164 Things

Originally posted to my old blog on February 22, 2010. This is part of my annual thankfulness review series.

It's been about 164 weeks since I stopped working for other people and started working on my own ideas. I check in once a year to see how things are going and to see if I can identify at least one highlight for each week.

Of course, I never manage to actually check in on the exact anniversary, so the first check-in covered 53 weeks and 53 Things. The next year covered 56 Things. And for this year, I've got 55 items covering the last 55 weeks.

I'm especially glad to look at the list because it changed my outlook for the year. Like a lot of people, I thought 2009 was a hard, awful, disappointing year. But now that I've made the list I think it was probably my best year ever.

Crazy good travel

1. Found out what the Sistine Chapel smells like (Will Hunting, not much) and other Italian adventures.
2. Held off on writing this post so that I could include Egypt.
3. A #pizzaquest spanning SF to Phoenix to NYC (di fara's is still the best)
4. Two and a half months in NYC (West Village and Fort Greene)

More CrowdVine growth

5. Revenue up 50%
6. Basically stopped doing hard development, system administration, account management, and support because Jay and Terrie do it better (thanks!)
7. Figured out what a B2B "solution" is. (It's software, hosting, a Terrie)
8. Introduced session ratings feature
9. New Themes and Designs
10. First A/B tests
11. Third-party registration integration (EventBrite, RegOnline, Laser)
12. Wrote an elevator pitch (didn't seem to come up before, now it comes up all the time)
13. Added Twitter auth and Friendfeed style commenting
14. Added content management features
15. First all hands meeting

Inspiration via voice rather than text

16. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg on personal scaling
17. The idea of Internet Treasures via Mark Pincus on Stanford's ECorner
18. Geoffrey Moore at Business of Software Conference (some people have tricks from last year, he has fundamentals that have held since the 70's)

And more inspiration from conferences

19. Business of Software (already mentioned) was a must for any software entrepreneur
20. VTM: Web Design conference
21. PCMA gave clarity to our approach and direction in the conference business.

Lotta writing

22. The Real Lessons from Twitter
23. Things I don't get (about the event industry)
24. Desiging the ultimate contact form in Rails
25. Top 100 event twitter accounts
26. Some Notes on NDAs
27. AirBnB - Good cheap housing for conference attendees
28. Conference Twitter Report
29. Declining OpenID usage
30. Linux on the desktop

Family

31. We were in the NYT Again!
32. Sarah's now the General Manager and Co-chair for Web 2.0 Expo
33. Two new nephews, Jack Ozro on Sarah's side and Parker on my side
34. Saw Sarah's sister-in-law rock the SF Fringe festival
35. I tech-reviewed Sarah's The Twitter Book (didn't require any feedback, really)

Productivity hacks

36. My todo list shows 7500 items completed over the last 55 weeks!
37. Started a journal (which made pulling this list together much easier)
38. Started hanging up politely
39. No laptops between 6-10pm

Lived a bit (like the travel wasn't enough)

40. Saw a lot of movies, six good, Inglorious Basterds, Avatar, The Hurt Locker, District 9, Food Inc., Where the Wild Things Are
41. Loved Whip It
42. And Watchmen
43. Really loved archival footage of old San Francisco from the Prelinger Archives
44. Road the Tour de Vino with my mom
45. Attended WonderCon (Wow!)
46. Played Omaha High Low for the first time
48. Live reenactment of the movie Point Break (with Keanu actor chosen from the audience)
49. Played and loved Dragon Age
50. Got a haircut from Marco, claims to have cut Regis' hair in the 80s.

Read some actual books
51. Andy Grove: The Life and Times of an American
52. Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Live

Misc experiences

53. Organized moderators for @iheartquotes
54. Made a killer pomelo sorbet
55. First time brining meat (chicken for the smoker)

Bonus

56. I usually end with a big thank you to my partner Sarah. The last two years have had big thanks for helping get CrowdVine off the ground and there was more of that this year--great advice and notably, a strong introduction to the work of Steve Blank and Eric Reis. But what really stands out is how much of the non-work items have her finger prints on it. This is the year where we introduced some work life balance (by balance I mean holding equally heavy weights in each hand) and so many of the highlights were sparked by her. Thank you!