mnn

I announced my resignation from MNN today sending a short to-the-point note to entire staff. I told key staff, including the E.D, of my resignation weeks, and in some cases months, before finally settling upon a date.

My last day at MNN will be June 1st.

There were a lot of factors leading to my decision to leave MNN. The primary reason is that Diana and I have decided to move to China. Yes that's right we are moving to China. The exact dates of departure and the arrival cities are still unknown but those are details we can fill in later.

The other factors are more short term superficial items that MNN can solve rather easily. Burn out played a major role in my decision. MNN is going through a lot of transitions and because of these transitions I found myself putting in more 15+ hour days than I care to remember. I have slept at the office on more than one occassions due to the sheer amount of work that needed to be done. Of course this doesn't take into account the out of work networking, conferences and personal time dedicated to cheerleading/advancing MNN in some aspect. In the 18 months I worked for the organization I was able to do a very large amount of work spread across many disciplines.

A quick list includes

• Redesigned/Implemented a new physical and IP network
• Installed configured
• LDAP services
• email services (including postfix, imapd, mailman, etc.)
• DHCP, DNS, WINS, AFP, Cifs services
• Internal and External firewalls (iptables)
• Webserver
• Tape backup system (including offsite storage and disaster recovery plans)
  
• Developed plan and found vendors to install IP Telephony system (reducing monthly costs)
• Wrote several hundred pages of documentation
• Reworked many vendor contracts and established support contracts
• Installed a 10mb IP fiber line w/o raising costs; providing significantly improved service to the organization
• Setup employee/producer discount Apple purchases
• Created a system that can easily handle p/t, interns and volunteers without compromising security or significantly increasing management support
• Redeveloped MNN.org and setup translation system.
  

Of course I didn't do all of these things solely on my own. I was responsible for hiring individuals to help me accomplish all of this. It is also those individuals and positions that are remaining at MNN to help sustain this in the future. In my opinion this was a large part of my position. I was not simply building something at MNN but I was developing a sustainable system for MNN.

I honestly feel as though I am leaving the organization in a significantly better position that when I took the position. If I were to stay another 3 to 5 years I could do even more, however, I have reached a point of where it is time for someone else to take the reigns. A new administrator can take over the network without having to build much and can take a much more relaxed sustaining role. This person can focus on providing better staff support and planning for the future.

Before moving to China and, most likely, while in China I am shifting my job role to Drupal development. There is a significant amount of work being done in Drupal that focuses on the non-profit sector; including software used by MNN. I think that I can add some value in this industry, helping to plan out and develop software that can be used by non-profits nation (world?) wide. While I could have done this work at MNN leaving MNN will allow me to better focus on the development.

I will miss working at MNN but I'm incredibly excited about moving to China.

It is with great sadness that I announce that this will be my last day at MNN. I worked for the computer for close to two years and the time has come for me to move on.

The decision to leave MNN was not made lightly nor abruptly. A few months notice was given to both upper and lateral management and an amicable last day was set. Diana and I decided to leave New York for the "redder" pastures of China. I have been studying Mandarin on and off for almost a year now and it is time for me to get serious about learning the language. 

MNN was an absolutely wonderful place to work and I hope that when we return to New York in a few years I'll be able to jump right back into MNN.

I will miss working at MNN.

I'm off to Vegas for the NAB conference. MNN is rebuilding its Master Control and doing many other things. I'm heading to the conference to look at new equipment and to meet with several of our vendors.

I'm not a fan of Vegas but the conference is always interesting. This will be my second appearance at NAB.

Check it out I was mentioned on an O'Reilly blog. I spoke briefly on using video w/ Drupal during DrupalCon (OS-CMS sunnyvale, Ca) and I get a one-liner on O'Reily. Man I should speak more..

Oh wait. I am. At Harvard.

The Beyond Broadcast Conference is occuring in Cambridge, Mass next week and I am on a panel speaking about "Participatory Media" and "Open Media publishing Tools". Basically it is geek talk for an entire day. I'm excited. I love this stuff. Check it out on Wikipedia

In other news I have fallen in love with twitter. Twitter is a stupidly basic service that allows someone to send message to the twitter service via the web, IM or SMS. So even when I'm not near a computer I can send simple messages to my blog to update my status/whereabouts with everyone. You can either read it on my webpage (the block on the Right), subscribe to an RSS feed, get the updates on your phone, or see them on twitter.

If you read my twitter messages from this week you would have noticed that I went to Las Vegas. I flew in for the NAB conference, which is a massive conference for television stations around the world. Tens of thousands of people attend and thousands of vendors show off their products. People arrive from around the world, hang around for the week and talk "shop" with other television heads. I'm not fond of Vegas but the conference is actually quite interesting and fun at times.

 

I arrived in Denver almost a week ago and have been working 14-18 hours a day on MNN's database open source project. A massive project involving the creation of custom Drupal modules, integration with CiviCRM and tons of coordination.

Since arriving in Denver I have learned two things.
1) Deb (g/f of Tony) showed my hypem.com  -schweet!
2) CiviCRM is a horrible system to program against

Oh well the struggle continues. In one week's time I will be on vacation in Portland, Oregon! I can not wait to get back to Portland.

Ok so if you haven't realized by now I accepted a job at MNN and I have been completely bogged down by this stupidly insane project with a crazy software developer. At this point I'm not sure what is was the software developer that didn't even follow software 101 guidelines or the amount of bureaucracy created by a non-profit organization. At this point I am seriously considering finding a corporate job (half joking/half serious) because if I don't get out from under this current project I will never be able to do things that I wanted to do at MNN. My job there would be pointless and I much rather spend 60 hours a week making 30k more in a corporate hell hole of a job.

Anyhow enough with that rant. A few weeks ago I went on a Timesup New York memorial Bike ride. It was a slow ride that has 4 different starting points in each of the 4 outer borroughs (Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and the Bronx). The 4 groups of people then met up in Manhattan and rode around to various spots where bike commutters were killed while riding their bikes. At each of the 16 spots a memorial was placed and one spot in each borrough (5 total) an "Ghost bike" was placed to raise public awareness of bike commutting and the danger put on it by the carelessness of drivers.

It was a great ride albeit incredibly somber.

You can check it out at a few places.
Here is a Video
Pictures (I'm in one about half-way down the page)
Village Voice article on the event

and of course check out Times Up New York


 

I woke up this morning feeling great. Last night I stayed at work until the early morning and moved servers, installed software and made our database software, at MNN, ridicuously redundant and on overkill hardware. I don't want to have to mess with the software ever again.

Oh man today was one of those days. A company that I have been working with, as a representative of MNN, called me today. They received a letter from our lawyers expressing our frustration with a software product that they developed. Unfortunately it was not a fun phone call and if I end up dead tomorrow you know where to start looking; Brooklyn, no wait I mean I live in Queens, look for me in Queens---ya that's it--- Queens.