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You read it right. With the turn of the year, I turned a page in my career. I really wish that didn’t rhyme.
It’s been almost 3 years since I joined Zend as the project lead for Zend Framework. I was introduced to the ZF community as an outsider; I had used Java throughout my career, and what little PHP I had used was framework-free. But since then I’ve made many friends in the ZF community and the larger PHP community. And, even though I have a shiny CS degree (which is rare in the PHP community) I’ve learned more in working with these people on ZF than I have in any other projects to date.
In particular, my friends in the PHP and ZF communities have taught me to question conventional wisdom and consider all options- including options that are somewhat less than elegant. They have shown me that the hallmark of great technologies isn’t how much you can twist your code into a logical Gordian knot, but how they fair when the rubber hits the road. Sounds a lot like hacking? Maybe. But Alexander the Great got the job done on schedule and within budget with one huge hack of his sword. Who are we to judge an app that works well and serves the needs of its users?
Moreover, my ZF and PHP friends have demonstrated how great software can be written by a large and diverse community of developers with a healthy dash of openness. I won’t kid you- it definitely felt like herding cats at times. But I found that we worked best when we embraced the chaos and let transparency work its magic.
The ZF team and community accomplished a lot under my leadership that I’m extremely proud of. The following achievements are just a sampling of what we’ve done in the past few years:

• 4 big feature releases: 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, and 1.8
• Zend Framework Certification
• Implemented an agile process for the Zend Team that resulted in bi-weekly bug-fix releases
• Explosive growth in adoption (12x by some metrics)
• Full overhaul of the ZF site
• Warm and very productive partnerships with Adobe, the Dojo Foundation, Microsoft, IBM, Appcelerator and others

I’d also like to personally thank:

• Andi Gutmans
• Zeev Suraski
• Matthew Weier O’Phinney
• Ralph Schindler
• Darby Felton
• Alex Vremev
• Padraic O’Brady
• Jon Whitcraft
• Thomas Weidner
• Christoph Dorne
• Wade Arnold
• Dylan Schieman, Alex Russell, and the rest of the gang from the Dojo project
• Roy Rubin, Yoav Kurtner, and the rest of the gang at Varien
• Vijay R. and the rest of the gang from Interoperability @ Microsoft
• Dirk Nichol, Peter Haggar, Doug Tidwell and the rest of the gang from IBM
• Craig Noelder and Brian Matsuro from Amazon Web Services
• Ben Eberlei, Ben Scholtzen, Jurrien Stutterheim, Bradley Holt and the rest of the gang from the ZF project itself
• Everybody I’ve missed

Now on to other adventures. . .