Looking ahead (and a bit behind)
Today marks the end of my second week at "OSAF":http://osafoundation.org and I have to say that I've really enjoyed it. I guess it doesn't help that most of what I have been doing I was already doing as a volunteer, but still it's been a lot of fun. I have been trying to figure out what schedule to keep - I'm on the east coast and the vast majority of the OSAF'rs are west coast folk (except for pje - he's in florida.) Basically since I'm responsible for all the release/build stuff, I've felt that I needed to be available during their times so my schedule has been 12pm to 8pm which is feeling kinda odd to be honest. One of the first things I've noticed is that when I've run errands in the morning (I still get up at the same time as before) the timings and "feel" of the people also running errands is way different. It will take some getting used to :) The other thing that has been a challenge is keeping a "presence" online so that people know I'm at my desk ready for any questions or tasks they may have. When your sitting in a chair in the office you have that by default - people can walk by and know your there. To try and maintain that same feeling I've taken to saying in the staff irc channel what I'm doing a lot more than I normally would have and I'm also experimenting with keeping my iSight on all the time and having snapshots taken every 5 minutes so people see me if they want. Now none of this is because I think that OSAF requires me to be at my desk 9-5, rather the opposite - I haven't been told explicitly that I have to keep any schedule but I am doing this to make it easier for my co-workers. The other personal switch I'm having to deal with is that my old job really was customer driven. My tasks for the day were almost always fluid and were dictated by what my boss thought was he hot item to fix or develop. With OSAF my tasks are a blend of known items: checking the tinderbox clients, maintenance tasks, etc. and tasks that come up to help others with build issues or bug fixing. Much more self-directing and I'm finding that those habits are a bit rusty :) so next week I will have to create a Task wiki page for myself so that others can see what is active/pending for me.