I recently went to the Dominican Republic for a little rest and relaxation, and while I was gone I went from employee #1 of Tribe.net to employee #205,652 of Cisco Systems. Seems like all the interesting stuff that happens at Tribe happens when I am gone. It's not like it was a surprise, we had been working a LONG time with Cisco to figure out what sort of deal may be there. It was pretty much coincidence that the final signing of papers happened while I was gone.

Anyway, now I am a small cog in a HUGE machine. Frankly, it is a bit overwhelming just how big this company is. I drove down to San Jose on Tuesday to drop off my HR paperwork (since I missed the orientation - also because I was gone). There have 2 campuses on Tasman - one that counts buildings by number (Building 1, Building 2, etc.) and one that counts by letter (Building A, Building B, etc.), and with all that space we are not even working down there! We are still working in the City and will continue to for the foreseeable future. The internal website for employees probably has more pages than all of Tribe.net does.

But the upshot of all this is that Tribe is out from under its debts (and payroll!) now, but it still has current and past employees that care deeply about the site and its future. The site does a pretty good job of taking care of itself at this point, but it is still continuing to slowly grow and will certainly require those of us who know how it works to continue to be involved. Sounds like a fun hobby to me.

So "Uncle Cisco" signs the paychecks now, and another chapter of my career has been written. Thanks to all of you guys for making Tribe.net by far the most interesting and rewarding chapter yet! I don't know if I will be keeping my little "t", but I will certainly be keeping my account! Maybe someday it will be noteworthy that I am Tribe.net user #2.