tl;dr: I’ve traded in startup life for a newly started team within Red Hat focused on helping their upstream communities.

So, I like startup life: the opportunity to define one’s role in the organization, the chance to work on many aspects of the business, and the ability to learn a great deal in a short space of time since so much is going on and so many things need attention. It seems like not that long ago I was penning a post about my excitement to join Portland-based startup AppFog, and much of that excitement was focused on these benefits that startup life provides. Then, Red Hat came calling….

It wasn’t an easy decision – the team at AppFog are great, doing fine work and they’ll be incredibly successful – but the chance to work at Red Hat and continue working to improve the health and well-being of free and open source software communities was too tempting. I’m one of the first few hires onto the Open Source and Standards Team, a group focused on helping all of Red Hat’s upstream communities make their lives better. It’s a new team and we’re all busy figuring out just how we’ll be best able to use our skillsets to help the community, but I’m very excited by all that I’ve seen thus far.

My starter project focuses on community events: where folks are going, what they’re doing at various conferences and how me and the rest of my team can be supportive of those goals. It’s early days yet – I just started this past Monday – but I’ll be happy to share more about what I am doing as I find my feet.

And yes, I got the red fedora at new hire orientation. I’ll get around to posting a photo one of these days. There were even rumors of capes, but that’s a story for another time….