Fast Wonder Blog: Consulting, Online Communities, and Social Media

I thought it would be good to do a year in the life of Dawn for 2007. What the hell, everyone else is doing one, so I will jump on the trend.

As I think about 2007, I can’t help but be a bit surprised by how much fun and excitement I was able to cram into a single year!

2007: Non-Stop Excitement:

• Organized a whole bunch of Portland BarCamp Meetups
• Decided to sell my house in Hillsboro, and Todd and I moved to the hip (or hippie) neighborhood of Hawthorne to be within walking distance of my favorite restaurants, book stores, groceries, and more. We love it here, and it is a much better fit for us than the suburbs!
• Attended my first sxsw to be on an open source panel and was also able to attend the Austin BarCamp at the same time.
• Launched the Fast Wonder blog (an evolution of my older Open Culture blog, which evolved out of my Open Source culture blog) with a new look and feel and a real logo.
• After leaving Intel in November of 2006, I started off in 2007 working at Compiere.
• Left Compiere to join Jive Software and was surprised to see it reported on CNet.
• Co-Organized the first BarCamp Portland with 250 attendees!
• Organized a Technology Community Leader meetup along with attending OSBC where I was on a community panel.
• Had so much fun that I organized another community leader meetup to go along with OSCON.
• Jive launched Jivespace, the developer community I was hired to build!
• Began doing video podcasts for Jivespace.
• Went to Ohio to visit family for a few birthdays. This is where I learned (the hard way) that my family reads my blog.
• Helped organize quite a few smaller community events like the Jive Show and Tell dinner and the Portland Blogger Dinner.
• Wrote an article for an O’Reilly Women in Technology series.
• Co-organizer for the first Ignite Portland event with ~300 people attending!
• Spent Thanksgiving relaxing on the beach in Cancun
• Started a weekly Fast Wonder Community Podcast (audio) series (3 episodes so far)
• Getting the O’Reilly Art of Community book back on track.
• Co-founded Legion of Tech, an Oregon non-profit, and currently acting as chair of the organization
• Went back to Ohio for just a couple of days to hang out with family over Christmas, and I’m still trying to catch up on email!

Now what? How in the hell am I going to top that in 2008?

• Achieve 501(c)(3) status for Legion of Tech?
• Get O’Reilly Art of Community book published?
• Help organize a bunch of other community events in Portland?
• Improve Jivespace to make it a really kick-ass developer community?
• Ultimately, I want to do something spectacular enough that it prompts someone to write a Wikipedia article for me.

Have a Happy New Year!