Category: Personal

New Year, New Gig

I’ve been waiting not-too-patiently to be able to blog about how my job has changed in 2012, and finally I can.

I’m still at Adobe, and still focusing on community, but that’s about all that’s the same.

I’ve moved to a different part of the company and have a new focus. Instead of working with just one segment of the many communities at Adobe — the fantastic designers and developers who belong to the Adobe Community Professionals and the Adobe User Groups — I’ll be working to create a “Community Center of Excellence” for all of Adobe’s various community programs. Essentially, I’ll be applying Jeremiah Owyang’s “hub and spoke” model for social media in corporations to community.

via @jowyang

It’s a big challenge and an exciting one. There’s just one small drawback – having to step away from the community I’ve spent almost 4 years supporting. Being able to work with such a supportive, energetic, and engaged group of people has been both a privilege and a pleasure, one that I will miss very much.

Luckily, I won’t be going too far. And I also get the pleasure of getting to learn about a range of communities I haven’t had much interaction with so far – like the vibrant Web Analytics community that has grown up around Adobe SiteCatalyst over in the Digital Marketing side of the house.

On my one-year anniversary at Adobe, I wrote this:

What a ride it’s been.

I can’t find the scene on YouTube & don’t have time to rip it from my DVD, but there’s a snippet from early in Season One of “The West Wing” where new White House employee Charlie Young is watching his first Presidential TV taping from the back of the Oval Office:

Charlie: I’ve never felt like this before.
Josh: It doesn’t go away.

I know the feeling.

A lot has changed since then, but I still know that feeling. And as long as I do, I’ll continue to think I’ve got the best job in the world.

So here’s to a new chapter!

As 2011 Winds Down

Here’s a few things that are on my mind as I think about the year that is soon to end.

This time last year:

  • Osama bin Laden, Muammar Gaddafi, and Kim Jong Il were all still alive. Also Steve Jobs.
  • Hosni Mubarak was still President of Egypt
  • The ‘Arab Spring’ and the Occupy movement hadn’t started
  • the 8-year US war in Iraq was still ongoing
  • Google+ hadn’t launched

Scott and I rang in 2011 in the company of a few close friends. Sadly one of them is no longer with us.

And on a much less important scale (except to me) – this time last year I was 20 pounds heavier.

2011 was also my most-travelled year ever. I flew more than 65,000 miles and visited 7 different countries (8 if you count airport connections). I don’t think I’ll be on the road quite as much in 2012, but you never know….

As for 2012 – I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions. Most of them are ignored by the end of January anyway. Changes, especially the big kind, don’t fit into neat and easy packages. It’s what you do on any given Tuesday that matters more than what you decide on some arbitrary starting point. So I won’t be making any this year.

What I do want for myself in 2012 is to stay open to the new. It’s so easy to get locked into what’s safe and comfortable, but if you do that too much, you find that the most dangerous choice of all is to play it safe. I don’t think I’ll start jumping out of airplanes or be moving to Katmandu 🙂 but it’s a big world out there and there is still so much I haven’t seen, done, or learned.

So thanks 2011, and here’s to a great 2012!

To Go Big (Screen) or Not To Go Big

For the last 2+ years, my primary home computer has been a 13″ Macbook Pro. And although I love the easy portability of a smaller laptop, I’m also a little frustrated by the small screen. Editing photos, playing games, and Powerpoint all suffer when you’ve got that little screen real estate.

So as much as I love portability, I’m also seriously thinking about buying a nice big monitor and spending more time at my long-neglected home office desk instead of computing on the couch. I’m even considering buying a small desktop computer to go with it. With so many cloud sharing services these days, synching files across devices isn’t the pain it used to be.

The main thing that’s holding me back is what going back to a desktop might do to my back. I screwed my back up badly before I got the laptop by not paying enough attention to my chair and desk quality, and I don’t want to make the same mistake twice. On the other hand, I don’t really want to spend a bunch of time trolling Craigslist for used Aeron chairs.

It might be a fun Xmas Shutdown project though… Hmmm…

To go big (screen) or not? What do you think?

9/11 – Ten Years Later

The night of my 18th birthday, I spent with my family eating dinner at Windows on the World, looking out over New York City. I remember Dad bribing the headwaiter to make sure we had a good view. I remember us talking about the history of the city and how all the streets in Greenwich Village were so clearly at an angle from the rest of the grid. It was also the first night I ever tried venison (it was yummy).

Fast forward a few years, and every morning as I left my post-college Soho apartment, I would look to the left and see the World Trade Center rising over 6th Avenue as I headed for the Spring Street subway station. I’d periodically meet friends at Windows for drinks, to celebrate special events. I even considered having my wedding reception there. I’d walk through the Concourse daily, on my way to work at two different jobs. And I still have clothing that I bought in the shops there.

The World Trade Center was an integral part of my life, and of my New York.

Until the day it wasn’t.

Photo by Andrea Booher/ FEMA Photo News

Ten years now. It seems a bit unreal that it has been so long, when I can still close my eyes and go back into the utter horror and chaos and fear that was 9/11/01. I try not to, though. Even ten years later, the memories are too vivid and painful to spend much time revisiting them.

I’m not going to write about that day. I could call up the memories, put them down here, but my story is a simple one, shared by thousands of others, both too commonplace and too painful to retell. Some year, perhaps, I’ll write it all down, but not this year.

This tenth anniversary finds me outside the USA, and I have very mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, I feel like I should be at home, honoring the day in some solemn and proper way. I’m reasonably confident there will be nothing untoward today, but there’s that nagging “what if” that makes me think not being home is a bad idea. On the other hand, I have a job to do and places to be.

And then, there’s Kath. I’m in the country of her birth today.

For the first year or so after 9/11, not a day went by that I didn’t think of Kath. 10 years later, I don’t. But even so, in a way, I feel that I’m living for both of us. Or perhaps a better way of saying it is that I feel a responsibility to use this time that I have, which she did not get, in a way that honors her.

If there’s any lesson to be drawn from 9/11, it is that you can never give in to those who want to bring horror and sorrow and pain into the hearts of others. You must life your life to the fullest rather than embrace fear.

I try to remember that. For Kath, and for the 343, and for all the others whose lives ended so terribly and so suddenly, ten years ago today.