★ New Beginnings Part 1 – A New Job

I’ve worked in many industries with some exceptional people. Since the age of 13, it’s been work work work in nearly every aspect of my life. I built houses with my Dad, worked in a lumber yard and even got a commercial drivers license and trucked building supplies all over Florida all before I was 19. At Apple, I worked with a talented group as an assistant manager of a retail store and it was an awesome job. Following Apple, I worked for an IT Consulting Group and was on-call 24/7 as 2nd in command of a team of technicians. While I was hopping around, I consistently pushed my online brand, blogged, learned and explored the web and how it connects us in so many ways. I came to San Francisco in June of 2008 to take my love and passion for online communications to the next level and it’s been a wild ride.

The first 3 months in San Francisco were spent networking, learning, exploring and getting my feet wet in many things. I was convinced that I didn’t need a full time job and I’d just do small projects that I was passionate about. Then, I fell in love with a product called Yoono and applied for a job. On September 10th, 2008 I was hired as their Community Evangelist and began spreading the word, doing QA, tech support and cultivating the growing community of users. I’ve never had more fun working on a single product. I had side projects for after hours but I worked nights and weekends for Yoono and it was simply an awesome experience for the past 1.5 years.

I hadn’t planned on leaving Yoono, nor did I fully expect to find a new job so quickly but in the first week of February I logged on to LinkedIN.com and searched “evangelist” within San Francisco in the “Technology” industry. I found three fantastic companies that I highly respect. One was an iPhone games company, another was a traditional media company and the 3rd was Brightkite. I sent sincere and unique cover letters that weren’t your typical introductions to each of the three companies. The next day I received 3 interview requests and 7 days later I decided to take the position at Brightkite.

This process took just under 9 days but that’s how things are when you don’t “need” the job but you really want it. A couple of weeks ago, I accepted a position at Brightkite as their Community Manager and put in my two weeks at Yoono.

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On Monday, I begin my new job in Burlingame at Brightkite. Last night, I had drinks with the team and spent a few hours bonding and taking a tour of their office. It’s an exceptional group of people.

Why Brightkite? Well, the same question could apply to Apple, Gwanda and even Yoono. A long time ago, I realized that if I am not fanatical about a product and its potential, I won’t work on it. This has meant that I have missed some great and high paying opportunities but that’s how I’d rather work. Brightkite is something I used religiously all of 2008 and early 2009. Their iPhone app has an excellent UI and I’ve been using their Droid application for the past day and it’s also very easy to use. Their service is location based which is something I’m very passionate about but what sets them apart from the other groups is the ability to post photos of where you are and they offer very finely tuned controls for how your location is shared with the world. As usual, there are aspects of their service that needs to be improved but I’d be saying the same thing if I’d chosen to work with Gowalla or FourSquare.

As many of you know, I deleted my FourSquare account last month. I did so because the game took over the social aspect of simply sharing your location. We forgot why we checked in and it became a competition for items, mayorships and “rent” or virtual currency (MyTown for iPhone). Brightkite is in a perfect position to take location to the next level and this excites me.

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Regarding Yoono, I’m going to remain a beta tester for them as a user simply because they are working on some incredible products and I want the nightly builds. Regarding my other small projects, I’ll save that for another post. There have been some changes lately but the gist of it is that I’m devoting all of my time, resources and mindshare to Brightkite for the foreseeable future and am extremely lucky to be a part of the team responsible for igniting the location based social networking space and the team who is going to take it to the next level.

Thanks for reading and for all of your support!

PS – Add me on Brightkite! http://brightkite.com/people/adamjackson