Last Friday, my time at Sony Music came to an end. The end wasn't abrupt, I had several weeks to prepare, but the top level of the group I worked in decided that it was time to end remote development and bring everybody in-house. They offered full relocation to New York which would allow me to keep my position, but I love the Bay Area too much. I did give serious thought to the idea of moving, because working with Sony Music has been great. But it does not match my current personal goals to leave here.

So as soon as they told me they were ending the remote positions, I did a little feeling out of the Drupal world to see what would be available. I had several interesting conversations right away, and over the first week I learned that there is a lot of opportunity out there at all levels of Drupal skill. The space that I work in is extremely popular, and Drupal is being turned to as a valuable platform at many levels, despite the strengths of some of the competition.

I had a lot of great opportunities, and to be honest the decision was difficult. Several people presented me with very interesting proposals, but I eventually selected IO1 where I am coming aboard on Friday to be their Director of Research. From a practical standpoint, that means I will continue to spend a chunk of my time working on Panels and Views, and I will also get to spend a chunk of my time working on new and interesting things to grow IO1's business. I do have a nice set of plans for what I'd like to accomplish already, and the things they need go very well with the things I want to do.

Plus, IO1 has been quietly active within the Drupal community for a number of years. I met Fintan, the CEO of IO1 back at DrupalCon Brussels where we chatted for some time over beer. I immediately liked him. He is gregarious and knowledgeable, he has a good sense of business, and he is willing to chase down opportunity when it presents itself. No business can operate successfully without some level of risk, and Fintan seems to be very good at choosing the right risks to take.

Also, and this was very very important to me. Back when Views 2 was initially being developed, and I was under a serious flood of "Drupal 6 is useless, there are no Views!!!" and I was working my butt off to get something, Fintan committed 32 hours of developer time at my disposal. Normally in the Drupal world, help comes in the form of itch-scratching. I see this thing I want fixed, I help you fix it, everybody wins. However, being given a resource that I was able to direct -- and who was clearly incredibly competent -- was a big deal. In that week, Views advanced significantly because I was able to get some important and difficult tasks out of the way, and IO1 directly contributed to Views 2's first beta release only a few weeks later.

That kind of cooperation has always meant something to me. I've had several Drupal organizations promise help and/or developer time in Views, but never actually come through. Some of them rather large, actually. Some of these promises repeated often. IO1 has been unique in following through on that promise. And while not everyone knows the name IO1, I know that they have quietly supported very big projects in the past. They have donated money and developer time on various drupal.org initiatives and asked for very little in return, because they knew that their business benefited.

This impression, plus the actual job description and title being very ideal for me, made IO1 the winning choice for me. I think the future is going to be very interesting for everyone. I get to continue my passion of working on community projects, and IO1 gets to focus my attention on the things that will most benefit them. As far as I can tell, everybody wins.