New Role: In the Trenches

So as the new year came round I start re-evaluating what it was I wanted to do at Yahoo! I have had an amazing 1.5 years here getting a chance to launch the public design pattern library, doing evangelism for Yahoo!, creating some components and working on some cool projects inside Yahoo!

As I looked at 2007 I could see that a number of opportunities still existed for me to go out and speak. In fact I had about a dozen events already in play through the middle of June.

Sometime last year I began helping (part-time) with technology and design consultation for a new Yahoo! site. I am not at liberty to announce the product at this time but at the first of the year I was offered the chance to become the engineering manager for this team. The product is an awesome idea and it promises to "do good" for our society. So with a passion for the goal, the product, the team and the challenges, it was a no-brainer for me to decide to step out of the evangelism role and take on the challege of putting into practice all the things I have been talking so much about. It's time to get in the trenches!

I am leaving a very talented evangelism team to join another extremely talented team that I feel honored to work with here in Sunnyvale. The current engineering team (in Bangalore) is doing an incredibly awesome job getting the first version of the product ready.

My management graciously offered (even encouraged) me to continue my speaking adventures. But I decided that in order to have sanity in my life and in order to do the best job for the product I would pull back from speaking and put my head down into this project. I subsequently canceled most of the events lined up and at this point I think I only have one event left to speak at this year.

I am considering taking the material from my talks and putting it into a book or ebook. But in the meanwhile I think the best thing is to start writing a series of blog posts that capture the current thinking I have on the topic of design patterns, principles and practices. Also I will be posting my RIA Best Practices talk from the Web Apps Conference in Monterey, CA on slideshare.

The other big news is Yahoo! was fortunate to have recruited Christian Crumlish as the new Yahoo! Design Pattern Curator. Watch the yuiblog and the ypatterns site for cool stuff coming out from Erin Malone & Christian!