I have two important announcements:

1. I’m leaving the tech industry. Hopefully “for good”; if not, at least “for now”.

2. As such, the content on this blog is going to shift, perhaps dramatically. I’m going to be writing about a broader range of topics that interest me (projects around my hobby farm, wilderness trips, emergency medicine) – more writing for me, less writing for some imagined audience. (I’ll probably still end up writing about some of the same topics as I’ve been covering since 2020, just less often.)

I’m writing this post mostly to give myself permission to make that change, and to give readers the opportunity to unsubscribe/unfollow if they’re not interested.

If you’re interested in more details about why I’m leaving the industry and what’s next for me and this blog, read on.

I only have 1% of the notability as Scalzi but this still super resonates. People think they know me, and look up to me, but they only know this somewhat-curated facade. Please don’t idolize me, either.

“So, what’s new with you?”

Um, a lot:

1. Today’s my last day at 18F. It’s been an honor and a privilege to get to work at such an amazing place with such fantastic colleagues. I’ve learned so much. If you have the oportunity to join 18F – take it. It’s truly a unique oportunity. If you’re thinking about joining and want to chat about my experience there, I’d be happy to talk.

When social media was small, it was a bubble: a quiet conversation among friends. It was nice, but not particularly challenging. Pleasant, but maybe not useful.

Then there was a moment. A short one. Social media was perfect. The bubble popped, and suddenly there were voices from outside the bubble. But it was still small, still manageable, not yet the all-consuming force it is today. I felt comfortable sharing all sorts of things. Poorly-thought-through arguments that might be wrong. Positions that didn’t track popular consensus. Politics that didn’t neatly map to left or right. Questions I could barely understand well enough to ask. The network was big enough that I’d get great feedback! If I was wrong, I’d hear about it (gently). I’d hear that my contrary view wasn’t entirely abnormal (or, that it was). Friends would engage even when my questions sucked or made stupid assumptions. I learned so, so much in this moment.

Adrian broke the news: today, he and I are retiring as BDFLs, transitioning to a truly community-run project.

Adrian wrote a bit about the history of the BDFL term and our roles wearing that hat. Go check out his writing for that, and for some of his personal thoughts. Here, I’ll just add a few things of my own:

For me, this has been a long time coming – I’ve been thinking about this for at least a year. In many ways, I this is a similar to a lot of the changes we’ve made over the years: it’s a formalization, and a naming, of what’s already happened. It’s clear to me I don’t have the sort of day-to-day involvement that I once had, and I can’t remember the last time I’ve had to make the sort of dictatorial decisions that the title implies.

Three things I want to remember from XOXO, written in haste as the conference wraps up:

I’ve joined Heroku as their Director of Security.

Almost four years ago, Adrian posted about a job opening at this little newspaper in the middle of the country. He wrote that

World Online is […] one of the most innovative online-news operations in the world. Our main sites […] have garnered an impressive batch of industry awards – and tremendous industry attention – over the past few years.

[…]

We strive for innovation, nimble development and the use of best practices. We have a near-religious focus on doing things the right way – clean URLs, CSS, separation of content from presentation, accessibility, solid application design, etc.

I’ve got a couple of sweet upcoming speaking/teaching gigs coming up, and now I’m going to pimp them out. If you’re not down with self-promotion, you should read no further.

February 22-23 I’ll be speaking at Journalism 3G, a symposium on technology and journalism at Georgia Tech. I’ll be part of a roadmaps session wherein I get to pontificate about the future of journalism and the cool tech on the horizon. The rest of the program looks really exciting – I’m looking forward to it.