Okay, I guess the question begs the other question, “do I really think I’m so self-important that it really matters where I’ve been?” Hopefully I’m not. I certainly don’t want to come across that way. Last night Kishore asked me where I’ve been in so many words, so I wanted to get it out here to clear some of the air. I have so much content in my head that I’ve fallen into paralysis analysis. So with this post I’m going to forget where I’ve been and start over going forward.

Pheewwww. For those of you who have read this blog for any length of time, you know my Tuesday and Thursday evenings have been spent leaving events early to get my daughters from dance class. Well that all ended for the summer last weekend with the end-of-year recital. THAT took all weekend. All Friday night rehearsals, all day Saturday dress rehearsals, and then two shows Sunday (1:30PM and 5:30PM). We got out of there at 8:30PM Sunday. Why does this matter? No real time to get my thoughts down in the blogosphere.

I have been out and about, though. I signed up for InOneWeekend, and I hope to see a number of folks there. Payment for the event is through Paypal, although you do need to provide name, address, and contact information in an insecure format. I’ll be contacting Elizabeth Edwards of the InOneWeekend organization to do a podcast on the event perhaps as soon as today. We’ve been exchanging voicemail.

Last week, the UC CAS IT program held an advisory board meeting. We had a lively, targeted, and strategic meeting on how to continue promoting the college. The bottom line here is that the CAS IT program graduates some spectacular folks. I’ve had a great time working with some of them personally from a bottom up perspective. There are some large local companies working with the IT program in a top down manner. Bringing both together to show support from a personal level as well as an organizational level will help the program rise above the noise and, hopefully, also the appeal of relocating away from Cincinnati to some perceived, and some real, technology hubs.

At the board meeting, I had a chance to talk with Kroger’s Joe Ivey, Director of Enterprise Architecture, and Catherine Kelly, Director of Software Engineering and ECommerce. Catherine and I will hopefully be meeting over coffee to brainstorm on how to help Kroger be an employer of choice in the Cincinnati area. Kroger IT has implemented some very interesting ideas in terms of attracting and retaining great talent in the IT space. If you’re a top-notch college student, or dare I say even a talented high school junior or senior, you probably want to look into Kroger for some options, especially in the co-op space.

This week I also had a chance to meet with Steve Harvey, a CAS Senior who will graduate in a week or so and who has been co-oping with GAI right along side LUCRUM’s own Raveen Rajavarma. In a tweet last week I had mentioned a local company having 75 FTE openings in IT. Steve told me he has had firm offers from 4 companies and it fending off further phone calls. The Cincinnati IT job market is on fire. Should be good news for all the college students.

A couple weeks ago I served as a judge in the CAS Tech Expo where a pair of IT students took home Best of Expo.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to record a podcast with Doug Ross, CTO of the Western & Southern Financial Group, and David Bowman, Marketing Manager at LUCRUM. We discussed Web 2.0, trends, and the effects on the enterprise. You should see part 1 on the LUCRUM blog later today or Friday. Matt Brewer stopped in to say hello. Although Matt might brush this aside, I owe Matt for the opportunity to meet with Doug. Matt, I owe you lunch for this one!

And hopefully in the next week or two I’ll have a podcast up with Leon and Dan talking about Telligent and their work there. We’ve tried scheduling it a couple of times and then life got in the way.

Outside of IT I’ve taken on some other distractions. My parents were in over Memorial Day, so anything I wanted to get done got postponed Everything else just backed up from there. I’ve been getting more and more involved with UC from an alumni perspective. I stopped by the Career Fair for English majors in order to lend my advice about what vocations will allow English majors to actually support themselves when they graduate. I also helped the McMicken College of Arts & Sciences hand out Graeter’s to their students. I snagged a nice alumni t-shirt and a portfolio out of the that one, along with having an opportunity to meet a lot of great kids. I’m looking to get involved with the A&S alumni board once it starts meeting again next fall.

Finally, I’ve taken a new/old role at LUCRUM. I no longer recruit. I’m getting back into the delivery side of the business, and that transition has distracted me quite a bit as we brought on two new fantastic recruiters. I’ll be working with the sales side of the business working to understand what our clients are asking for, listening hard to them, and then proposing solutions that will meet their business needs. I’ll also get an opportunity to continue to play a LUCRUM evangelist role as well as make efforts as an advocate for the Cincinnati IT community as a whole. LUCRUM has been willing to fund some of this effort for me. I’m grateful they see value in my activities. The role is a new/old role as I’ve done a lot of the delivery part of the sales cycle in previous incarnations at LUCRUM. For me, LUCRUM has been an organization where I’ve had the opportunity to try new things, spread my wings, and reinvent myself. I’m never bored!

I’ll be moving this blog site to a new site when I can convince my wife that $7/month is not too much money to host a website. When that happens the subject matter will also expand a bit. I’m looking forward to this move in the next few weeks.

All in all I’ve been out and about, I just haven’t had enough time to actually write about it. Kishore, thanks for asking!

- Andy