A movement to the side, perhaps to move ahead

As the summer progressed, it became clear that the current operations for Ayrstone weren't going to start making a living for me, and the opportunities we were seeing weren't looking like they'd "blow up" fast enough and large enough to deliver enough money to keep our household afloat.

Furthermore, while I'm still excited about the idea of a farm equipment review site, RateItAll, while intriguing, just doesn't seem to be robust enough to do what I had hoped (I did an experiment to rate precision ag sites). That leaves me with the option of building a ratings engine or using a pre-built one (like RedQueen), which is very time-consuming. Since I didn't have the time to consume, I decided to look for a paying gig.

Happily, about that time I was contacted by a recruiter from Cisco Systems, who was looking for some help in their Networking Academy. The Networking Academy is a fascinating group at Cisco: they create curricula in networking technology to help schools train students to get good jobs in networking, and they give it away, for free, and help the schools adopt it. It's self-serving, of course, but it actually does good for the schools and students - people learn critical skills to get a good job and move up the economic ladder.

This seems like a step sideways, but I don't see it that way. I think one of the most exciting opportunities coming up is networking the farm and getting more farm operations onto the web. This gives me a perfect seat to understand the technology and products available better.

So I'm excited, but I still want to build the review/rating site as I have a chance. Watch for more on that...