“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.” ~ Anatole France
This has pretty much been my feeling for the past few weeks, as I gathered my things and organized everything for my departure from Microsoft. As of today (or better saying, yesterday at midnight) I’m no longer working as a Senior Technical Instructor at Microsoft.
Combining my time at FAST, and then at Microsoft after the acquisition, I have been with the company for over 6 years. During this time I’ve made many friends, worked in challenging and exciting projects and also had a chance to spend a lot of time exploring, understanding and trying to help others understand (at least I hope so 
) the enterprise search world. In short, it was a lot of fun and I learned a LOT. Which is why I decided to change and keep learning…
Starting today I’m joining some great friends over at cXense as their Director Customer Excellence in Americas (US, Canada and Latin America), which is a very fancy title to say that I will continue doing what I love to do most: help customers to be successful.
As for the future of the blog, it will get even better. I will keep trying to help as much as I can, responding to questions and comments, as well as posting about enterprise search, this time also including posts about other flavors of search (such as Solr/Lucene and cXsearch, which I can’t wait to learn more about!). I’ve also invited a few friends, who are still working with SharePoint/FAST Search on a daily basis, to guest post here now and then. Questions about any of these search technologies will be more than welcome, as always!
6 years ago I got a call inviting me to join FAST and, by accepting that offer, I had one of my best professional experiences to date. When the same people called me again, this time with an invitation to join cXense, I had no choice than to say yes and look forward to many more adventures.
Great to hear that you will be continuing to do what you love the most. It was great being in your class. and thank you for all the support you provided there after. Looking fwd for many more posts from you. All the very best!
Thank you, Indu! We had indeed a fun crowd for that class.
And your questions are still very welcome anytime!
–Leo
Best of luck!!
Thank you, Laura!
Excited for you and the next step forward!
Congratulations!
Thank you, Chel!! I’m pretty excited too (and already have tons of things to learn
)
I wish you the best of luck Leo, and I look forward to many more excellent posts in the broader field of search outside of Microsoft
And you’re joining some smart people for sure!
Thank you, Mikael! And I will continue to look forward to your posts on FAST Search!
Boa Tarde Leonardo,
Meu nome é André Fiz o Curso com vc aqui no Brasil de FAST.
Estou em um Projeto grande aqui no brasil e tenho algumas Duvidas poderia me passar seu novo contato de email ?
Claro, André! Vou entrar em contato com vc através desse email que vc usou aqui.
Dude, congrats, good luck. Remember, the search world is really small, I am sure we will run into you again.
Thank you very much, Mark! The search world is really small indeed, and I do hope we will run into each other again
So you went back to work with JML. You are MUCH missed at MSFT. Please keep in touch.
John Drake
Yes, I did. I couldn’t stay too far away from my FAST origins
Please keep in touch too, John!
Congratulations Leonardo, you are a great reference in Brazil over the FAST …. good luck in your new challenge…. and keep going
))))
Valeu, Julio!!
Congratulations Leo.
Thanks a million for teaching me the FAST University course, it gave me the foundation to everything I know about FAST today.
All the best with the future, looks like an awesome company with lots of ex-FAST management.
Thank you very much, Sezai! It is an awesome company indeed, with lots of new things for me to learn, which I’m loving.
And you are most welcome. It was great to teach that class to you, and even better to see that your keep sharing great stuff in your blog!
Cheers,
Leo
Good luck in your future endeavors! I enjoyed your blog and training.
Thank you very much, Kevin! Hope all is going great with your implementations over there!
I worked for MS Library and while our interactions were limited to OT, you made all of us feel like rock stars. Your generosity, collaborative nature, curiosity, and passion for learning and sharing knowledge was infectious and a delight to experience. I hope all is well at your new(ish) job
.
Awwwww…. Thank you, Linda! You guys definitely deserved all the credit. I never realized before interacting with MS Library how important it was to have someone to help curate content, find valuable articles/research papers, etc. You guys made it so much easier for everyone in the company to keep up with the changing landscape in any of the hundreds of niche markets we could be interested on. So, thank you!
And yes, everything is more than awesome at my new(ish) job!
Best,
Leo