2020-08-09: All the links in this post are dead. :(

Ruprict.net has been dormant for months now, mostly because I’ve started to shift my career into a much more Ruby-colored light. In the last few months, besides really focusing all my spare nerd time on Ruby, I became the Managing Editor of Rubysource.com As a result, all my technical blogging has funneled into that site. It is a ton of fun and the more I submerge into Ruby and its community, the more I enjoy it.

For this reason and others, I started looking for a job a few months back as well. The job search was almost exclusively Ruby jobs, which was a risk since I’ve never done Ruby professionally. However, I did land a couple of offers, which weren’t right for various reasons. This proved that I could get a job in Ruby land, something I was unsure of when I began the search.

Some weeks back, I met a guy named Les Porter at a local Ruby development meetup. Les had pasted a sign on his shirt that said he was looking for Charlotte-based Rubyists for a startup called KYCK. KYCK is “the global soccer conversation”, focusing on the social, rich media, and e-commerce aspects around the world’s most popular sport. I talked to Les a couple of times, just to see what he was offering, and we made an appointment for me to come down and see their facility.

Being honest, I did not really think the KYCK thing would pan out for me. I have never been in the startup life, always playing it “safe” with somewhat established companies. The more I talked to Les, however, the more excited I became.

KYCK offers me a change to help lead a team and build something from the ground up. It offers me a chance to focus on the technologies I love and really grow all of my skills. There will be major sacrifices in the short term, for sure. The more I thought about the potential upside, the more I realized I had to take the risk. It’s time to put my money where my mouth is and really do something. As you might have guessed, I took the job.

I start in the new year, and I am excited and terrified and anxious and a million other things. Right now, every minute of every day I am thinking about how great it could be and how much I have to learn. I think if I wasn’t scared, then I’d be pursuing the wrong path.

So, I’ll be stepping out of the ESRI world for a bit. I do love this community, so I part with the proverbial “sweet sorrow”. It has been one of the privileges of my career to watch the community around GIS and ESRI grow, while considering myself a very small part of that.

KYCK goes to public beta on January 15th, 2012. Stop by and see the site in your spare time, and if you are a soccer-head, keep KYCK on your radar and register when you can.

I wish the GIS/ESRI community nothing but success, knowing it will continue to thrive in amazing ways. I hope the community wishes me luck, as well. It is going to be a crazy ride.