On January 20th, it will mark the 20th year anniversary since I started working in the IT industry. A lot has happened over the course of the last two decades both on a personal and work levels, as you can imagine, and, yet, it feels as if it was just yesterday. That is, probably, why, over the course of the last couple of months, a growing urge to find a new work adventure has taken over yours truly. Till now. That search is now over. 2017 will, definitely, be a year of change and milestones, I’m pretty certain, but it’ll also be a year of excitement, of new dazzling opportunities for learning and growth, of discovering wonderfully inspiring initiatives to experience, experiment with and learn from. In short, it will be a year of new beginnings. And, for yours truly, that time has, finally, come. As of January 16th, I have now joined panagenda. Let the new adventure begin!

Now you know why I haven’t blogged much over the course of the last four weeks. It’s been a bit hectic with the Christmas holidays, the time off with family and friends, the search for a new work adventure, the rather nasty flu I’ve just recovered from, the time to unlearn and relearn while deciding what I wanted to do next pondering whether it was a good time to go back to basics or not, etc. etc. all in all confirming a lot has been going on so far, but when the right opportunity shows up you know you just have to go and grab it, before it vanishes into thin air. And that is exactly what I did! I grabbed it, or, probably, better said, it raptured me big time. It all started with a short conversation in an online collaborative space that is not even widely available to everyone out there just yet. It all begun by tapping into one’s own social networks, where, usually, the magic happens: you know, you get to talk and converse with people who know you rather well (probably even better than you do yourself!) and who are willing to help open up new paths for you, because they feel the timing is just perfect. That’s why I’m pretty excited and rather enthused, beyond words!, about having already started writing a new page in my 20 year long career in the IT industry by joining panagenda this past Monday. 

Those of you who are already very familiar with panagenda will know what a real treat, honour, and true privilege it is to say I’m now a panagendean as well. Those of you who may not know much about them and what they do (just yet!) I can tell you they are an amazing team of rather talented, gifted, very helpful and knowledgeable folks doing some pretty mind-blowing things while helping organisations transform the way they work as they join the 21st century. They do walk the talk. Every time. And you will know what I mean very soon.

So, ‘what is panagenda, again?’, you may be wondering, right? Well, they are an international company with offices in Austria (The HQ is in Vienna), Germany, The Netherlands and the United States. They primarily focus on helping organisations understand and make sense of the different IT and Collaboration solutions they may have been using over the course of time in order to help accelerate and improve their various business transformation processes and tooling. Their motto is ‘Make Your Data Work For You’, so they work with a good number of customers helping them understand how to work smarter, not necessarily harder (Which is, as you well know, my favourite mantra) with the data they produce within their own collaboration landscape. They provide a good number of different analytics solutions, extensive expertise (advisory work) and consulting services around both traditional communication and collaboration tools, as well as emergent enterprise social networking software, bridging both worlds rather nicely and intuitively to help address whatever the different business problems customers may face, as well as help them identify new business opportunities.

Don’t worry, over the course of time I plan to put together over here a number of different blog entries explaining more in detail what panagenda has got to offer as well as the kind of work my colleagues and myself do for our clients, which I guess has just triggered an additional thought from all of you out there in terms of what I will be focusing on myself from here onwards, right? As a starting point, I’ll continue to do lots of advisory work and consulting services around Social Business and Digital Transformation, along with a specific focus around Analytics, covering areas such as Corporate Communications, Collaboration, Learning, Knowledge Management, Digital Workplace, Adoption / Adaptation of Emergent Social Technologies and, in general, Business Transformation. My goodness, quite a challenge trying to summarise 20 years of working experience, don’t you think? Phew!

Either way, did I already say how excited and thrilled I am about having such a fantastic opportunity of working together with quite a sensational team of very smart folks always willing to help their customers, business partners and fellow colleagues become better at what they already do? Well, if I didn’t say it before, I will now: I’m beyond words, literally, to have been given such honour of working on this new work adventure I just started a couple of days ago and that it’s beginning to feel like the 20 year long wait doing other things was just totally worth it! Every single minute of it! 

Thus with all of that said, it’s now time for me to go back and get on with the overall on boarding process, and in case you are wondering about whether the themes and topics I cover in this blog will substantially change from here onwards, fear not, you are just about to get exposed to some rather thought-provoking write-ups on what purposeful digital transformation programmes are all about.

Are you ready? I surely am!

Go panagenda!