Well! These past 2 days have been rather action-packed!

First things first: I am pleased to announce that yesterday afternoon, my beautiful wife Kendall delivered our first child. Our daughter Hallie Elizabeth Adams was born into the world at 12:14 PM EST on Sunday, January 6, 2013. She is being monitored for some kidney issues we already knew about from prenatal ultrasounds but otherwise is healthy and doing very well. We posted a picture of our happy family on the post we added on our family blog.

As if that wasn't enough activity for one day, I started a new job today as well! I'm honored and excited to have accepted a role as a Senior Solution Consultant with Ariba, an SAP company. It's interesting how sometimes things come full-circle: Ariba is the leader in business commerce and corporate procurement, an industry in which I worked at the start of my career over 15 years ago! Ariba has been very understanding about the near-simultaneous timing of these 2 wonderful events and they are allowing me to ease into the job slowly, which I very much appreciate.

I think I'm going to be just a little bit busy for a little while... :)

I am pleased to announce that I started a new job today: I'm honored and excited to have accepted a role as a Senior Solution Consultant with Ariba, an SAP company. It's interesting how sometimes things come full-circle: Ariba is the leader in business commerce and corporate procurement, an industry in which I worked at the start of my career over 15 years ago!

A couple of weeks back I took a Boot Camp for New Dads class at Northside Hospital and it was awesome! I didn't realize it at the time, but it turns out that Boot Camp for New Dads is a national and even international organization! So if you're in the Atlanta area, you can participate in a class at Northside or (at least ostensibly) a class at Kennestone and if you're elsewhere, the Boot Camp for New Dads site will help you find information on classes in your area. At Northside the class was a mere $35 and I felt like it was money extremely well-spent in helping me learn practical and useful information regarding what to expect as I get ready for fatherhood. I'm not saying this class, or any class, is sufficient for one to learn everything one needs to be a father, I'm just saying for me it was very beneficial and I highly recommend it. If you'd like a copy of the notes I took in the class, request one in a comment on this blog post and I'll see about shooting you off a copy via email.

By the way, our little girl is now due in only 1 more month! :)

It is with great excitement that I announce that I have left Adobe to seek new opportunities. My 4.5+ years at Adobe were amazing: joining Adobe was a great choice--in fact, it was without a doubt the best choice I could have made at the time. I am leaving very much better for the experience than when I arrived and I have incredible customers and partners as well as great colleagues past and present to thank for that. So thank you!

I joined Adobe in February 2008 as the Senior Solutions Consultant for ColdFusion for North America (see this blog post). At the beginning of this fiscal year, I was moved to a new team, the Web Experience Management Solutions Consulting team, and I worked with CQ and Scene7. Both of these roles were wonderful experiences and I gained so much from them. However, due to some organizational changes at Adobe combined with a number of extremely encouraging conversations with external organizations, I chose to leave Adobe at the end of September.

Leaving Adobe is certainly bittersweet for me: as I mentioned above, joining Adobe was a great choice and I'm leaving very much better for the experience and I will miss so many people I had the pleasure of interacting with in my roles at Adobe. Getting to be the ColdFusion SC was a dream job and the opportunity to work with CQ and Scene7 was tremendous as well. However, as I also mentioned above, the conversations I've had about external opportunities have me feeling very excited and encouraged about what comes next for me and it just appears at this point that the best fit is going to be outside Adobe. I was initially going to hold posting about my departure from Adobe until such time as I have made a choice as to what the next thing is going to be--but I decided to get this on out there now while I'm still investigating my options because it's always possible that someone reading this will know about an opportunity that is even better than the great opportunities I am already considering. :) So: if you have available or know of any opportunities I should know about, please let me know! The best way to reach me is to fill out my contact form. Thanks!

I look forward to updating you very soon about my next adventure!

As posted on our family blog, we're having a baby girl!

Kendall and I are married! And as such, I really, really need to update our blog at blog.kendallandjosh.com!

