Leveled Up

Last night (on the eve of my Birthday) I accepted a role as Principal Interoperability Architect within GE Healthcare IT.  My new role also includes interoperability product management responsibilities. My first official act in this new role will be attending the IHE North American Connectathon this Monday where a number of my colleagues will be testing my employers products.  This Connectathon will NOT be my first, but it will certainly be my first in this new position.  I'm certainly going to be looking at interoperability in a whole new way in the coming years.

I've been working towards obtaining this kind of responsibility for the past year or so.  You, my readers might ask, how this will change my blogging content and habits, or my standards participation.  I've already given that considerable thought:

1. My blog posts here will continue to focus on standards and standards related policy.  Any work that I participate in on for the development of standards has always been within public view, and will continue to be so.  I don't talk about my employers products in this blog, and that won't change either.  I have other venues for that sort of thing.
2. Habits will very likely change, just as they did when I started school.  I'll try to keep up, but will likely be overwhelmed with more operational responsibilities that will make it difficult to do so.  I know I can do better than a post a week (on average), but will likely not return to a level of 1 a day that I had before I started school when I finish that later this year.
3. Standards participation will become more focused.  I'll have to implement, instead of teach implementers.  It won't likely have a huge impact on quantity or quality of participation, but will likely affect the quadrants that I focus on.

Finally, my business card will change.  No longer will it say Standards Geek. In the past I've been responsible for the creation of standards, and now will be responsible for implementation of them in product.  As is fitting, when standards get implemented, my title (on my business card) will also reflect that.  I think I'll start introducing myself as an "Interoperability Geek".

   -- Keith