I'm leaving AOL

Some confusion over my last post - so allow me to clarify (this should be of no surprise to folks inside AOL).

Yes, I'm leaving AOL, and, no, its not connected to Jon Miller's departure, except in the zeitgeist-of-the-Company-atmosphere/sign-of-the-times kind of way.

I had first resigned some time ago, but was asked to help stabilize through a significant company transition and "keep an open mind through the process". I think I did that (really, I tried) - even running the Open Services Developer's conference, creating participation opportunities with external developer communities and helping accelerate the Company's (metaphorically and literally) thinking around what embracing the Web means.

That said, it became clear some time ago that where I'd want to invest and direct our technology and efforts just didn't align quite enough. I was offered some very generous senior opportunities inside the transforming organization - for which I'm very grateful - but after 7 bosses in three years, and having participated in and initiated quite a bit of transormation at the Company - I think its just time to move on, professionally and personally.

Officially, I'll be wrapping up next month - so don't be surprised to see me still wandering the halls. I had also been asked to ease the change - to make the transition smooth, and that's been going on for the last few months.

I'll still be blogging here, so don't expect any particular change in that arena - you'll see here what develops as I'm ready to talk about things.

Important footnote: My choice isn't a reflection of AOL's opportunity. I genuinely do believe that AOL can be signficant, relevant, and successful again as a leader on the Internet - I hope that it will. People like Jim Bankoff, Kevin Conroy, Mike Kelly, Joe Redling - these guys aren't dummies.

Anyhoo - it was a good time: met some great people (many of whom are also gone :P), took away some things, contributed some things, and hopefully left a positive wake.

Time for the next thing :)

AOL CEO Switch: Miller replaced by Falco

Jon Miller was a deeply thoughtful leader. There is no question he'll be missed.

I had resigned from AOL, back in June of this year (no surprise for AOL insiders), for professional as well as personal reasons (which still stand - I'll elucidate in the near future). But I had stayed on in my role because the (then) CEO and the (then) CTO personally asked me to help through the significant transition immediately ahead - and to keep an open mind about the future through that process. I am/was senior enough, and had been entrusted with enough responsibility, that that seemed more than reasonable.

He certainly taught me, personally, a lot about what it takes to run an organization at scale, through significant transformation - I think people forget how differently the Company operated 3 years ago. For example, when I started we had 300+ developers still working on the upkeep of an aging AOL client and hitting quality targets for our Dial network. Now its a dozen or so, from our Bangalore development center, no less - and all core development is about embracing the Web.

And more than that, Jon's a professional, in every positive sense of the word - and in culture of personalities and politics, that's refreshing. I appreciate the time I got with him - as well as the growth opportunities he offered me during his tenure.

Although it became clear by the fall that I was not long for AOL, and though I feel I've been able to positively impact the Company's fortunes, this kind of leadership change is a big deal. I hope they know what they're doing... and more importantly, what they're trying to accomplish. This level of turmoil without clear direction seems a little... I dunno, desperate - and, in my view, furthers AOL from the battle field in which in needs to compete. I hope that's intentional, and that they have a plan (Good luck Randy :))

If I had one complaint of Jon, it would be that he was not able to be involved enough in the day-to-day execution and operations of the Company - AOL would've been better for it. I imagine his responsibilities with Time Warner made that difficult.

You can read more here. Jason sums up the somber surprise well...

Updated: Some clarification on my status at AOL.

Bye Bye Mac

Update: Apparently a hoax. D'OH!!!!

Not not that one... I meant that, apparently, Justin Long is no longer "the Mac". Hopefully that doesn't mean the end of the ad campaign - which was just frikkin' funny... though, (as the Wired guy points out) not sure where it goes from here without being a little wierd.

Bad call! Bad call! (though I reserve the right to change my mind... :))

Adobe Flash AVM and Mozilla join forces

Adobe has open sourced the VM used in Flash Player 9. As I mentioned previously, its pretty good.

Even further, the Mozilla foundation plans to migrate their JavaScript engine, SpiderMonkey, to this VM in the future. This is a good move for both organizations- and it nicely cements a credible non-MS rich runtime for the Web.

It still all effectively proprietary (i.e. the direction is controlled by a very small few) ... but that's mostly OK.

Mac is back

I bought a Mac mini last week - my first Mac (personally) in maaaaany years. I started my professional life as a Mac programmer, so its something of a "return" for me. Its nice - Apple's really done a great job making a great out-of-the-box experience. And I'm really stunned by the design - its just frikkin' lovable.

There's a lot of prognistication about Vista's impact on the market (mostly negative for Microsoft) - the pricing structure and broken promises make it tough, even though the OS itself (not to mention the new Office) really have some very nice (somewhat overdue) features and robustness that will get overshadowed.

But there's an elegance and desparation that Apple finally shed before making its turn around which is instructive, I think, to lots of companies somewhat trapped by their own past success - it doesn't come quick and requires persistent commitment.

Its not that OS X or Apple are perfect - there's a lot that stinks and/or just doesn't work, and I don't think I'll be switching permanently anytime soon (and honestly, I think Safari's kind of poop-ish).

But... the video below is an oldie, but a goodie - and it embodies the "karma" of what I mean... If design is the new black of business - and it takes a leap to embrace, then its also requires more a holistic approach to the consumer; it's not just about the product itself. And, as always (and obviously), you can't lead by following.


And before you laugh too hard at those "MS losers" - remember that Microsoft commissioned the video; so there's not a self awareness gap, lack of intellect, or even a lack of humour there - doesn't make it much easier to actually do.

The Elephant Stampede: RIA and Standards?

Saw this article on slashdot discussing desktop/web convergence - and the elephants chasing to define the experience. There are some interesting points in this discussion - but one missing thought/question is that I'm not sure what role open standards play (if any); the contenders are (effectively) single source solutions: Flash/Flex (Adobe), XUL (Mozilla), WPF/.NET (Microsoft), Java (Sun), etc.

Previous posts on this: RIA innovation?, Disruptive trends, Content Engineering, Orbit and Java, and RIA Battlelines.

Of course it could all end up like this...