Joining the Tasktop Team

Last week I said that I had some really exciting news to share, and this is it: As of today, I am part of the Tasktop team. I've long been an admirer of Tasktop, for a number of reasons...

First, as all Eclipse users know already, they've built some really cool Eclipse technology including the Mylyn task-focussed interface. But many companies have built cool open source tools...

More impressive is to take those cool ideas, discipline them and build a growing, dynamic company on top of them. But plenty of companies have also done that...

But what's really impressed me about Tasktop -- what's made me want to join rather than observe the effort -- is that Tasktop has gone far beyond the "packaged solution with bundled service and support" that typifies most open source derived business efforts. Many companies take a "fill-in-the-blank" approach to open source business models, creating a captive open source market around their offering. Tasktop has created and nurtured a healthy open source eco-system around core open source offerings, but it then re-imagines and re-purposes the technology, leveraging that technology and expertise to uniquely address real customer pain. That takes real vision, and to me it's a clear signal that the Tasktop leadership is able to imagine and execute at an entirely different energy level.

So I first approached Mik and David in the middle of last year to discuss what they were doing and how I might add real value to the effort. That lead into consulting work with Tasktop last year developing the initial implementation of what has become the Model Focusing Tools project. That was a great opportunity to get to know some of the team and the Tasktop way. Everything I saw then fit nicely with what I'd already intuited. We have a really great combination of engineering excellence, creativity, and light-weight organization.

It's nice to say "we" again after over seven years of working by myself or as part of a small team. Yes, I had a lot of close associations with very smart and capable folks through collaborative science efforts and open source projects, but it just isn't the same thing if you're not working toward a shared set of goals. And I hadn't realized just how much I'd missed having colleagues to work with on hard problems together until I got involved in that last project.

This morning as I've checked in my email, I've been getting emails from everyone at Tasktop welcoming me to the team. I must admit to a bit of cynicism about the whole "team" thing -- like so much else, it often seems an empty set of words that don't match up at all to reality -- but in this case it feels very genuine. So heartfelt thanks to everyone -- I'm working remotely so I won't get to meet you in person right away, but I look forward to it. And don't worry, you won't have to "buy me lunch". ;)

(And yes, I'm afraid to say that you'll still be seeing irreverent and irrelevant blog entries on Eclipse Planet, but I am going to try to keep a closer eye on the four-letter word count.)

Obviously I'm going to be focussed on and very occupied with my new role at Tasktop, and you may be wondering how this will affect the other efforts I'm involved in... With the new Beta, Butterflyzer has grown wings -- or for the crossword lovers out there, it's pre-Imago. That's as much as I can say right now, except I'll continue to keep a close eye on its maturation process. I'll also still be leading the Agent Modeling Platform, doing what I can in my off-time to support builds and provide project leadership. The project provides a wide-array of functionality now, and pretty decent quality. Now it is time for people who are interested in moving the ABM effort forward to step up to the plate with their own time and energy. I think the future of tools for modeling real world systems at Eclipse is very bright.

As I said last week it's an exciting time to be building software tools! I know it sounds funny, but I like to think of software development as a helping profession. That's because I think that software products really can help people live more fulfilling, interesting and even happy lives. And I'm delighted to be at Tasktop helping to create those tools.