[caution: heavy reminiscing...some waxing poetic...and a bit of an emotional spill to follow]

I spent Friday night at FOO, half cork'd on Stormhoek (darn you Hugh!), reminiscing to people I originally thought I'd dazzle with 'interesting' conversation that it was about to become my one year anniversary of moving to California. Heh. Thankfully most everyone else was drinking as well.

Egad...I was so naive. I read through that article again today and cringed. I remember throwing away all of my winter clothes and dancing around, thinking there would be no more cold. Heh. I'm in San Francisco where I wear sweaters in July and August (it gave me an excuse to shop again). The photo above was taken of a 'hippie' at the Caltrain station. I was convinced that I would arrive at Haight and Ashbury and see people dancing with tambourines.

I had ideas...big ideas...but I was scared mindless. I was hired after a couple of intensive telephone and email interviews...sight unseen. My new employer had read my blog lightly (I suspected later on). When I arrived, I had been working around the clock to get ready and up to speed, so I became sicker than I had ever been in my life. I spent the first month and a half living in a hotel room in Redwood City, partially with my son, who was shipped back and forth to his Dad in Sacramento. My relationship (from Toronto) at the time was put to one of those tests that it would not survive.

A month later, I was still naive and scared, but no longer in shock. I was learning alot in a short amount of time. Trying to absorb everything. I went to any event that I could find. I quickly joined every social anything online and offline to get acquainted with the local community. I battled to get an apartment in the Haight (no small feat, really, the market was and still is booming and finding an apartment has everything to do with being there first).

I had wide-eyed ideas still...and my boss was more than a little disappointed. I haven't really published this before, but it was made abundantly clear that I didn't live up to expectations (luckily shortly thereafter, I proved myself...it's not always clear where an organic strategy is going to land...luckily enough people understood what I was building to keep me afloat for the 3 months it took*). That and my insecurity of moving countries into a seriously advanced technology space (No place in the world is this lightening speed ahead. No place. There are smart people everywhere, but the Valley is a totally concentrated mass of technology and development focused individuals...so much that people think that this is the way the world works...even though it doesn't) was the best thing that could ever happen to me.

It was lay down and cry and claim defeat or say 'EFF YOU' and preserver. I did the latter.

Okay...so fast forward to one year and five days later...

I have found an amazing relationship with my penguin (him), and co-founded a company with him that works with really frickin great clients, and met oodles of other amazing people (too many to link to), which landed us another partner in the firm, and I get to meet super interesting, smart, engaged and enlightened types all of the time, and get to speak at conferences, and travel around the world to BarCamps and other gatherings of people who sometimes even know who I am through online contact (so we don't need to give our entire life's history), and somehow came out with a crazy marketing term that people seem to rally around...and and and...alot can happen in a year.

From afraid and feeling like a big loser for not understanding anything around me, to feeling 'in the groove' and accomplishing my goals...that's alot.

But really, what I'm looking back at is that it took me 6 years to get to the point I was BEFORE I reached the Valley and 1 year to grow 10x beyond that (if not more). The accelerated pace of this area is slightly overwhelming when you first get here. You aren't supposed to admit it, because everyone around you seems so non-chalant about it.

I remember being at a geek event and handing someone my 'blog card' proudly and the guy looking at it, rolling his eyes and saying, "That is soooo 1997." I was used to handing someone my blog card and being asked what a blog was. Here I was nearly 10 years obsolete!

Reality check: in 1997 most people hadn't heard of the internet. Really. During the last bubble, most people predicted it was a fad. (it kind of was) Um. Today, senators still talk about it being a series of tubes.

We have a way to go. And the spammers and the people with money are going to get there first and kind of wreck it for us. But what one year has brought me is more than skepticism. What one year has brought me is actually more optimism than ever. An honest optimism and hope. One that doesn't give a flying snake about MySpace or Hollywood or even Google. One that isn't contingent on a self-fulfilling prophecy or an echo chamber or the death of old media.

I've met enough people that I know that life is terribly complicated because of them, but it is also complex because of them...and I maintain that, given the right incentives, we are actually good. The problem is that we only have one answer presented to us thusfar (or many do) and that 'answer' or 'success story' is changing.

So, a year ago, I would have thought I was nuts to think that I could build a business based on redefining success and telling clients to stop thinking about "getting rich quick" and start thinking about building long-term organic growth businesses that provide value...oh...and work with your competitors. Holy crap. You know...it still sounds a little far fetched. Heh.

But here I am. One year. Two visas. Three blogs. Eight clients. Twenty two podcasts and online interviews. Forty some odd BarCamps. 124 'geek' events attended. Ten thousand 'social network' signups. 883,000,000 mentions of Web 2.0. 883,000,001 complaints about the term Web 2.0.

I'd recommend it highly to anyone else...


*there is this strange notion in the valley that if you don't reach a gazillion users by the day after launch, somehow heads have to roll...it's a very different perspective...VC driven me thinks...but wait...we hadn't launched. That's even harder to explain.