I'm tired of consulting

Over the past three years, I have been working as a consultant in the nonprofit tech space doing online communications, tech planning, project management and all that good stuff. I have had a great time, I have gotten to work with some great organizations and for some great companies. But, I feel like it is time for me to step back and get back to my roots.

Over the past few months, I have become increasingly disillusioned with consulting in general. It is a great career, you face new challenges everyday and really have an impact on the work organizations do. But, for me, there was a big disconnect between the work I did on a day to day basis and the people that it directly impacted. The work became more about budgets and timelines than the lives we were fighting to change.

I have always been a grassroots guy; i've been in and around the social sector since I was 5 and started volunteering at the soup kitchen at my grandmother's church. Throughout most of my career, I have been one of the folks on the ground fighting the good fight. And for me there was nothing more fulfilling than being about to see the fruits of my labor through the impact it had on people's lives.

Ironically, I never planned to go into tech consulting, I fell into into it like most accidental techies. Most of my background had been in youth work and grassroots advocacy. I only dipped my toe into the tech scene in 2005 when I worked with a buddy from an online car forum to launch an e-commerce site (which eventually flopped because I could not keep up with it between work and school).

While working on a civic engagement campaign for an organization after Americorps, I really became interested in how technology can make the work I did more efficient and help us to engage people online. Having been the guy who cut the hundreds of phone lists using Excel and managing the voter file in Access, I figured their had to be a better way to use technology to mobilize citizens to get involved.

That is what really drove me to NOI and in turn DC. My goal had been to go back to working with community-based organizations, helping them implement integrated strategies and technology solutions that allowed them to be more effective at what they do. Technology will not solve the challenges they face, but it will enable organizers to deal with some of the day-to-day inefficiencies they find in their work.

Over the past few months I have lost sight of why I came to DC. This was meant to be a learning experience. But, along the way it became about the technology more than the people, more about my career than my passion. Hey, call me an ideologue, but I am a firm believer that if what you do is not driven by passion then you shouldn't be doing it, especially when the work we do has such a huge impact on the lives of so many.

I have not figured out exactly what my next move will be, but I know it will involve getting back into the mix and fighting to give a voice to those who are not heard. In the short term I am going to be planning my move back to Boston and finishing up some independent projects. I will post updates on any new developments.