It seems that naming has been an issue that has plagued my entire career. Confusing names. Names that sound similar but mean very different things. I'm even guilty of causing it!

But if you take one thing away from this blog post: Couchbase is not CouchDB. They are both database products, with some common roots, but they are not the same thing.

Interested in learning more? Check out:

• Damien Katz on why he moved on from CouchDB to Couchbase.
• A comparison of Couchbase and CouchDB.

While I'm at it, let me clear up a few other naming confusions that have plagued me for a long time:

College

• I used single letter variables. For no good reason. It didn't occur to me that I could use an entire word!
• For my undergrad. I went to Ohio University. No, not the Buckeyes of Columbus. The Bobcats of Athens.
• Oh, but I also went to The Ohio State University for my master's. Those are the Buckeyes of Columbus.

Working at OSU

• I worked full time at OSU. I started out in Student Affairs Business Office, which used to be called something else (HFSEC or something?)
• I moved to Student Affairs IT.
• Student Affairs was renamed to Student Life.
• I have no idea what it's called now. I still call it Student Life.

Family names

• My wife and I named our firstborn "Matthew Kevin Groves".
• He's not Matthew Groves Jr, because my middle name isn't Kevin.
• The convention within my family is that I am "Matt" and he is "Matthew".
• "Groves", "Grover", "Tall Guy" also work. If you call me "Tall Guy", be prepared to be called "Shorty" or "Shrimp".
• I will NOT tolerate any use of "Matty".
• I'm not "Grooves" or "Graves" or "Grove".
• I live in Grove City, Ohio. I realize this doesn't help.
• I used to live in an apartment complex called "The Groves", which is in Grove City.
• I may be related to Leslie Groves. This has nothing to do with naming, it's just a cool bit of trivia I thought I would mention.

Quick Solutions

• I worked at Quick Solutions in Columbus for a bit.
• Quick Solutions was named after a guy with a last name of Quick. Neat, huh?
• It's not called Quick Solutions anymore; It's Fusion Alliance now.

Telligent

• I worked for Telligent for a few years. It's a company based in Dallas which makes the excellent Telligent Community product.
• They changed their name to Zimbra while I was working there (after an acquisition).
• After I left, they changed their name back to Telligent (after some sort of spin-off). The people I knew and worked with are with Telligent.
• Telligent and Telerik are different companies; I've never worked for Telerik.
• Jim Holmes worked for both Telligent and Telerik. Thanks for that, Jim.

Couchbase

• Not CouchDB.
• Couchbase.
• If it helps, think of "SQL Server" and "MySQL". They both have "SQL" in the name, but they aren't the same thing.
• Couch is an acronym (Cluster Of Unreliable Commodity Hardware).

Well, that's it. I started this post just to help and clear up the "CouchDB" and "Couchbase" thing, but it turned into more of a personal rant. Anyway. Couchbase.

Short version: My new job title is Developer Advocate, and I am working for Couchbase.

Long version: Being a developer advocate / developer evangelist is something that I've been considering for a long time. I've enjoyed speaking, blogging, writing, screencasting, teaching, helping, networking for a while now. But until now, I had always done these things only in my spare time. The thought of making those activities into my full time job appealed to me. But, there are a lot of developer advocate positions out there, and most of them don't appeal to me, because the product or the company doesn't appeal to me. The few times I managed to get interviews with really awesome companies with great products, it didn't work out, and I thought that maybe it wasn't meant to be.

But I'm very excited to announce that I finally found a DA opening with a great company with a cool product (a NoSQL database company based in Silicon Valley!).

I've done a lot of thinking this year about my career, and what direction I want to go. I've been a coder for my entire career. Some of the best parts of being a coder is sharing knowledge with other coders: teaching, writing, and expanding my own knowledge in the process. As much as I enjoyed working for my previous employer, they make a product that isn't developer-facing, and therefore a developer advocate position just wasn't going to happen for me there.

I'm ready to begin a new chapter, and I'm looking forward to reaching out to developers and helping to build the Couchbase community.

After working at Heuristic Solutions for 2 years, I've decided to take my career in a new direction.

I started at Heuristic Solutions with big plans and big expectations (both from myself and from others). Things did not pan out as well as I hoped, due to a combination of factors, both professional and personal. But, I made the transition from consultant to the LearningBuilder product team, and that's where I've spent most of my time while employed there. It's been an immense and enriching challenge working on a very complex piece of software; perhaps the most complex (in a good way) piece of software I've ever had the honor to work on. Sure, it's not perfect, no code base is, but it has consistently provided a canvas to apply and grow my skills as a developer.

Everyone I've worked with, and especially the Central Ohio-based members of the product team, I highly recommend to anyone seeking out a team that works hard, thinks hard, and cares about what they're building and how they're building it.

