Yes so this is it, I’m leaving. After 13 years at the Hope Valley grindstone, it’s time to move to pastures new. Not only am I leaving CDR Group I’m also laving the murky world of GIS behind too!
What? Where? Who? Why? I hear you all cry! (In my imagination)
First the Where and Who. Highlander Direct, based in Sheffield, (http://highlanderdirect.com/page/index/) where I will be taking up the post of Account Manager. Further more I will be joining up some old work colleagues from a few lifetimes ago, namely Dave Haxton and Jon Pritchard, two fine upstanding citizens (raised eyebrows), who’s opinion I value.
The Why is rather more complex and has no one answer to it. Well it does in some ways, as you might imagine money is playing a significant part in this decision, but not that alone. I have had a growing feeling for sometime of being in a rut, doing the same things, having the same conversations with the same people, without really getting anywhere so a new challenge was beckoning. The world of GIS is a very different place to what it was 13 years ago when I began this adventure. We Geo-Evangelists have, if anything, been a bit too successful, GIS is now mainstream, maps are everywhere, the value of location is recognised by organisations big and small. In short its no longer the lucrative niche it was. Don’t get me wrong, there is still business here and much of it, but it requires a speciality within the discipline itself. A boat, I fear, I may have missed. I’m already a Geo-dinosaur! Some asked a short while ago if Spatial was Special, I have to answer that no, not any more.
I would like to point out that I leave CDR with no animosity in my heart at all for them. Quite the reverse, they have been good to me and I hope I have been as good back. I wish the company and all those people I’ve worked with over the last 13 years all the success in the world. However a key to success both in business and in life is take new opportunities, but also recognise when its time to move on. It’s my time to move on.
Thank you. I really mean that, thank you one and all. Every one of you who I have come into contact with. Customers, suppliers, contemporaries, competitors and all other geo-bods, thank you.
For some of us the lines between professional and friendship have become blurred and its been all the better for it.
If you want to keep in touch, and I hope you do, I’m on Facebook, there’s only one Darryl Beresford on there! (Did you get the Highlander gag??), twitter (@daza66) or email darryl@python.co.uk.
It’s been emotional.
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