2009 has been a year of ups and downs, highs and lows, and a roller coaster of new experiences. For better or for worse, 2009 has been a game changing year for me, between work, social media, and socially, my world is a different place than it was one year ago.
I started out 2009 with The Media Power Group. If you aren’t familiar with Media Power, the short explanation is they were a mobile application development house and the successor to the Gizmondo, a company that was also spearheaded by Media Power head honcho Carl Freer. I have many stories about Media Power that I really want to tell, but the situation in relation to my former employers is still in such a state that it is in my best interest to not start telling those stories yet. Suffice it to say that the company packed up in the middle of the night at the end of March and moved out to California.
It was while I was working at Media Power that I started taking a larger interest in social media and volunteered to help out at Twestival. In a three week whirlwind, we went from our first meeting to a party that catered to over 1,000 attendees and $24,000 raised for Charity:Water ($250,000 raised worldwide). It was at the Twestival meetings that I met Emily Gannett, co-founder of Klickable.tv. As Media Power faded, Emily and her partner, Roger Wu, were looking for a developer to replace someone who had just left their organization.
While I had spent almost a year and a half at a New York based startup, I didn’t actually interact with the larger startup community in New York until I was with Klickable. It wasn’t uncommon to go out every night after a full day of work to promote Klickable, support friends’ startups, or just socialize with other members of that scene. It gave me a new perspective on marketing by working in such a small company, where we did all the work necessary to build the company by day and promote it by night. For me it all culminated in assisting Roger in his presentation at the New York Tech Meetup. Between a full audience in a Fashion Institute of Technology auditorium and another hundred or two watching online, we demonstrated Klickable for over a thousand people, a daunting and exciting experience that was the culmination of the seven months I spent with Klickable.
With the New York Tech Meetup behind us, I decided that it was time for me to move on from Klickable and try to find my own path. I left amicably, and they understood my needs at the time, which allowed me to continue the way I wanted to. I began spending time on startups of my own that I wanted to finally launch. I picked up smaller contracts to cover my bills, but would give me time between them to spend writing my own code.
So now we are days away from 2010, and where does that leave me? I have one project that is on the verge of launching and a second one that is close behind it. All the amazing people I met over the course of the year keep shaping my year to come, by continuing to be amazing people. Some of whom I am proud to call friends and some who think highly enough of my work that they want to refer me for work.
2009 was very much a year for building foundations for me. It may not have been my most lucrative year, but it will lead to 2010, the year I crush it. But I don’t want it to be a lonely road, so I plan to elevate others with me. As I launch my new ideas, I plan to mentor and/or work with other startups that those around me want to launch. There are already a few startups that I am talking to and plan to leave myself open to assist anyone who can use assistance in my areas of expertise. Together, we’ll all build skyscrapers on the foundations of 2009.
