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You see it all the time in the sports world. The latest example is Scottie Pippen, the former basketball great who played most of his career with the Chicago Bulls. It happens often in boxing. Buster Douglas attempted to come back, but was unsuccessful. Probably the most famous example was the great George Foreman. We all know how well that turned out, both in the ring and the business world. Sometimes athletes come back because they miss the competition and excitement. Other times, it’s all about the money. In most cases, it’s probably both.

I have been ‘retired’ from true enterprise-level web application and database development for about 6 years. I have held different project management and consulting roles since then. Don’t get me wrong, I can still code html, php, and css just fine. But thinking on a broad scale and being able to whip out database structures on the fly seems to have disappeared. And honestly I don’t know if I can get that back at this point. I have been using nothing but pre-built solutions like Wordpress, Textpattern, and other CMS tools.

Now I sit here at my desk with five or six web business concepts that, at first glance, look like they should be relatively simple to execute and produce revenue. But as I dive deeper into thought, that spark that would start a fire and allow me to kick out 40 tables in a custom CMS just isn’t there. I have to write everything down first, do a little research, and edit my notes and thoughts as I go. Jesus, I’m only 31! It kind of reminds me of that scene in Vegas Vacation were Clark Griswold is sitting in front of the TV, obsessively watching the baccarat infomercial. I repeat over and over out loud, “Bet on Ruby. Bet on AJAX. Search is a natural.”

But I know I’m not the developer I once was. Technology changes so fast, that if you fall behind, especially as far as I have, it’s extremely difficult to catch up.

Do I still have any value? I’d like to think so! I have experienced so much over my early career that would provide a great resource to any business. I may not be the hot shot programmer that works best in isolation and pumps out solutions in minutes. But now I’m a team player, and more important, a team leader. I have developed greatly in other areas of IT and business management thanks to training and experience.

So which one will I be, Buster Douglas or George Foreman? During Foreman’s comeback, he used not only his natural talent in the ring, but also the talent he acquired through his many business dealings. He had grown professionally, and I hope I have done the same.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 26th, 2007 at 3:41 pm and is filed under Internet Marketing, The World, Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.