So, it’s been a very long time since I’ve written a proper “blog” post. Here’s the cheapest form of post there is, the list!
Since I last blogged, I have:
written a bunch of tweets . I don’t write a lot of long things, becuase I have very little time to spend formulating sentances and I’m incredibly lazy. Twitter is where I do most of my communicating.
stopped using wordpress. It just got too painful to try to keep it updated. I considered, briefly, one of the hosted alternatives (namely page.ly and wordpress.com), but frankly the cost benefit ratio was off for me personally (page.ly to expensive for what I need, wordpess.com not featureful enough). I was urged by Harper to try Jeckyl and drydrop which is really awesome, but just not easy enough for me to actually bother with doing it. In the end, this is now on posterous. My reasoning: cheap, featureful and fucking easy. I merged my personal and nerdly blogs, imported everything, and have everything up using my domain, the ability to customize the front end, in about 5 minutes worth of work. I really wanted to use tumblr (I had been using it for a couple other small-fry blogs) but they were just to damned unstable. So here I am, giving posterous a shot.
helped run technology at an awesome company . As (first “Director of” then) VP Engineering at skinnyCorp/threadless I got to help grow an amazing platform, make it more stable, make it easier to refactor the next time around, grow an amazing engineering team, and have a hand in growing a great company.
left the best job I’ve ever had to try to be an entrepreneur. I can’t rave enough about how awesome it was to be at threadless, but I finished the things I set out to do there, and I know that someone else is better suited than me to bring technology at threadless to the next level; and I have different things that I am excited to work on.
shut down my first company. I started mk2 development with my good friend Bryan years ago when we were both otherwise employed and wanted a clearing house for sidework and our ideas for little webapps. Over time Bryan (and I, but mostly Bryan) grew the business into a viable consulting company that was chugging along, but needed another active partner. After I left threadless Bryan and I figured out that we wanted different things out of a company, but that our friend Dave wanted a lot of the same things that Bryan wanted. So Bryan and I disolved our company, and Bryan and Dave are working together doing things under the colorjar flag.
spent a bunch of time thinking about big problems with smart people. Primarily commerce, community, identity and reputation. Those are hilariously big problems, and if you want to talk about them, hit me up. I love to talk to people about these concepts.
taken a couple of steps towards starting a company. I have spent a bunch of time recently learning the difference between an idea and a company. I have a bunch that I am hoping to share about where I am headed; it’s super exciting.
worked on a bunch of fun side projects. I’ll talk about those as they surface.
talked to a bunch of amazing companies and entrepreneurs. Having days free has allowed me to be free to talk to a bunch of different companies, from pre-startup to established companies it is great to share my experience as a technologist, and my specific experience with commerce. I love helping companies, so feel free to reach out.
become a first time parent. The main reason that I have very little time, and also the main kick in the ass for all the change. I have so much more to share about this, it’s absurd. So, i’ll leave it at that for now
Hopefully, I’ll have the chance to share some fun thoughts about the second half of this list.
w00t.