Friday, 28th July 2006
Art And Entrepreneurship
If you are wondering if i got the title wrong and meant Art of Entrepreneurship, well no that is what i meant and it is not a typo. Today's post is about one of the nicest persons i've met at work. His name is Art Geigel. If your wondering what the title is about, then it is because today is Art's last day working at Hyland Software.Art will be pursuing his dream and will be becoming an Entrepreneur and is the founder and president of Omniasoft. This is something i wish i was lucky enough to have done or will do, because it takes plenty of courage to leave a secure comfy job and become an entrepeneur. I'll always admire and respect Art for this step that he about to take!!!
For a little background, Art and Me share the same pod at Hyland and work on the same projects and have often bailed each other out when it comes to finding simple but hard to find bugs. There were times when we complemented each other perfectly. Besides being a talented web developer, he is a great guy and great friend. That he was just a tap on the shoulder away, was the best part.
The most enduring image of Art (besides him playing Noah in the hilarious "Noah's Arc and the extinction of the unicorn" video at the Go Game) would be my first day at work and i was staring at code which i couldn't make sense of all and was intimidated as hell (after all my first day right). That was until Art's comforting and encouraging words in an e-mail. They were so good, i made him post them on the local wiki we use and he did (so that the next new hire would feel good as well). I looked all over on the wiki for the post, but wasn't able to find it. But luckily enough i managed to dig out The Actual E-Mail buried in my Outlook archives some place. And Here it is
Just some words of encouragement as your first day nears it's end..The first day I was at my cube I went home feeling like I didn't know ANYTHING even though I made it through HSU. I also felt that I would never learn the ropes quick enough.The truth is I learned the best lesson my first day - you can count on those around you to help and answer questions.So don't worry if you feel lost or are unsure about things. You will learn each day you're here, and Jason, me, and everyone else is happy to help you out in a time of need.I also felt like I needed to get SCRs done within 10 mins flat! That is not true! Take your time and feel confident in knowing things will come in time.
Now that you get a feel for the kinda person Art is, i'm sure you'll understand why Hyland and the web team will miss him. (btw i'll post the image of Art as Noah, after i get his permission though)
Art- If your reading this (i know you are), then thanks for all the good times we had while working, talking about mundane stuff, whether it be hacking firefox code or bashing Microsoft or picking on QA, it was all good!!!
Good luck with all your endeavours, and i'm sure you'll do great. It trivial to state that Hyland will miss you, but our web-OEM team (a small as it is with 3 people) certainly will (Jason and me were just talking about it at last friday's nite out and how the latest product we came up with is kick-ass). But hey, it's not like your going a million miles away, itz just that we wont be working together.
I know that when i left my job at Hewlett-Packard, it would be an understatement to say that there was a little tear in my eye at the end because i had such a nice time working there. But Art would agree with me in that, he had an equally hard time in holding back that tear. Right Art?
Posted by Nikhil on Friday, 28th July 2006 in Life in General | Work | Fun