Oh--and I should also point out that since the end of November 2010, she too works for Adobe. She's an Account Manager for the Omniture Business Unit so we're a happy little Adobe family. :)

http://www.joshuaadams.com/bday

It's almost time for my 12th annual WhirlyBirthday--and this year there's a new celebration to add: my engagement to Kendall!

Everyone is invited. Yep, everyone (and if you don't live in Atlanta, you're additionally invited to crash with me while you're here). I'd love to have you, your friends, your family, etc! It's not just about WhirlyBall--after all, there's dinner beforehand. But really, it's about hanging out too and there will be a great group there so don't worry about it if you don't know many or any others who are coming--you'll meet people.

So come on: check out the details and RSVP that you'll join us via this URL:

http://www.joshuaadams.com/bday

I hope to see you there! It will be a ton of fun--and it will be better with you there! Please join us!

Josh

Kendall and I are engaged! I've posted all the details on the blog I have set up for us at http://blog.kendallandjosh.com!

http://www.joshuaadams.com/bday

It's almost time for a birthday anniversary: the 10th anniversary of my 1st WhirlyBirthday! I'll be getting out the word via email as always, but this year for the first time I'll also be using social networking to spread the word which will hopefully mean that people who might not have heard about it via email will hear about it via facebook, twitter, my blog, etc. This is a good thing because everyone is invited. Yep, everyone--and if you don't live in Atlanta, you're additionally invited to crash with me while you're here.

So come on: check out the details and RSVP that you'll join us via this URL:

http://www.joshuaadams.com/bday

I hope to see you there!

Josh

I'm heading out today on a short-term mission trip to Estonia! You can read more about it at http://www.estoniax.com/josh and you can follow our team's blog (hosted by my good friends at FusionLink and running on Mango Blog) at http://blog.estoniax.com. But don't worry--I'll be back to Atlanta in time for the ColdFusion 9 + Flex 4 User Group Tour meeting with Ben Forta!

I am pleased to announce that I have accepted a Systems Engineer position in the role of ColdFusion Specialist with Adobe Systems, Inc. I am excited about working for Adobe and about the role as ColdFusion Specialist. What has me so jazzed up? Getting to work with ColdFusion (and also Flex, AIR, LiveCycle, and the many other great tools from Adobe) and at the same time with you, the ColdFusion user. I love ColdFusion, but what I love even more is working with ColdFusion users as they do new, better, bigger, and innovative things with ColdFusion! And that's exactly what I have been hired to do.

Over the past several years, I have had the pleasure of getting to know so many in the ColdFusion user community at conferences, user group meetings, and other events. I'm excited for this opportunity to focus on continuing those relationships and forging new ones. Because for me, that's the greatest thing about my job: I am here for you! If there is anything that you need from Adobe in regards to ColdFusion, I'm your man. So don't be shy--get in touch! I'm still in ramp up mode so I'm not going to list contact information here, but you can simply add a comment to this post or use the Contact link at the bottom of the page to send me a message. I look forward to hearing from you soon!

One more thing: not to make this sound too much like an awards acceptance speech, but the reality is that there are a number of people who deserve my thanks for their role in helping me get to the point where I was able to land this position. But rather than try to cover them all and risk missing any, I will instead turn my thanks to the Atlanta ColdFusion User Group as so many of those deserving my thanks are people I know through my involvement in ACFUG. Thanks ACFUG and those I know because of it--I appreciate you! If you're reading this and you're serious about your career and you're not attending meetings of your local user group, you need to start. If there is no local user group, you need to start one. And another great option--and the place to turn if absolutely no one lives near you such that any user group you would start would be a user group of one--is the Online ColdFusion Meetup.

2010-12-22: given the age and content of this post, it is difficult at this point to conceive of a legitimate comment that could be posted. Yet comments continue to be posted: spam. And it's strange because it is this blog post more than any other that receives these spam comments (I think it might be because this post is linked from Ben Forta's blog). So it seems wise to me then to stop the insanity by closing comments to this post. Should you have a legitimate comment you wish to post here, please contact me via the contact form here on my blog. Thanks!