bkdelong

Ok, ok. I know. That last post beat around the bush. Well, this one won't. I just had to wait until Sally announced it.

That's right - ZOT Group, Web standards consultancy extraordinare and my employer is closing up shop. We've gone through a lot in the past year. Clients conducting massive layoffs and canceling IPOs, a CEO being diagnosed and subsequently treated with cancer, and like many other companies, we fell victim to the market. When you deal on a regular basis with companies that are employing cutting edge technology as their primary means of income, they are more often than not dependent on VC funding. When the well dries up, so does the client base.

Despite what you may think, Sally actually spent a lot of time working while she had cancer. Though Roddy and I did a lot of the day-to-day interaction with clients, Sally was still in the picture, keeping things moving. Her version of "taking a break" is only working 5 hours a day.

ZOT was a phenomenal place to work and Sally was an amazing person to work for. I love recounting how we hooked up with each other - I had just gotten married and Kirky and I had closed on the house. Kirky had been very supportive as I spent the year after my graduation technical editing books and picking up some consulting here and there. But now we had a house, and I needed a job. So I started looking through the job sites and editing my resume. A few days later, I went to my maildrop to pickup whatever would be waiting for me. I flipped through my copy of Mass High Tech before throwing it out and saw that the first page profile was that of one Sally Khudairi. Skimming through it, I noticed she had recently moved from the W3C to Cambridge Technology Partners and that her job at CTP had recently disappeared in consolidation and she was starting her own gig - a Web standards consultancy called "ZOT Group".

A few Google searches later, I discovered where Sally was located and on August 3, 1999 I emailed her, letting her know how excited I was with Web standards and my involvement with the World Organization of Webmasters, and Web accessibility knowledge. A few days later, I was meeting with her at the Bristol Lounge in the Four Seasons Hotel and that Monday, I found myself immersed with client work. It was fantastic!

My first official day on the job, Sally was in the midst of moving from Southie over to Watertown. We spent the day getting my cell phone (which became my business phone line), eating lunch at Joe's, (meanwhile one of Sally's feet was slapping around on a broken but brand new sandal she had just gotten), then a stop off at the new place to yell at contractors doing a multitude of things wrong, and a French movie at the West Newton Cinema.

Working for ZOT was always extremely flexible - I could work from home at any hour, I always had my business line (cell phone) with me, my laptop was my desktop, so I could work almost anywhere. I couldn't ask for a better job.

As we got deeper and deeper into a client base, we began working with companies that had actual products. It became my job by default to check out the software, examine what standards it was implementing and how it was implementing it. I also became intimately familiar with the product and made sure I was able to use it and understand each nuance. This lead to beta testing by default as well as suggestions for improvement from everything including UI and performance. I then took what I knew and worked with Roddy and Sally to include that knowledge in marketing and communications.

That was one of the big reasons for ZOT's existence - communications and marketing without the bullshit. If you look at our Web site, you'll see some of the marketing phrases that disgust us. If you're going to use the buzzwords, at least know what they mean and whether they truly apply to the product.

I got to work with some amazing groups - Mozquito Technologies, Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, and Endeavors Technology were among the few. They all have software and standards that STILL haven't broken out into the mainstream, yet they all can do some phenomenal stuff. I also saw a lot of products that did some really cool, practical tasks...but never hit the market.

So where to from here?

Well basically, I'm looking for another job. As Sally's post mentions, Roddy and Carl will be moving to Camelot Communications, producers of the top industry conferences ApacheCOn and XML DevCon. I had that option but choose to take another path.

I want to stay in the standards space. I want to have a job that will let me continue to do work with the Web Standards Project and Attrition and all the little projects that make me, me. I would like to stay in the Boston area and even work out of the house, if possible. I'd love to do some more writing about standards whether it be on online or offline publications and more book authoring and technical editing.

But most of all I want to play with emerging technology. Yes, ZOT has spoiled me. I want to start working with the Semantic Web, and all the "X" related standards proposals being worked on (XPath, XLink, XSL, XSLT, XHTML, XForms, XPointer, XPath), I want to manipulate P2P and the 2WW. That's where the next generation of technology is. I can already grok most of it, why not put that to use by working for someone.

I also want to give BACK to the community. Lance Arthur's recent post really got to me. I want to continue the education that have creeped out in my WaSP-related rants and bring this new technology to the masses. Very few people grok all this new stuff coming out of the W3C. I want to take that, retain the core teachings of it, and explain it at a basic level so more than just the early adopters will see the benefits and begin to use it. That's, after all, how HTML got out there.

I've had the honor to work with some great people, help some good companies and glimpse technologies that will be commonly used in our future. I'd like to continue to do that. If you have a place for me, send me a note - I'll have my resume online as soon as I can figure out a way to quantify all I did at ZOT; for to have great ZOTness, one must wear many hats.

This sounds like the end, but fear not - It's only the beginning.

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