I’ve decided to take this blog and turn it into a mix of my business and personal thoughts. Here’s an email I just sent out announcing my departure from Microsoft and what I plan to be doing. More thoughts to come on the switch, but I did want to get the announcement online:

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In keeping with Microsoft tradition, I’m writing to all of you to let you know that December 2^nd is my last day at the company.

I’m going to be taking a COO position at EC:Wise, a 100+ person consulting company that specializes in business intelligence, analysis and data services as well as a position in an associated startup that is providing automation, analytics and social networking for the casino industry. As most of you know, I’ve always been interested in helping companies attain their goals and enable better focus on their customers – whether thru transactional systems, data analysis or social networking. This allows me to hit many of these things at once. Additionally, it has the added bonus of working with some people that I’ve known for over 20 years, including someone that I used to work with in my own company back in my New Jersey days. Finally, I get to spend some time working not only in the .NET world, but the open source world as well.

My nearly 10 years at Microsoft have been an incredible learning experience – you’ve all been part of that. I’ve been involved in the creation of some amazing software, some incredible teams, and I respect the fact that this has been one of the few large companies that encourages you to speak your mind. If I can leave anything with y’all it’s to keep fighting to do the right thing by customers – both internal and external – even if you have to be creative to get there.

I’ll be staying in the Seattle area – and can be reached via my personal email at yalangriver@hotmail.com, and of course on Facebook at www.facebook.com/yalangriver.

Please keep in touch.