I announced this internally last week but didn’t make any public comments about it mostly because of the proximity to April 1 (I realized the date after I sent out some internal emails and got back lots of “ha ha, you aren’t fooling me!” replies. Ooops.) Last week I stepped down as the CEO of Bode Media, Inc, the parent company that publishes Metblogs and my co-founder Jason DeFillippo assumed the role.
There’s no drama or scandal or forbidden love triangle or blackmail behind this, it was simple and obviously time for a change. I’d been CEO of the company since Jason and I started it back 2003 and 8 years is a long time. Especially for someone with as short an attention span as I have and especially for something that thrives on constant engagement and excitement. I’m exceptionally proud of a lot of what Metblogs has done and while I think some of the stuff we did was too early, and some of the stuff we wanted to do we didn’t do fast enough, as a whole I think it’s all right on. Though, in the same way a drowzy driver on a road trip (hopefully) realizes when he/she is nodding off and has the sense to pull over and hand the keys to someone else, I know it’s time for someone else to drive. It’s probably been time for someone else to drive for a while honestly, and I couldn’t be happier that Jason will be doing just that.
The first several years of Metblogs were filled with explaining to people why local mattered – at that time the web was all about global. Local is finally starting to make sense, a lot of sense in fact, and I know Metblogs will be in good hands with Jason at the helm. He’s been right there with me since day one and seen it all already. I know some of what he has planned and it’s going to be awesome.
As for me, I’m looking forward to playing a non-leadership role again and will continue to blog about local stuff over on our Los Angeles site. I used to do that a lot, but haven’t so much recently. I’m excited to get back into it from purely the fun angle.
And yes, stepping out of the full time role at Bode Media means I have time for other things, though as you might expect that’s very much already spoken for. I’ve got another post coming soon talking about what I’ll be spending my time on over the next few months, but that’s another story.