So, you might be asking, if it's so great, why are you leaving? Well, I think that will be clear in the next blog post. In the meantime, it just remains for me to thank:

• Seth - for being a great technical leader, and for originally recruiting me to join Heuristics
• Calvin - for pairing with me over the last 2 years, and coding circles around me while doing it (bada bing bada boom)
• Brian - for helping to beat me into shape as a QA lead and playing those bongos congas so well (I hope you get that island in the sun)
• Michael - for hanging out with me and becoming an excellent coder, and automater of everything
• Scott - for always answering the call, pushing the technology limits, and just being there in the consulting trenches at the beginning
• Sara - for being a passionate UX and UI whiz, and for talking Star Wars (I've stlil not met her in person but would like to!)
• Glen - for allowing me to open up on a personal level, and providing much-needed guidance
• Christopher and Ali - for being generous, kind, and fair
• Steve, Tom, Robert, and the rest - for helping me whenever I needed it, and for your hard work accomodating customers and building relationships

A special thanks goes out to:

• Gate 35X
• No Winning
• Kuli Loach
• A closet-sized office

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for what's next.

My new employer is Heuristic Solutions, and I am starting as the Software Solutions Lead today.

(I blurred the phone numbers and email address to avoid spam, but if you want to know what they are, just contact me).

Heuristic Solutions made me an offer that was just too good to turn down. We are a very small consulting firm, but also a product company. Heuristic Solutions is the company behind Learning Builder, a leading online credentialing management platform. However, I won't be on the product team. Instead, I'm coming on to help grow the consulting practice. In my view, a consultant company that also builds and sells a product (or a product company that also has a consulting practice, depending on how you look at it) is in a very strong position. I won't go into it too much, but imagine the talent that you can develop and attract when you can offer experience in a variety of technologies and industries, and then apply that experienced talent to your own product. And, more practically, think about the diversification of revenue sources.

Anyway, the opportunity to lead the consulting practice for a company positioned like Heuristic is positioned is just something that I couldn't say no to. I'll still be working remotely (though probably travelling a bit more than I was with Zimbra). Just like when I started with Telligent, I'm a little scared! I have some pretty ambitious goals for myself and for Heuristic, and I've left one of the best jobs of my career to take on a whole bunch of new responsibilities and risks.

However, it's a challenge that I think I'm ready for. I'll be a coworker with the inimitable Seth Petry-Johnson (though he's on the product side), and after extensive talks with founder Christopher Butcher, I'm very happy about the Heuristic philosophy and the direction that he wants to take Heuristic.

(I'm even fond of the company name: Heuristic Solutions. In software, there is no silver bullet that solves everything; there is a instead a series of heuristics that usually represent the optimal course of action. These heuristics almost never become "laws", and always remain open to augmentation.)

Over three years ago in August 2010, my life changed drastically. I was working as a consultant for a consultant company that I like (and still like), with team members that I like (and still like), but for a project and client that I haaaaaaaated. I was miserable, and even my wife could tell. Though some good things eventually came out of my experience on that project, I couldn't wait to move on to a new client.

However, that time never came. Jim Holmes tweeted that his employer (at the time) was hiring a developer for a remote work position. I had some reservations at the time about working from home, but I figured...why not? I'll try something that really scares me. After a rigorous interview process with Jayme Davis, Josh Ledgard, and many others (Did I mention Rob Howard, founding member of Microsoft's original ASP.NET team?), they let me become part of the Telligent Analytics product development team.

Yes, Telligent. TELLIGENT. Not Telerik. Telerik is a different software company that makes very different products. Jim Holmes worked for Telligent then, but he works for Telerik now (belay that, he just left Telerik and is moving on to something else). Yes, I realize that makes it more confusing.

The twin frontiers of working from home and working on a product team were very challenging. Keeping up with a team of really sharp developers like Scott Watermasysk, Kevin Cunningham, Jose Lema, and others was difficult, but rewarding. I learned a lot, and I helped to ship some products. I got to work with Jim Holmes(!), and a great QA team including Miles Dunn. I annoyed Michael Monteleone, Wyatt Preul, and Ben Tiedt on a regular basis. I could list a dozen more awesome employees of Telligent (past and present) that I got to work with.

I also had a major life event while working from home: two broken shoulders caused by a major seizure. Telligent was incredibly accomodating, and if I weren't already working from home, my life could have been affected a whole lot worse.

Telligent eventually merged with (purchased) Zimbra from VMWare, and took their name.

This opened up a whole lot of amazing possibilities with email, database technologies, integration, and analytics. I got the opportunity to present a session at The Big Social, which is the annual Telligent/Zimbra conference. I helped to ship a major new release of the Analytics product--version 4.0, which was rebuilt entirely to take advantage of the Zimbra Community platform.

I got to work on a code base where I had plenty of input on design decisions, and I got to work with support helping customers on a regular basis.

I could absolutely see myself retiring as a Zimbra employee. Everyone I've worked with at Zimbra has been sharp, kind, professional, and if you are reading this blog post now wondering if you should apply to work there: yes, you should.

However, another opportunity presented itself that I just couldn't say no to. More on that next.

No Weekly Concerns this week, but don't worry: it'll be back next friday.