New Beginnings…

It’s true what they say…

“As one door closes, another opens”

…and who can tell what new opportunities the new door might reveal.

Just recently I blogged there’s going to be “too much happening at work, for me to be able to juggle all my “Official” work, with my DX-Squad responsibilities.”

…and this is technically true. If I had to do both one thing and the other without some sort of reconciliation, I’d probably go mad.

However it wasn’t the *entire truth*.

You see there is a very good reason that there’s going to be “too much happening at work”….

Big Announcement

I’ve joined DevExpress

Yup I’m going to join Mark and the gang in promoting the DevExpress IDE Tools.

CodeRush Pro/Xpress, RefactorPro and DXCore

Its worth noting that I’ve not actually given up my previous job. DX did ask, but honestly the family business couldn’t take the hit at this time. We’ll see what happens in the future… Who knows :)

Instead I’ll be working part time on all manner of things CodeRush related. But rest assured… My existing employer is aware of the situation and is ok with this new arrangement.

So what’s changed?

Well that’s a good question….. The simple answer is … well … not much really :)

I asked what my job title would be. The best we’ve come up with so far is “CodeRush Community Evangelist”. What do you think? Can you come up with anything better?

In theory, I’m going to be more focused. After all I’m being paid to do this now. This also means that I’ll be forgiven more easily by my wife, for the amount of time I sometimes spend in the evenings on these things :)

One way of looking at this, is that DevExpress thought it would be cool to be able to direct my efforts a little more than they do now.

The way I see it, it’s not such a good idea to dig too deeply into this sort of thing… If I ask too many questions they might change their mind :)

Community Plugin Site

Don’t worry the community site is still a community site. It and the plugins on it (current and future) will continue to be owned by the community. Nothing is changing there.

I’m going to continue all of my community stuff. I’ll still write plugins. I’ll still blog. Hey you never know they might even let me write on the official site :P.

What will I do?

The simple answer to this is ‘More of the same’. I’ll have greater access to the devs behind this wonderful set of products (You know, the crack squad of awesome guys that actually implement the stuff that Mark Miller comes up with)

With this new level of access, I should be even better equipped to answer questions and writing plugins. So we all win. Hurrah!

The biggest change from my perspective is that I can’t say “I don’t work for DevExpress” anymore. I’m going to have to work on that one :) Although it’s already recorded all over the place, so I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t attempt to track down each and every instance.

So what next?

So I’m just off now for my ‘Kool-aid upgrade’.

Instead of making regular visits to the Kool-Aid fountain, I’ve got this new Kool-Aid Patch which hydrates Kool-Aid directly from moisture in the air around me. :)

Oh and while I’m on the topic of Kool-Aid, If anyone thinks for a minute that this will make me *more* Pro-CodeRush, I advise you to stop and think for a minute about that….

How exactly is that possible?

Seriously?

So after my Kool-Aid upgrade, I’ll be off to learn a few secret handshakes and will catch you all on the other side.

I think things are about to get interesting :D