Taking the plunge
First of all, I want to thank everyone who responded to my post about being available for work; I’ve been overwhelmed - to the point where I’ve decided to work for myself.
Now, I promised myself not to be a Web 2.0 company; there are already enough of them failing to deliver as it is. The hard part when you get into any kind of technology consulting is picking a focus, particularly when you get such an interesting range of offers (and such a varied background!)
What I really want to do is focus on moving people towards the future - moving towards open source, open standards, and open data. That means explaining why and when RDF is better than XML, why and when OpenDocument is better than DOC, and why and when Linux is better than Windows. That also means helping port things from Windows to Linux and vice versa.
I liked porting Redland to Windows - it’s a royal pain at times, but it means (or at least I hope it means) that at least one more Windows program will be cross-platform, which means future migrations to Linux are that much more easier.
Unfortunately, I’ve lost my access to a Windows machine for the short term; until I have enough work to pay the bills I don’t dare buy an expensive proprietary license - if I’m going to spend money, it’s to join OASIS as an individual contributor so I can get in on the OpenDocument metadata work!
Now I’m off the Flickr to try and find some nice CC-licensed fern pictures that I can use as the basis of a logo.