A New Chapter

Friday is my last day with my current employer, who happens to also be my first employer in Germany.

It's been an interesting adjustment moving from the USA to Germany and not only because of the language and location. The cultural differences both in an out of the workplace have also taken some getting used to. But all in all I feel rather well adjusted to my new environment and language.

What I have not been able to adjust to, and also a major reason for me ending my employment with my employer, is the strategic decision to abandon Coldfusion for PHP and TYPO3. I have invested an awful amount of time in Coldfusion and see no reason to abandon it if alternatives exist. There aren't that many alternatives in Germany but there are enough so that a technology switch isn't absolutely necessary. If it was a technology switch over to Java then I probably would have stayed, but PHP, you gotta freaking be kidding me!

So where am I going and what am I doing?

I met a few folks here through the Munich Coldfusion User Group. Specifically Jens Hoppe, Jörg Wilcke, Alex Friess and Harry Klein. They developed a Content Management System with Coldfusion called Contens, and to be honest had never heard of it before (the Atlantic is wider than I thought).

Contens has been in Business now for 10 years, and have developed, and continue to develop, a pretty amazing CMS and have some pretty impressive reference clients. They recently released a social networking platform called "Contens relate".

So as you have probably guessed already I will be starting at Contens. I will be doing technical consulting and project management at Contens as well as many as yet to be determined internal tasks.

A little bit about Contens the CMS

• It not open-source (License based), but runs on open-source software (Railo).
• The term "German Engineering" is NOT just a cliché.
• The documentation would probably make Luis Majano cry with joy.
• It's CFML!