I know what you are thinking: “Why another open source project?”

That one’s easy:  ”Why not?”  But you probably want a deeper explanation than that.

It’s a bit of a long story, but I’ll leave out all the background and cut to the chase:  Some time ago, I was contemplating my career, where I was compared to where I’d hoped I’d be by now, etc.  I’m known to be a pretty avid reader, so as I shared my thoughts on the subject with a friend, he suggested I read “The Dip” by Seth Godin for some insight on how to view where I was and how to proceed.  I’d been reading Godin’s blog for some time, so I was amenable.

Reading “The Dip” led me to read “Linchpin,” also by Seth Godin.  The experience was pretty transformatory, if that is even a word.

See, for most of my career I’d had this idea of starting my own software company.  For over a decade, I’ve come up with neat idea after neat idea.  And every time I’ve come up with one of these ideas, I’ve diligently started working on business plans and financial models and other MBA-type documents to quantify the idea and prove that it is viable.

And every time I’ve done this, I’ve gotten so bored or frustrated with the business parts of the idea that I end up abandoning the whole thing.  Keep in mind, these are ideas I started out pursuing with passion, with conviction, with full intent of purpose.  I’ve paid for domain names, written prototypes, set up web applications, and more.  But I always hit the wall of business viability and stopped dead.

When I read “The Dip,” I realized something important:  I’m not sure I’m really interested in starting my own company, after all.

In some ways, absolutely.  I’m completely fascinated by venture-backed startups in particular.  And I love technology and programming.  But am I interested in pushing through the difficulties of trying to figure out how to take a product to market and how to generate sales and how to scale up staff and resources and come up with a price for a product people will pay for that will allow a company to be successful?

Not sure.  I’m not saying no, I’m really just not sure.

But, I knew back then that I still wanted to do a project.  Really, that’s probably what I wanted all along — to be free to work on a project that is always interesting and useful to me.

Knowing that I wasn’t sure I wanted to create my own company was completely liberating.  Since I’m not sure I want to make a business, I’m not confined to projects that have business viability.  I’m not required to work on the business parts if I don’t want to.

“Linchpin” reminded me that my career, and my life, belongs to me, and if I want to make them meaningful, it is up to me to do it.  ”Linchpin” reminded me that I have gifts to give to the world and it is up to me to decide to give them.

So, the message was:  ”Matt, it is time to start your own project.”

Zoomulus is the result of that journey.  Zoomulus is about creating tools and libraries that make it easy for normal, tech-savvy people to leverage the cloud, quickly.  These are tools and libraries that I need and I want to use.  I can only assume that others might find them useful too.

World, Zoomulus is my gift to you.  Enjoy.