I figured I’d blog about my trip to the UK pretty quickly after coming home,
but I had a quadruple-knockout-punch of vicious jetlag, mental exhaustion,
seething inspiration and a small dose of niggling fear. Messily intertwined
and difficult to resolve, as always. The last few weeks have not been kind
to anyone hanging on items in my todo list.
I was in the UK for the first face-to-face meeting of a new company I’ve
agreed to join. As soon as my contract is finalised, I will announce this
change of affiliation to the Foundation. Although it’s not required, I think
this is the right thing for any Board member to do, should they change their
employment status mid-term. Foundation members deserve to know, and we have
important by-laws regulating affiliations (even though Board members do not
represent the companies they work for).
The small dose of fear is due to an intermingling of two previously separate
areas of my life: Work and Play. Although this new job will only be
tangentially related to GNOME (at least to begin with), it will certainly be
active in the greater Free Software community, which is where I spend a fair
chunk of my “play” time. Of course, I take my play time quite seriously…
So there’s a lot of personal and professional interplay between these roles,
and not just in the short term. I want to get it all Just Right, but where I
don’t, I want to recover gracefully. 
If nothing else, I’m lapping up the
challenge.
