Failed Entrepreneur for sale: I don't have any other way to put
it. For twenty years, I have been an actor out alone, a ruthlessly
small business on the bleeding edge of computer possibilities and
internet innovations, and, well, it seems no one does this
sort of stuff this way anymore -- or if they do, I no longer know how
to connect with any of them.After months of cold-calls and proddings, of slammed
doors, cold-shoulders, indignant amateurs and mostly just blank
stares, well, I'm tired of the rejection. Maybe I'm just stupid, but I
can't even find more than a handfull of prospects willing to even
entertain just the concept of outsourcing webservices design
or whatever, let alone actually turn them on to innovative
stuff like topic maps or webservices or weblogs or portals ... or
whatever. Whatever. Such a handful, even if they did buy, is not
enough to stay in business. Maybe the day of the maverick
outside consultant pioneer is obsolete, usurped by cheap naivity of
young gung-hos and yes-boss offshores. Maybe it's time to count my
losses, cash my chips and move on, raise sheep. Oh, this consulting
stuff is fine for an expensive hobby, and I might continue to dabble
in it in my spare time, but it's not viable as an occupation. It's time to face the dream of it straight in the eye and
go looking for a real day job.Only I feel like a mother
returning to work once her kids are grown: I've been doing this job
full-time since 1983 -- I don't know anything else or where I'd fit in
the real world anymore. I know all these new technologies
inside out from the engineering, business and the human viewpoints,
I've got 20 years experience under my belt rolling out what works ---
and lots of what doesn't --- and I've been right in the thick of two
decades of disruptive technology revolutions including the
minicomputer, the microcomputer, structured programming and
object-oriented design, Unix, UML, Extreme Programming and open source
methodologies, Internet and Linux/free-software, webservices and XML,
portals and weblogs --- all that accummulated experience
should be useful to someone with a buck in their
pocket. Beyond that, I really don't know. Teach? Management? Dock
worker?Any ideas? Yeah, I know: TeledyN is usually such
a positive space, and I've tried to keep it such, but today is a day
of Death and Reckonning, and sad as it is to share the death of
someone's 20-year-dream, I have to ask you to put this tale in the
perspective of this day, to place it with the wherefore of Día de
los Muertos, the Mexican celebration of "Death and the
Children" and it's implicit knowledge that from every tragic loss,
gain and the future is reborn.