As of Monday, I am no longer CEO of the Cape Cod Technology Council, Inc. The board has decided to reposition the organization as a membership/volunteer organization. ie, no staff, ie, no me. This is the farewell column I wrote earlier today for the CCTC Packet and I wanted to share it here, as well.

This has been one intense week.

If you missed it, Thursday’s Broadband Summit 2 in Wood’s Hole was excellent energy and moved us several steps closer to the creation of our much-needed broadband backhaul infrastruture.

FCC Commissioner Michael Copps was thought provoking and MA Commissioner of Telecom and Cable Sharon Gillett provided key insights into the development of state broadband policy and funding - the outcome of which we hope to see within the next several days.

But even more exciting was the energy and seriousness of intent in the 150 or so regional leaders who were also part of the day. Public safety, towns, county, education, business … there are so many ways a regional broadband network will impact us and a representative sample of the critical groups were sitting down, talking, brainstorming, and leaving with follow up meetings and actions set. That is the best kind of magic!

Friday, CCTC hosted the Mass Office of Business Development, visiting three different companies within the innovation sector and highlighting a vibrant side of the Cape that doesn’t involve beaches or holiday-making. That too, was a wonderful kind of magic!

Three years ago, I wasn’t sure that nonprofits or the public sector had a whole lot of use. I was living and breathing the Silicon Valley culture of private enterprise, innovation, and creating the next big thing today. Even after moving back to the east coast, I was still living that ethos as I helped a Boston area software company’s founder build his company’s first professional management team.

Then, somehow, I ended up talking to the board of Cape Cod non-profit (a non-profit?!?!) who had a need — and in that need I found a challenge.

For the past almost three years now, I’ve been working on that challenge: how to support businesses in what we have come to call the ‘innovation’ sector. That is, companies that sell products or services based largely on intellectual capital to markets that may be on Cape but that are just as likely to be anywhere in the US or across the globe.

We also looked at the broader needs of all business - of the way technological shifts in the world have changed the core way we all function. How telecommunication highways are as necesary as paved highways, how web 2.0 changes the dynamics of business interaction, and how location becomes an option dictated by factors other than availabilty of raw supplies.

Along the way I have learned an enormous amount about how the entire ecocystem of a community works — seeing every piece integrate with the others, seeing government and the public sector making positive impacts on the business community, and watching as it all links togther into a general regional state of well-being or of frustration or of hope and belief.

I’ve been blessed by having so many people around me who are so willing to talk, to answer questions, to brainstorm, to share, to let me be a fly on the wall and watch and learn. I’ve been blessed to be part of groups - there were so many First Fridays (from lighthearted baseballl to data security and blackhats!), and there was that digital arts showcase at Nantucket Sound, and those Summer Solstice Socials, and and those annual dinners with the MIT Media Lab, and iRobot, and Forrester’s new ways of looking at the practice of business, and … and … I could go on and on.

But I won’t, because this chapter has ended.

The Tech Council board has made decisions that mean I no longer have a role within the organization and so this is my final column, and my expression of thanks to each and every one of you who are reading this.

Life is made of many chapters. Part of the fun of living is exploring one after the other, learning and growing from each, and cherishing the best parts always.

This has been a great chapter.

But now, it is winding down, just a few last files to file, a few last bags to pack. No, I don’t know what I’m doing next, but I do know that next week will be here and that in that week and in the ones that follow I’ll keep listening and connecting and following the threads and the paths with many of you and somehow in all of that it will become clear. And then another chapter and another adventure will be underway. Ain’t life grand that way?

Like I said, this has been one intense week.

Thank you all for everything!

– Teresa