New duties in the day job

Wow. I can look back over the past six weeks and say, with resounding confidence, I've been busy:

• One Web site redesign project done, another under way (more on that in a few weeks), and whatever spare consulting time I have spent advising friends and family on Web strategies.
• Travel to attend a Mid-America Press Institute seminar and two different Scripps corporate meetings.
• And that doesn't include shuttling kids to and from school, getting tires rotated and balanced, replacing gas grill propane tanks or stocking up on ever-more-necessary Prilosec.

Now comes the change that ensures life will stay at this pace for a long time. As of this week, my team at E.W. Scripps has doubled in size, and I'm now the Director of Online Products in Scripps' Newspapers Interactive Group.

My team still includes the super-sharp Operations team, led by Amy Lawless, and ever-astute Audience team, led by Angie Epps. But now we're joined by the Products team, newly led by Tom Tharp. That group includes corporate product managers for major classified ad categories (e.g., jobs, cars, homes), online retail strategy and e-mail marketing.

As my boss will no doubt remind me in the coming months, I asked for this! Maybe I'm a masochist, but I'm excited about adding these responsibilities and getting the new group aligned and organized. We have a lot of work to do -- stressful, sometimes frustrating, but often gratifying and rewarding work.

The new role probably means less consulting time than ever for me, once I complete current projects, and continued light blogging on this site. That may not be so bad, right?