★ 10 Months in San Francisco. Reflection.

Ten Months in San Francisco

On May 12th, 2008 I made the decision to move to SF. It was a very tough decision but an opportunity arose that I couldn’t turn down. Since a young boy (just after I turned 16), I wanted to travel to new places and live somewhere different even if it was just for a short period. San Francisco presented itself and I decided to do it. My girlfriend Laura and I sat at Starbucks on Sunday the 11th of May and spoke about this idea, plan and how we were going to make this work. She said, “ok let’s do it” and I put the wheels in motion.

I flew to San Francisco on the 18th of May to iron out the details and look at apartments to see if this move was even feasible. Between the May 12th and May 30th, we held Garage Sales every day of the week, sold our cars and all of our possessions aside from keepsakes, laptops and clothes and on May 31st, we had one last Garage Sale, left the keys with our landlord and flew to San Francisco.

That’s right. In 18 days, we decided to move, sold everything and did it. We touched down on on Saturday the 31st at 9PM with 6 suitcases and a couple of laptops and the next day we picked up the keys on our new but temporary apartment. It’s a very remarkable story and one that friends and family have asked me to write about extensively. Maybe one day I’ll take some time off and make it into a book that is perhaps on-demand publishing or distributed electronically. A young couple’s story of moving across country, the things that were set in motion to make this happen and the first year of living in San Francisco.

I wanted to write out some memorable moments and accomplishments since moving to San Francisco. Each time I tell myself that Im not where I should be in my career, this will help me remember what I have accomplished since moving here.

1. Started SocialCalendario and became The “Web 2.0 Party Guy” by attending 4 parties a night for my first 6 months of living in San Francisco. I blogged my party antics on popular blogs like This & this . My party schedule has tapered off a bit but I’m still heavily involved with the SF Party Scene.
2. I have been planning events & parties for years in cities all over the US. I hosted my first party at 17 at a nightclub and has some major sponsors. Since moving to SF, I’ve planned, hosted, promoted and organized over 25 parties. 12 of these I was the sole organizer & promoter. 4 of my parties had over 250 people in attendance and 1 had over 400 people attend. I continue to help throw parties, benefits, fundraisers and promote events for my friends.
3. I started AdamsBlock which became a nationwide phenomenon. The world’s first 24/7 reality TV show that actually did some good as well. The camera raised nearly 5 thousand dollars for charity, reduced crime on that block substantially and raised awareness of the day to day life of neighborhoods affected by poverty and drugs. Suburbia finally understood how it really was on the street via an unbiased camera lens. The project continues with a new set of guys and will be growing to a nationwide network of webcams in the coming months with the focus on raising money for local charities and reducing crime.
4. I became an outside consultant for 4 companies (and counting). My consulting ranges from events, party planning, marketing, social media strategies, social media marketing and assisting companies hire a community manager to manage their online brand. I will soon be expanding this to include seminars for companies looking to dive into social media and have an existing traditional marketing department.
5. I do full time community management for Yoono and have helped to give a voice to their brand and build a community around the product. I have worked on this since September, 2008 until present.
6. In 2008, I spoke at 4 barcamps, meetups and conferences. All of these were unpaid and I have 4 more lined up for 2009. These are still unpaid but I enjoy teaching, speaking to large groups and helping people. It’s great exposure and a lot of fun.
7. In August of 2008, I began brainstorming a Twitter Book with Dominic Sagolla and friends. We began work on this in October and the book is still in progress. I can say that I’m very happy with the current text and know this will be the book that changes how people microblog and will set the bar very high for future books.
8. I signed on with an agent. This happened just last week but my hard work, dedication and performance across many fields has caught the eye of an agency called William Morris. I’m lucky to have their representation and they are representing me in The Twitter Book, my speaking engagements and some future projects that I have up my sleeve.
9. I took over as CEO of Teens in Tech while my friend Daniel took a 2 month absence to focus on school. This is a temporary position and is not a job that requires a lot of my time but it’s an honor to have Daniel’s trust on this and I’m lucky to be a part of a fantastic organization.
10. I continue to work on a stealth project that should be completed soon. I started it when I moved to SF but it’s hard to talk about it until around June.

