I wrote back in November about how I was changing my job focus, and turning over the reins of the Client Services part of my job to Tammy Stockton.
Now I have an official new title, Director of Emerging Technology, within the newly named Technology Engineering group of Computing & Communications. In my new capacity I’m reporting to Terry Gray, which is great – I’ve been a huge fan of Terry’s for many years now, and I always enjoy working with him (though I’m a little sad to no longer report to Ed Lightfoot, who I have learned a tremendous amount from over the years).
I’m already immersed in lots of interesting ventures in this new capacity – the last two weeks alone brought meetings with Apple about the iTunes U program, Google about their Google Search Appliance product, and Xythos about their products, along with meetings about local projects well under way, like the UW Wireless Initiative, and some brainstorming with colleagues about possible future services like content management, windows authentication services, and wikis.
It’s already clear to me that the number of opportunities are close to boundless, and the trick will be in getting some staff to help with these efforts and to figure out effective processes for deciding which efforts to pay attention to.
And, of course, I’ll be attending the O’Reilly Emerging Technology conference next month – it’s in my job description!