Building from Change

Let’s be honest, the past few years have been less than ideal. The list of issues is long and varied. I get the sense there’s a general feeling of anxiety or struggle in most of my communities. There is also so much change going on across most aspects of life.

Change has come into my professional life in a big way — I have departed my position with Lilly and am now seeking out new opportunities. While this is a huge change, I believe this will be an eventual positive for me. Previously, I felt very limited on what collaboration opportunities I could engage with in the community. It was often impossible to get time or approvals to collaborate with external organizations. As someone who has always been interested in standards and interop, this was very challenging.

While this transition is going to be difficult, I am going to take the chance to engage these communities that I haven’t felt engaged with to date. I am actively trying to re-engage with my friends and colleagues at IDPro, a fantastic organization for practitioners of all things identity. I have also joined the OpenID Foundation as an individual member and hope to be an active participant in one or more working groups in the near future. Other areas I’ll be more actively monitoring, if not participating outright will include:

Another long-standing item I’ve been meaning to address has been my presence on social media. Before the Musk buyout, I had a number of great contacts on Twitter and it was a great way to share timely information. After the buyout, there seemed to be a migration to Mastodon but the community feels so much more fragmented now across Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads. Here’s my plan for moving forward:

If you find my alias elsewhere, it is likely me (I try to lock down my name where I can) but I don’t intend to use that service for general posting.

I’m looking forward to building this out and making the most of the changes ahead of me.