Late last year, I wrote a column about a good friend and one of our industry's key leaders, Tom Deierlein, the chief operating officer of Dynamic Logic, who was taking a leave of absence to return to active duty as an officer in the U.S. Army with an expectation that he would be headed to Iraq for a year-long deployment. Having just received one of Tom's monthly e-mail updates, I thought it was timely to remember Tom in a column.

Over the last few months, I took some personal time to evaluate what I wanted to do in the next phase of my career. Everywhere I looked, I saw people exploring new opportunities purely for one single reason: passion. The "Web 2.0" has emerged and is driving growth in our industry again not because of the money that was made five years ago, but because the people who stuck around have passion.

My annual "off the grid" vacation last week took me to Down East Maine, where I was reminded that not everyone in the country has the same communications standard....