* Taking off the yellow jacket

Posted on September 1st, 2007 by Ross. Filed under About me.


As of October 1st, I will no longer be working for Georgia Tech. I turned in my notice on Thursday morning.

On October 15th, I’ll starting the next stage of my life with Talis. My job title embarrasses me a bit, so I’m not going to put it here, but my job centers around interoperability, standards and creating communities to support those initiatives both inside Talis and especially outside.

It’s bittersweet to leave to Tech. The library has made everything I’ve done possible and I am very grateful for that. That being said, it was probably time to move on (although six months ago, I cannot ever imagine having written that phrase).

I am really looking forward to Talis; not only do I think the work they’re doing is exciting and innovative, but, in my opinion, I think it’s the only way to push major ideas into libraries. Libraries are generally too risk-averse to look at the interesting things their peers are doing and adopt them. My work at Tech doesn’t show up in many places outside of Tech. It never will.

Talis also affords me the opportunity to work from home which allows us to live anywhere. Our hope is to move to Chattanooga, but it may be a while, with the housing market as it is.

Don’t worry, I don’t foresee myself becoming a Platform marketer (although the Platform will undoubtedly come up, I mean, let’s be realistic, it’s what Talis is staking their future on) and I hope that joining ranks with a vendor doesn’t alienate me from my colleagues and conspirators.

The next month will be busy, as I try to polish off my fingerprints that are all over Tech’s technical infrastructure and document and mainstream my various projects that are just shy of production status, but I will try to write more about my thoughts on this soon.

Here’s to big, life-altering changes!



9 Responses to “Taking off the yellow jacket”

  1. brian Says:

    total sellout!

  2. Bruce Says:

    Congrats Ross; you ought to enjoy working with the people at Talis, even if typically virtually.

  3. Paul Says:

    Wow, that’s big and great news for you – congratulations and good luck!

  4. Peter Murray Says:

    Congratulations, Ross!

  5. Jason Griffey Says:

    Congrats, Ross. If I can do anything to help with the move to Chattanooga, LMK: jason-griffey@utc.edu

  6. Meredith Says:

    Wonderful news! It sounds like a really amazing opportunity.

  7. Ed Summers Says:

    congrats Ross — bring the noise!

    I’m a big fan of the work Talis is doing to make library data inter-operable across the enterprise and across the web…so I think you have some fun times ahead. I look forward to hearing developments from the ground.

  8. carol o Says:

    Hey, belated congrats! It’s awesome to be able to work from home too. I found becoming a vendor somewhat disconcerting, but it was a really good experience and definitely broadened my horizons. Of course, I fled back to academic libraries soon enough, so who knows. :)

  9. Tamara Says:

    Ross — I came up for air just long enough to offer congratulations. You gotta love the new title!

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