All great things must come to an end, and my career at Honeywell has been fantastic! However, after 28 years in various technology roles, I have decided to retire early from Honeywell at the relatively young age of 57 and discover new horizons. My last day at Honeywell will be Friday, April 26th. Thus, I ask all of you ... my friends, social connections and web site readers to help me write the next chapter in life.
Given Honeywell's generosity over the years, and my frugality, money is NOT the driving factor in this research. For instance, in the short term, I plan upon helping a number of charitable organizations with their web development and collaboration efforts. Other than covering my direct expenses, my work will be unpaid and is a donation.
Before making any longer term decisions, I plan to rectify a mistake I made years ago upon college graduation. Within 2 days of obtaining my degree from Dartmouth College I started my work career, and only once over the intervening years did I take two consecutive weeks of vacation. By contrast upon that June day in 1978, two college buddies delayed their entry into the "real world", purchased an old car and saw America. Over the next few months they would surface in unexpected places as they worked their way across the USA with no particular destination in mind. Their main hope was that the old car would make it to the West Coast. It did!
I don't intend to make the same error twice. No matter what the next chapter may hold, the next few pages will read "epic bike" ride with my wife. After my last day at work, the first steps will be to start training with Molly in preparation for the Great Gaspé Tour! ... a 2,000 mile bicycle trip through the Maine, New Brunswick, Quebec and New Hampshire. (Wikipedia: Gaspé Peninsula) (Learn more about my bike touring plans)
Watch out, North America! (post continued below)
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After this ride, the next chapter begins. Help me define how this book might read. Should I continue web development project work for charities? use my experience for a start up? work as a project manager for a consulting firm while taking liberal amounts of time off between assignments to satisfy both my wanderlust and charitable urges? I don't know the answer to these questions, but the search will both interesting and fun. All I do know is that a new fabulous journey awaits me. (learn about my building schools and dorms in rural China | Video or Project Background)
Over my Honeywell career I've had the good fortune to be the lead person on many ground breaking exciting technology projects. Most of these services were ideas I proposed and introduced to Honeywell. While some of these items may not seem advanced in the year 2013, most were trend setting ideas in their own time.
For obvious reasons of confidentiality, I cannot link my Honeywell work. However, over the years I have used NorthStarNerd.Org as my personal R&D platform. When possible I've linked related blog posts from the past. Here are just a few of the projects I've led.
- Category:
- Work Project | Start Date | Related Blog Example
- Web Design, Development, Social Media and Video
- Web Design | 1997 | Honeywell Technology Center via Internet Archive
- Web Analytics | 2008 | WebTrends
- Web Analytics | 2010 | Google Analytics | Google Campaign Builder
- Search | 2010 | Google Site Search | Noble Prize Winner Seminars / Videos
- SEO | 2010 | Google Webmaster Tools and much, much more | Marvin the Martian SEO
- LinkedIn | 2010 | Honeywell LinkedIn Channel - My Research
- YouTube | 2011 | Honeywell YouTube Channels
- Internal Collaboration, Learning & Knowledge Management
- IBM Compatible PC Training | 1985 | n/a
- eLearning | 1990 | NETg - NTU - SkillSoft - Stanford Online
- Virtual Meetings | 1999 | Placeware, now Live Meeting from Microsoft
- Virtual Library | 2000 | Online access to research, magazines, manuals and more
- Internal Wikis | 2000 | Wikipedia drives first Honeywell wikis - Wikimania
- Search Engine Tagging | 2007 | Connectbeam
- Microblogging Portal | 2008 | Cat 2.o or Cyrus Joins Our Yammer Network
- Video Sharing Portal | 2012 | Brightcove
Please help me discover the next chapter. I can be reached via email: [email protected] or Google Voice: 218-461-9105. You may also wish to view my LinkedIn Profile: Rich Hoeg.
