Ed’s Next Adventure
I’m diving deep into the world of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for developers!
Wow, 5 years goes by quickly. 5 years ago since I converted my purple badge to Blue! Or as Craig reminds me, it’s been 4.99 years and I’ll get my 5-year crystal at Microsoft after I come back 😎
It’s been such an amazing time with so much growth in my life. It has also been a really great extension of the work before I joined Microsoft as a Microsoft MVP, Consultant, Product/Release Department Manager, that I’ve had in the DevOps, ALM, Agile, TFS, and Visual Studio Team Services space for 12 years.
At the same time, the ending of this chapter is bittersweet. There are so many amazing people that I have worked with and learned from that I will truly miss. I’m hopeful our paths will cross again.
Visual Studio Team Services and Team Foundation Server have become so amazing especially when I look at the last 2–3 years. Out of all of the fun projects & products I’ve worked on, I’m very glad to have made sure that I hit the two main improvements to dev team’s lives:
- Launch a hosted SaaS service at Microsoft for development teams (the first developer SaaS service at Microsoft!)
- Ensure an easy on-ramp to that SaaS service from existing on-premises data
I saw just how difficult it was for dev & IT teams to maintain their on-premises engineering systems in my many years of enterprise consulting. It’s amazing to have launched Visual Studio Team Services so teams don’t have to worry about it ever again. It’s even more amazing to have a front row seat to the engineering transformation at Microsoft towards a One Engineering System that is Visual Studio Team Services. The story has been amazing to share with so many.
In addition to being a part of the transformation that Microsoft has been making with developers. I mean, we open sourced .NET! It’s awesome to see that we have been moving in the right direction and even “getting our groove back.”
Developer Startups
I had the opportunity to work on my MBA at the Foster School of Business at the University of Washington during these years. It was a really amazing experience for me. One of the things that I picked up was a better understanding around entrepreneurship and a lot of the mechanics of founding successful startups. (As much as you can influence at least!) I walked away with a more concrete understanding and passion. Starting a company became approachable to me and I have shifted to bringing experiences into my life to drive me towards that mission.
Meeting so many awesome founders of amazing startups in the developer space has been a highlight of the last few years. I’m so impressed with how generous and compassionate each of them are to help others in reaching even higher in their success.
In my time at Microsoft, I have also loved diving deeper into not only the technical aspects of amazing developers tools and services, but also the many non-technical pieces that are important. Developer services are insanely tough to get right especially as you start to think about being successful in the enterprise space. There was a great article that Ethan Kurzweil wrote recently that captured what I had been observing as a set of Eight Laws for Developer Platforms and really resonated with me. Brilliant!
Next Adventure
That brings me to my next adventure: I’m joining Algorithmia as Head of Product! I have been really impressed with the work they are doing and I became even more impressed with each of the amazing team members.
I’m joining Algorithmia as Head of Product!
Algorithmia is a public marketplace of algorithms written by developers from all of the world. Under the hood, there’s some amazingness to make sure each of the microservices run at scale. It’s pretty freakin’ cool. There’s also an on-premises version that enterprises and large organizations are starting to pick up with success. There’s so much more possible here and I’m looking forward to it’s future.
A good chunk of the notable algorithms currently available focus on helping developers with solving artificial intelligence & machine learning challenges. Data science groups have been a primary group that has helped Algorithmia get to where it is today. This space is really interesting to me. I’m looking forward to diving into this world!
We are at a very early point in where AI & ML are at. There’s so much more that developers and Product Managers can leverage to transform their applications into truly being much more valuable to customers and intelligent.
There’s a lot of growth opportunities ahead for Algorithmia and I’m excited to be a part of that success. I can’t wait to see what’s ahead!
Thank you so much to each of the mentors in my life. You are amazing and I couldn’t be more appreciative of your guidance. It’s crazy and exciting at the same time. One of my favorite mentors shared this thought with me that fits well for these times in our lives:
The good stuff is often on the other side of fear.
Please feel free to follow me here, on Twitter, LinkedIn and what’s happening with Algorithmia on the Blog: http://blog.algorithmia.com/
