Chat with Jim Douglas, new CEO at CodeGear

Yes, CodeGear has a new CEO [you can find all the details, in a post by DavidI, here: Announcing: Jim Douglas, new CEO of CodeGear] and we all had a chance to meet him this morning during a live chat [CDN Log-In required]. If you missed it, relax, there will be another one this evening at 17:00 PDT. Don't miss that one though! In a nut shell ... I was impressed. The man speaks very, very well and seems down to earth while doing so. Significance of the content aside, we could have all been at the local pub. Although I was expecting fifty-five minutes of this is where I'm taking the show and five minutes of pick a question "that fits where I want this to go" and see if we can slide it in, the chat was quite the reverse. Once DavidI got things going with a couple of not so standard lead ins they moved right into questions from the crowd. Jim was right in there, swinging away at the questions like they had all been scripted. From where I was sitting, he pretty much knocked every one of them out of the park. There wasn't a huge turn out for the chat, around forty in the venue I was using - there were two being used. Considering the chicken-little impersonators and cheer-leaders that have already positioned themselves for the inevitable "told you so" if the change in leadership results in either world domination or death to the product line, I'd say they've pretty much wasted their time. Although I'm leaning toward the world domination corner, I just think he's going to do a really, really good job at what needs to be done next ... and boy, does he have his hands full there. I'm not getting into it here, suffice to say if there's any hiding under desks being done ... it's not at CodeGear HQ - they've done a fantastic job to date and really need to be extremely satisfied with themselves and what they've accomplished in getting some excellent products to market. Jim, welcome to CodeGear and [perhaps more importantly] the CodeGear community! Thanks for stopping by, -- Dave