Days Go By

This being my first blog post, I'll quickly catch you up on my life, tell you why today is the day that I finally started a blog, and give you some thoughts about what lies ahead.

Days 1 – 842 of Life in Silicon Valley: The Oracle / Foster City Years

I graduated from Cornell with a BS in Computer Science in May 2002, and being the 49er that I am, I went west to work for Oracle.  Sure, I was 153 years late for the first gold rush, and the dotcom bubble had just burst, but I figured that in time Silicon Valley would rebound stronger than ever.  I planned to get some work experience, and when the time was right, I would move on to bigger and better things.

Amazingly, my life went pretty much as I had hoped.  I learned a lot about software development at Oracle, and in my spare time I met some amazing people.  I also finally had the time to learn to play guitar, read books (for fun!), and enjoy life in general.

I had left the cold of Ithaca and Cleveland behind.

Days 842 – 1133: The Nextag / San Francisco Year

It didn't take me too long to realize that the career paths that Oracle provided weren't right for me.  I like the problem-solving aspects of writing software, but learning API's and keeping up with the Java IDE industry is a snooze.  I had always enjoyed economics in college and had long felt I'd be well-suited for a business role that requires a technical background.

In October 2005 I started work as a product manager at Nextag, and I also moved to San Francisco.  At Nextag I've mainly focused on search engine marketing and optimization.  It's been great to learn how SEM and SEO work.  At Oracle I was so focused on a small part of Internet technology that it was easy to lose sight of the bigger happenings on the Internet.  Despite learning some interesting things at Nextag, over the past few months I've come to the conclusion that the company isn't the right place for me in the long run.  Simply put, I’m a bit too late to the party, and the party isn’t that much fun anyway.

Since joining Nextag, I've spent a fair amount of time getting "linked in" with Silicon Valley.  I've been bouncing around ideas for startups with a number of friends and colleagues, and I know that in time I'll have a company of my own.  I was thinking about leaving Nextag to do my own thing, but about a month ago Ken Norton  contacted me about Jot.

I had read a few articles about Jot back in October, but I didn’t give the company much thought at the time since I was starting work for Nextag.  However, at Oracle I really enjoyed the communal benefits of wiki use, and I’ve done my best to encourage collaboration via wiki at Nextag.  When Jot came calling, I was immediately interested.  A few weeks of interviewing ensued...

Day 1134: The Day that I Finally Created a Blog, and the Day I Accepted JotSpot’s Offer

I’ve been thinking about starting a blog for several months now, but I held off for the usual reasons...I didn’t really have spare time, I was concerned I’d accidentally say something I shouldn’t say about my employer, I don’t like revealing all the details of my private life, etc.  Still, I always enjoyed writing, and I figure maybe there’s something I can share with the world.

At the minimum, I might as well let my friends know about my latest career move in this blog post.  I’m incredibly excited and honored to be joining the Jot team.  If you haven’t read Joe Kraus’ blog, take a look.  I really think Jot is onto the next big thing in enterprise software (if you want to call it enterprise software...it’s actually more of a consumer application that every person at every company in the world should use).  I’m sure I’ll extol the virtues of Jot plenty in further posts...evangelizing the coolest web product I know will be a blast.

Days Ahead: The Jot / TBD Era

So now that you’re caught up on my life, I figure you ought to know what I plan to do with this blog.  Hopefully I’ll write reasonably often, but about what?

I’ll probably write about products that I think are cool, and I’ll point you to news stories that interest me.  On occasion I’ll probably rant about sports, music, books, movies, or TV, and sometimes I’ll just post about stuff going on in my life.

Anyway, I think that's enough for now.  I'm finally reading Moneyball, so I think that's what I'll do next.  Hopefully I'll have something interesting to say after I'm done, so make sure to subscribe to the RSS feeds :)

Comments

[Vinod]

Congrats on your new job offer. Hope the company does well.

[Ken Norton]

Congrats Ryan, we're looking forward to having you on the team!

[julia]

congratulations. sounds exciting.

[Vicki]

Hi Ryan,

Don't know if you remember me from NexTag but congrats on the new job offer. Sounds like an exciting time for you. Please keep in touch!

[Robert Leathern]

Ryan - congrats on the new position and starting the blog! I'll add you to my BlogLines though recently I'm way behind in my posts (I'm sure you'll do the same with my feed!) since we've been very busy over here at LinkedIn launching subscriptions. Keep checking back for more exciting news.