Life by Design
- Posted October 8th, 2009
- Filed under: How We Do It
Editor’s note: This is a blog post that I don’t really want to have to publish, because that will make it true. Adam is one of the most fun, creative, enthusiastic people I have ever worked with and my heart is more than a little broken by his news. However, as you will read below, he’s doing what’s best for him right now. Love and luck to you and your family, Adam. We will never air-drum, karaoke, listen to The Darkness, use the emo emoticon or see a rust eagle cruising down the road without thinking of you — MRR.
After nearly two and a half years, this week was my last at BatchBlue. This is a decision that I couldn’t have imagined making just a few weeks ago. My awesome co-workers have been incredibly understanding and supportive…and I think a big reason is that the decision really has nothing to do with BatchBlue at all.
Next week, I’ll be joining a company called PatientsLikeMe. PatientsLikeMe is a unique company that provides online communities for patients with life-altering diseases. What started as a small community of patients suffering from ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease) has evolved into a site that hosts over a dozen communities for diseases ranging from mood disorders to Parkinson’s Disease.
While my role is not specific to any particular communities, I recently found myself in need of a community that isn’t there yet. The opportunity to make this happen is what brings me to PatientsLikeMe. I’m going to be doing HTML and CSS, but I also have much greater and very specific goals I’ve set out to accomplish in my new position.
This change, of course, is going to be a shock to my system. BatchBlue is part of every aspect of my life—both work (doing what I love) and personal (having the flexibility to be with my family whenever I need to). With BatchBlue, along with the occasional weekend customer service and 2 AM bug fixes came the ability to hang out with the kids during the day and even spend 11 days in the hospital when my youngest was sick. Things like that I’ll never forget.
It’s not just the BatchBlue staff that I’ll miss collaborating with every day. One of the big reasons I joined BatchBlue was the allure of working on a product with actual users. I came from a research and development think tank, and too often we had little to no access to end users. That all changed with BatchBlue. I’ve built relationships with BatchBook users—folks like Scott and Stewart—that I know will last even though I’m moving on.
If there’s one thing I took away from last week’s WebInno event it’s that BatchBlue is onto something big. It can be easy to forget that when you’re in as deep as we all are. But it was exciting to see so many attendees have that “ah ha” moment when I showed them SuperTags—specifically, the Social Media SuperTag—and the idea behind The Small Business Web. While I’m extremely proud of the work I’ve done at BatchBlue, I’m also excited to see how another designer’s perspective can guide BatchBook into 2010.
As BatchBook continues on the leading edge of the social CRM landscape, rest assured that I’ll be cheering from the sidelines.
