Did you wonder if I was ever going to post again? Well it has been a while but I am now ready to get back on the wagon. For those that have read my blog in the past you have probably noticed a few changes to the site in the last couple of months. I have totally rebuilt my site on Drupal 6 and am now ready to get on with my new life. This post is mainly to bring folks up to date on what I am up to since I left my previous district last May and to describe where I hope that I am headed. You should be seeing a number of posts in the next few days about my site upgrade and some of the things that I customized to get the site where it is and about some of the tools I used in the process.

May of 2009 brought about many changes in the Orwin household, the largest of which was my parting ways with my previous employer after nine years as a district level technology director. I had been talking about trying the consulting thing and this was as good a time as any. Since that time I have been trying to decide just what I wanted to do when I grow up. I believe with the creation of this new site, I am ready to really give consulting a go! I had to rebuild the site in order to be able to get a shopping cart system (still in the works) that would process purchases across all of my sites. Originally I wanted to keep all of the sites separate but that meant getting a separate hosting contract for each domain. I didn't want to go there. So, for all of my open source friends, I have a section on this site that is still accessible via the http://k12opensourcehelp.com url and you probably noticed the main site is now http://www.orwinconsulting.com . You will also find a new addition to the family at http://www.edtechbootcamps.com. More details to come on these sites.

In order to keep this post a bit shorter, I will dive into some of my thoughts that have been bouncing around for a long time. For many years I have been donating a great deal of my time to the open source movement through participation in conferences, classes, blogs, forum discussions and various other participatory activities. Over the last eight months I have continued to activily participate in a manner very much like I did before. What I am finding is that if I am going to survive as a consultant, including feeding and clothing my children, I need to start charging for my time on a more regular basis. I have found this difficult to do and only through the help of my new partner am I starting to get a grip on the realities of being self employed. I am still passionate about open source and know that some folks will have a difficult time with my charging for my services, but that is the only way to make money in the open source world. Given this statement, I will be rolling out a number of services in the next few months in a variety of areas, open source being one of them. In a nutshell, I am now open for business! If there is something I can help you out with give me a call.

Does this mean I won't be an active member of the open source community? Heavens no! I will still be answering questions in forums, writing blog posts, doing presentations and helping folks out. Look for a number of posts in the next couple of days with more information on my journey into a new chapter in my life! I look forward to hearing from you folks via comments and forum discussions. Come on in and check out the site!