Going to Gotomedia

Just two weeks before I was due to depart (with most of my furniture sold, possessions ready to be packed), I was introduced to Kelly Goto by Cindy Li, who I met earlier in the year at SXSW. After spending two hours with Kelly talking about my work and that of her company Gotomedia, and then spending a morning with her team, I accepted an offer to join them as an Interaction Designer.

It turns out their offices are just 25 minutes walk from my apartment, and given that I live on Potrero Hill (emphasis on the word ‘hill’) this is certainly going to give me some much needed exercise. I believe this new role will give me an opportunity to focus more on information and interaction design, having spent less time on this in previous roles, as well as finally forcing me to get to grips with JavaScript — of which I have embarrassingly little knowledge of.

This job will also need to rebuild some confidence in my existing skill set, it becoming obvious recently that I have a low regard for it, especially when compared to how it’s viewed by friends, colleagues and peers. I think part of this can be attributed to my two years at Ning where, unlike agency work, there was not a continual turn around of individual sites and projects, but rather a greater focus upon iterating upon existing designs and code (which is of course the nature of the beast).

To be honest, there is still a large part of me that wants to try the freelance route, but given my visa is not something I want to give up too easily, and that transferring it is a pretty easy process, I’m of the mind that I have nothing to loose my giving this a try. Just a week in, things are already looking great.

One last aspect that made this such an attractive job offer, was that it allows me to spend more time working from the UK. So for all of you that were looking forward to seeing me this week, you won’t have to wait that much longer - I return to Britain for a month long stay this December 17th.