Chris Spagnuolo’s EdgeHopper

Hello everyone. Hope you all had a great summer. I’ve wrapped up my summer hiatus and will be once again writing my blog. The summer was great. Tons of cycling, camping with the kids and even a little travel. But, it’s good to be back. And, I’m back with some major changes, both professionally and to the blog itself.

On the professional front, I’ve left my development team at Data Transfer Solutions and have joined Rally Software Development as an Agile Coach. It was a hard decision to leave my team but it was time to move on. Rally offered such an exciting future and is such a great company, it was hard to say no to an offer from them. I’ll be working with organizations from all over the world and getting the opportunity to work with folks that I am still in awe of.

As for the blog, it’ll no longer be called GeoScrum. As I leave the GIS world after 15 years, the focus of the blog will lean more toward agile practices. In addition to being a huge agile proponent, I really value and try to communicate to others the value of customer enthusiasm and customer evangelism. I’m also very concerned about great design, branding, and marketing. I have adopted a very Zen approach in everything I do from design and presentations to writing and speaking. Sometimes, simpler is better! So the “new” blog will focus on these things in addition to agile practices.

As such, I am re-branding and renaming the blog to EdgeHopper. The new blog and site will contain pages with links to multimedia content, my personal reading list, and a “Where’s Chris” page with details about my upcoming speaking and coaching engagements. So, why EdgeHopper? Well, I’m a huge Seth Godin fan. Seth likes to talk a lot about edgecraft. In Seth’s words: “Edgecraft is a methodical and measurable process that allows individuals and teams to inexorably identify the soft innovations that live on the edges of what already exists. The future belongs to people who can invent, implement, and sell the ideas–the free prizes–that become purple cows.” (And if you don’t know what a Purple Cow is, check out The Reading List page of my site). So EdgeHopper is my homage to Seth. I’m always hopping around the edges looking for something that I can turn into the future. It’s my passion.

I created this site and this blog to share my thoughts, ideas, and opinions on all of these topics. I hope the readers and casual passers-by of this little online forum find something useful. And if you don’t, I hope you at least smile as you check out my musings.