pI don’t like having to write this kind of post. I try to keep this blog relatively on-topic, but every once in a while, my access to my following of readers, who have remained loyal all these years, requires me to do so./p pIn January, I decided to switch up my life plan a bit, and leave the thrill of self-employment and chasing my next paycheck for the thrill of being able to consistently pay bills. I was hired on by a company showing lots of promise out of Ft. Worth that builds criminal justice solutions for all levels of government. They have an amazing technology platform built on .NET 4.0 which completely blew my mind, and they just needed someone to help take the company to the next level./p pSo I was hired to help develop the business and write the business plan, which I had done a couple years ago for a company with a promising business model that ultimately asked for too little funding. I had never worked in the government sector before, and had no experience in Criminal Justice, so the task was definitely daunting. But research projects were nothing new to me, so I dove in. /p p(This is the main reason the blog has been dark for much of this year… after plowing through draft after draft (and spending time with my wife and two kids), mustering up the energy to organize my thoughts on how awesome Windows 7 is was more difficult than usual.)/p pThree months and nearly 80 pages later (not to mention a 150-page research appendix), the plan was complete, and the company is currently in the middle of negotiating a *major* round of investment with it (mid-8 figures). Things are going well on that front, but the timing with the economy was such that cash flow county budgets were cut, and their cash flow can’t carry them through to the contract’s annual renewal without significant (and hopefully temporary) headcount reductions. Since developing the business is not crucial to finishing the development of the software, my head was the first one on the block, and I’ve been put on a mandatory leave-of-absence until August (at the earliest)./p pWhile the turn of events was unexpected, I am not daunted by any means. I still have ownership in said company, and will return if/when they are funded. In the meantime, I have the opportunity to take advantage of some new experiences and freelance again for the next few months. Which is the reason for this post./p pFor the last few weeks I’ve been working on some a href="http://communityserver.com"Community Server/a projects; upgrading my a href="http://interscapeusa.com/blog/paperclip-theme-for-cs2008-5-rtm-released/"Paperclip theme for CS2008.5/a for the State of California Parks Department, and completing some minor theme upgrades for a company called a href="http://www.insights.com/index.aspx"Insights/a. So if any of my readers need or know of anyone that needs Community Server work, a href="http://www.windows-now.com/blogs/robert/contact.aspx"please use my contact form/a and I would be glad to help. I should also mention that my company, a href="http://interscapeusa.com"Interscape Technologies/a, is a registered a href="http://telligent.com"Telligent/a partner./p pI am also open to taking on another business development project. So if you’re a company at any stage (not involved in Criminal Justice) looking for someone who can look at your business from the outside-in and work with you to craft a plan for your future, then please do not hesitate to contact me. /p pAnd thanks to everyone for indulging me in a personal post. I’ll try not to do one again for a while./pdiv style="clear:both;"/divimg src="http://www.windows-now.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=47143" width="1" height="1"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WindowsNow-Main/~4/uf5z4IWnX94" height="1" width="1"/

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