Leaving Rextopia
After a short few (but great) months with Rextopia, I’ve decided to focus on projects that more suit my skill set… so, I’ve parted ways with the wonderful team. I’d like to say it was a tough decision, but it really was not because (and I think the Rextopia team would agree), I suck at “selling.” However, I did grow some new skills and enhanced old ones (blogging, social networking, RSS integration, interaction with web publishers) so the experience with Rextopia was completely worth my time, and I hope that I added some value there as well.
When you leave a “job” it is interesting how the drama and anxiety you have about leaving soon fades away. For instance, the Rextopia team was more than obliging and caring during the decision-to-leave process, and I feel in some ways closer to them than I did while I was an “employee.” I’m even working with them on some projects that I care deeply about and that they were wonderful enough to encourage me to develop and continue. That fits in with my psychology of employment and my continual insistance that the new world order will see employment, career and personal edification through working in a whole new light as the web continues to infiltrate our lives.
I’ve already received a few “job” offers in the online industry, but I really want to take this time to reflect and make a wise decision on the next step (that sounds so cheesy). I’ve been greatly influenced by marketers like Tara Hunt, Pinko Marketers, Hugh Macleod, Citizen Agency Project, and of course Wayne Porter which have all helped me to be able to reconcile my own personal philosophies and theologies with the business of marketing. This does not have to be about selling pills or widgets. This can be about forming community, making partnerships and working together (not us vs. them) as people.
ZeFrank is a daily source of inspiration, and through ideas like his “Ugly Myspace” competition has helped me to realize that paradigms long held are shifting and walls are being broken down. Definitions like “targets” or “consumers” don’t mean anything in reality and it has taken the involvement of millions (billions) of humans playing together on the web to make that happen. As more people access tools and toys such as MySpace or Flickr, we start to realize that everyone is a producer, and marketing is not pushing to just those who are consuming. Marketing is not top-down anymore, and that is scary as hell for most marketers (especially in the online world).
So, with these realizations and my own skewed since of lefty politics and social views I’m embarking on a mission to do better… to make things good… to connect people to good things they might not have known about… to form community… and to use my skills to leave the internet a better place than it was when I found it (way back in the Prodigy Bulletin Board days).
Lofty goals often mean periods of worry, anxiety and joblessness in terms of “career” but sticking to my flower-guns has got to be a better policy than being miserable knowing that I’m not using my full potential.
So, who knows what’s next, but it will be shiny, rusty, exciting, boring, profitable, unprofitable and creative. I will make this work (whatever in the hell this is).
More soon.
posted: 06 August 4
under: the word of the day is j-o-b