From the ashes...

This past Sunday marked the start of Eugene Beer Week, now in its 9th year.

If you are one of the three readers who remember this blog from its initial flight, circa 2009-12, you may be asking one or more of the following questions:

• "Really?" 
• "A seven year hiatus and this is what brings the blog back?"
• "Wait, isn't Eugene Beer Week already half over? First blog post and it's already late."

All great questions. Well, except that last one.Could have done without the sarcasm. This isn't really a story about Eugene Beer Week, but it is a story that both starts and ends with EBW. Let me explain...

In early 2012 I was three months into a new career, three weeks into fatherhood and had just signed on to help with marketing and awareness for the 2nd Annual Eugene Beer Week. Some of those milestones are probably more important than others, but the net result was something had to give. Shortly after EBW wrapped up, so did the blog.

I've attempted to restart things a few times over the years, usually getting a spark immediately following the yearly arrival of my domain renewal notice. I'd fiddle with web hosting and CMS options for a week or two, then throw in the towel long before even thinking about content. Then, a few weeks ago (after receiving this year's renewal notice) I decided it was time to give it a serious try. I made a deal with myself that if I couldn't come up with anything worthwhile to write, I would finally put it out to pasture.

And now we're caught up. Here I am with about a dozen different drafts of my relaunch post sitting in front of me. Some inspiring, some comical, most incoherent, all bad. And inspiration strikes. Or, more accurately Twitter strikes. My phone buzzes. Ah good, a distraction. Just what I need. Hey look, it's the list of tomorrow's EBW featured events. My eyes drift down from my phone to my not-so-slender middle. Look, it's my well-loved 2nd Annual EBW shirt (featured above). We have liftoff!

A lot has happened between the 2nd and 9th Eugene Beer Weeks. The personal highlight reel includes 6+ years in Higher Ed IT leadership followed by a recent shift back to the private sector, a 100% increase in children, 10 legally recognized years of my partner's tolerance and understanding, having a (award winning) homebrew recipe become a commercially produced beer, discovering a late-blooming obsession with Disneyland and most recently, discovering my partner has Celiac Disease. Again, some of these items are probably more important than others.

So, for those still following along, it's been 8 years since I have done and serious coding. And with the Celiac diagnosis, my craft beer intake has serious plummeted. Kind of a rough spot for a blog titled "Beer and Coding."

Where do we go from here? Honestly, I'm not exactly sure yet. I have a decent mind map of topics (that I'll be sharing shortly) and I'm currently working up the skeleton of an editorial calendar so I can ensure some consistent content. Apparently I absorbed a thing or two after several years supporting a large marketing and communications team...

In any case, it feels good to be back.

Cheers,
Kevin