I’ve been waiting to write this post for a couple of months now, and since everything is finally settled (as far as I’m concerned, anyway), it’s past-due time for this update.
First, the facts: on June 30, my then-employer, ACCESS Systems Americas, as a particular result of the lack of uptake on the First ELSE phone as well as a general lack of return on the mobile platform business, decided to stop development of the ACCESS Linux Platform, and laid off 35% of their staff—myself included—as a result.
As required by Japanese securities laws, this “reduction in force” was promptly announced—in a Japanese PDF on the main corporate web site. There has, to date, been no announcement of this in English, nor mention of it on the English-language site, to the best of my knowledge.
Some of my ex-co-workers have, happily, already found themselves new positions. Many are still looking, in a very tough economy, and I wish them the very best of luck, and offer to them any assistance I am in a position to render. I also wish those folks still at ACCESS the best of luck with the initiatives they’re pursuing.
There’s definitely a blog posting to be had in why mainstream open source has been a consistent and habitual failure in the mobile space, and will most likely continue to be so, in spite of some very promising beginnings going back to the “GNOME Mobile and Embedded Initiative” several years ago, but that’s a subject for another day.
For my part, I’m submitting resumes when I see positions of potential interest (so feel free to let me know if you have one), but—since I’ve got the ability to do so, and I’m at a point where I’d prefer to suffer from my own errors than those of others—I’m chiefly working on a new venture. My company is twostones, and, in addition to some specific development projects, we’ll be offering a variety of strategic and design services, including
- Consulting on open source licensing and “best practices”
- Social media program development
- Webinar and podcast design/development/production
- Web site design/development
- Search engine optimization/landing page optimization
- Analytical design
- Productivity and project management consulting services
I seem to go about ten years a job. Apple was ten years, and an adventure. Palm, PalmSource and ACCESS were about ten years, and an even bigger adventure.
I’m lucky to have a new, and potentially even better adventure placed before me, and I look forward to getting up every morning to work a little more on it. Being interested in things like Japan, social media, videography, “nomadic working”, blogging, writing, web design and such, I’m in a good position to play around with all of those in the course of this venture.
Life’s changing, as it typically does. And change is good.
