Its a new year and I officially find myself in the job that has been one of the worst kept secrets out there: namely I’m now an adjunct professor at the Rochester Insitute of Technology’s School of Print Media. Here’s a shot of me in my new office, which I am sharing the office with a Jack Karpen of the School of Photography, whom I have yet to meet..

Note the door. This is something new for a refugee from a cube farm and shared graduate spaces.

I’ll be blogging at least four days a week starting today, documenting whats going on. And there is a lot. A LOT. For the moment, here is the story of how I landed this job. I originally wrote this summary for a local networking group that I’ve been involved with. It nicely sums up the last two years and will catch everyone up on the employment story thus far:

In the fall of 2004, I took an educational leave of absence from kodak.com to pursue a graduate degree at the University of Chicago. This past summer, after completing the classwork component, I returned to Rochester. Unfortunately, with education leaves there is never a guarantee of employment and I learned that there was no longer a position available for me at Kodak. So I began networking, including joining PeerNet, while I worked on researching and writing my thesis.

As part of that networking, I wanted to get in touch with people who were engaged in similar research on social networks. I posted a note about it on my blog and a friend sent me an e-mail suggesting that I contact the Lab for Social Computing at RIT. Researching the Lab, I realized that I had met one of its members a number of years ago through a common friend. So I dropped Tim an e-mail. He in turn suggested that I contact another member of the Lab. Amit was interested in talking with me and he suggested meeting at RIT before a lecture he was planning to attend. When I got to RIT I found out that a former professor of mine, Frank Cost, was giving the lecture. After discussing our research Amit and I both attended the lecture. That gave me a chance to say hi to Frank at the meet-and-greet that followed the talk. Frank, in turn, was excited to hear about my time at the University and suggested that we might grab lunch.

To cut to the chase, that lunch has led to a six month teaching appointment with the School of Print Media and the possibility of a tenure track position.