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Sunday, July 17, 2005

Changing Jobs - New Challenges

Well it is with a mixture of sadness and excitement that I had my last day at Sabre this past Friday. Sadness, because I leave behind many friends and colleagues that I greatly respect. Excitement because of the opportunities ahead.

As I told those at my farewell party, I have had an absolute blast working there over the last 3 years. It has been challenging and rewarding working to establish a user experience team as part of the normal process within Sabre. I have been fortunate to have had great folks around me. And the really good news is that the team is well positioned to continue the momentum and do greater things with the new leadership coming into that team.

My new challenge is far from Texas where Sabre is based and where I have lived most of my life. I am joining the Yahoo Platform User Experience team (in Sunnyvale, CA). I have the interesting title of Designer/Ajax Evangelist and am looking forward to some really exciting work in the days ahead.

So what was it that got me interested in moving my family across the country, entering the crazy CA real estate market and leave an incredible job at Sabre?

It really came down to a strong gut feeling. First, the job pulls from so many things I have done in the past yet reaches into a number of unknown challenges. Second, I was amazed by the team of folks involved. One of the things I look for when creating a team or joining a team is the incredible mix of passion + brilliance + humility. That is not an easy balance to strike. The secret is to realize that the ideas are a team effort and the competition is outside the organization. I am very excited about what Yahoo is doing and will be doing in the future and am thankful for the opportunity to make a contribution there.

As for Rico, the effort is growing. Darren is being given a full-time role within Sabre to work on Rico. I hopefully (given time constraints of a new job) will continue to play an important role in the Rico project. Richard Cowin will continue his role as co-collaborator with Darren. Jacques Morel is also from Sabre and has recently joined the effort. Others are starting to join as contributors and there are some exciting talks happening around ways to expand the Rico effort.

My thanks and appreciation goes to David Endicott, VP Development Sabre Airline Solutions. He is an awesome guy to work for! And thanks to Brad Jensen my former VP who brought me to Sabre with his passion for usability.

2 comments:

Brent Ashley said...

Good luck, Bill, great opportunity. I'll be watching for your influence at Yahoo.

Unknown said...

Hi Bill
Good to meet you at Easy7. As i spoke to you, we would like to have you visit Hyderabad and present to our local HCI community. UPA Hyderabad will be glad to provide you the platform

www.upahyderabad.org
www.sameerchavan.com