Those are professional accomplishments and all of this started and continues in only a 10 month timeframe. Here are some personal accomplishments that I feel are worth talking about.

1. Moving to San Francisco has been awesome. It has forced me to mature a great deal, learn how to budget money, save money and survive on a very tight budget. When rent is $1600 a month, you learn to make every penny count.
2. I took on a full time switch to Windows Vista Ultimate and fell in love with Windows. I’m using Macintosh right now and can’t wait for Windows 7 and maybe a worthy competitor to the iPhone like the Palm-Pre.
3. I captured, cataloged, tagged and geo-tagged over 16 thousand photos in iPhoto
4. I finally collected 20K iTunes songs. And yes they’re perfectly organized down to the year, album art and even lyrics.
5. I just recently completely overhauled my home computer setup. I sold 35 items on eBay (all tech gear) that was outdated and bought a brand new Dell 30” Display, Bose 2.1 Speaker system, new 2.93Ghz MacBook Pro and two 1TB hard drives. I also helped Laura upgrade her 1.5Ghz PowerBook to a 2.6Ghz MacBook Pro. This took a lot of time and effort to sell all of this stuff and shop for bargains. I’m happy that I did some housecleaning and now have up to date hardware to help me get more work done.
6. I managed to stay healthy. I bought a bike and ditched public transit. Biking in San Francisco is scary and fun and I’ve learned a lot the hard way. I nearly died in an accident 2 weeks ago, had all of the lights stolen off of my bike (3 times) and learned where you don’t park your bike.
7. I learned how to cook better than I did before. Moving to San Francisco helped me fall in love with wine and I’ve mastered the art of cooking fish, asparagus and I’ve started experimenting with making my own sushi at home.
8. I planned, organized and attended my 8th Macworld Conference & Expo. I’ve been attending since 2003 and am very pleased how 2009’s Macworld in January went. I had 30 people attend my 7th annual city tour, 4 car loads of people caravan with me down to Apple HQ to go shopping and have lunch and another 2 car loads of us went to the computer history museum. I did an event related to Macworld every day and built even more friendships plus catching up with old friends. I hope Macworld lives on forever. It’s my favorite conference of the year.
9. I feel deeper in love with my amazing girlfriend, Laura. She and I celebrated our 3rd anniversary on February 20th. We met in 2006. I was 19 and at a cafe working on my iBook after just recently getting back from my 3rd Macworld Expo. She was nearly 23 years old. I walked up and said, “oh are you leaving? I just wanted to introduce myself.” Her Mom said I was too young and she dealt with 2 years of me not being able to drink with her at bars. We moved in together exactly one year after meeting and even though we’re still too young to get married and start a family, she’s been supportive of my 100 hour work weeks, traveling and days when I’m just stressed out and having a rough day. Laura has anchored me through good and bad and I hope she’ll always be there to stand next to me and be my greatest critic and fan. I love you honey.

My journey to San Francisco began when I started blogging at the age of 12. It even started when I was 9 and discovered The Internet on AOL 2.0. It was enforced when I discovered The Mac, Social Media and realized I had a knack for blogging, speaking, teaching and learning new media very very fast. My father is owed a lot of credit for helping me with public speaking and teaching since I was asked to lead children and adult martial art classes even at the age of 12 so I had to become a leader at an accelerated pace. His worth ethic also channels through me and I owe him everything. I’ve had great teachers in my life but hard work is one of the secrets to what I’ve accomplished. I’m glad to have all of you reading my blog and following my work. I’m very blessed and thanks for watching the lifestream known as “Adam’s Life”. Time for me to get back to work.