Outgoing

Posted by Andy Baio

Five years ago this January, I wanted to solve a personal problem: finding events I cared about and sharing them with my friends. Nine months later, Upcoming.org popped out and changed my life forever.

After five years of working on Upcoming and two years after its acquisition, I’m moving on. This Friday is my last official day as a Yahoo!, after which I’ll go back to being a lowercase yahoo.

What next?

In case you haven’t noticed, Waxy.org went into cryogenic sleep shortly after we were acquired as all my energy went into building and growing Upcoming. I’ve missed writing and coding here badly, so I’m thrilled to make a second announcement:

Next year, I’m focusing exclusively on Waxy.org and related coding projects. What does that mean? Yes, more links, but also the same flavor of original research and investigative journalism I’ve done in the past, though on a daily basis instead of the quarterly (ack!) schedule I maintained this year.

I’m going to be taking some time off for the rest of the year to travel and get things in order (e.g. I’m long due for a redesign), so don’t expect things to really get moving until the first week of January. Stay tuned to the feed for details.

What about Upcoming?

I have the utmost faith that Upcoming will thrive without me, as the team continues to make the site better and better. (Truth be told, I’ve gradually taken myself out of all the daily machinations and I don’t think anyone really noticed.) We don’t release stats, but we’ve seen wonderful growth over the last two years and I feel like we’re just scratching the surface. I can’t wait to see some of the high-profile improvements we’ve been working on get released over the next weeks and months.

I’m eternally grateful to everyone who supported Upcoming, but most of all to the dedicated and passionate community. (You rock so hard, it hurts.) Special thanks go out to Stewart and Caterina, without whom the acquisition never would’ve happened, and the Yahoos that believed in what we were doing enough to bring us on, but especially Paul Levine, Bradley Horowitz, Jeff Weiner, Jerry Yang, and all of Yahoo! Local. Thanks to all my brilliant co-workers, without whom I would’ve gone insane: the entire Flickr team (but especially George, Heather, Aaron, Dunstan, Tara, Matt, Kellan, Dan, Paul, and Cal), the Brickhouse team (esp. Ernie, Rabble, Kevin, and Tom), the Pipes team (Pasha, Ed, Jonathan, and Daniel), my fellow acquirees (Joshua Schachter, Eric Marcoullier), and the rest: Cameron Marlow, Ian Rogers, J.R. Conlin, Chad Dickerson, Mor Naaman, and Jeffery Bennett. You’re all awe-inspiring.

Finally, huge pieces of cake to the Upcoming team — Leonard, Gordon, Neil, Shawn, Kelsey, and Vince. I love you, guys.

Party!

Care to send me off with style? Join me for a night of silliness and celebration this Friday night at the Latin American Club in San Francisco. The details are on Upcoming (where else?). First round’s on me!

Comments

    Dude, many, many congrats on moving to the next stage. Waxy is one of the blogs that inspired me to start my own. And while that ultimately failed, what came out of it, MyBlogLog, didn’t and it’s due in no small part to you.

    As they say, I wish you best of luck in your future (feature) endeavors. Continue to make cool web things – and of course, keep in touch.

    Congrats! It’s sometimes difficult to remember what life was like a few years ago when Upcoming as a side-project leading to a new life in a new city at a new company. Seems like you now have some more time and space to determine what’s next and worthy of the next few years of your work life.

    Ah, great. I wondered if your “I need to update more often” post was to be your last. Great to hear we’ll be seeing lots more here soon.

    Congrats, holmes. 🙂 I’m trying to imagine what life would be like if I worked on LYD full time and my eye starts to twitch involuntarily.

    We’ll keep in touch, though. You’re good peoples, man.

    Congrats on the move! It will be nice to see waxy.org popping again…

    “we shall continue to follow you with great interest”

    Loved seeing something pop up in my RSS feed for this site that isn’t a link, and look forward to more! Good luck, Andy!

    Firstly, a big congratulations on all you’ve accomplished with Upcoming.org and on your new job! I believe Waxy.org was my first RSS subscription and was part of my introduction to the power of syndication. It was great getting to work with you and I’ll come by for a visit! Don’t I still owe you a feature?

    Congrats and thanks for all the hard work you’ve done on Upcoming. This was the first blog I read regularly and I’m glad to see you coming back to it.

    Hey! I didn’t know you were one and the same person (Waxy & Upcoming). I guess I just don’t pay attention. Y! will be a poorer company without you. How do I know? I’m a Yahoo too!

    Matt (the guy that put out that Anton Maiden CD)

    It’s been great to see Upcoming.org grow from strength to strength.

    Thanks to whoever sent me the upcoming shirt (all the way to the UK). I’m looking forward to more updates here, best of luck dude.

    Dam – it’s a virtual who’s who, social graph of inner cognoscenti here – commenting and congratulating you. Me – I’m proud to have signed up early – ignored the service – but let its essence seep into me like a true glass of vin du aroma.

    Friday night is party night – Laughing Squid as well.

    Too bad I don;t drink – but I’ll light a joint in your honor

    Yay, more articles from Waxy! Congrats on what you and the team have accomplished on Upcoming (it’s still sooooo delicious) and best wishes on your next steps, I’ll definitely be “watching.”

    Nice one Waxy. Good luck and happy travels.

    …and if you are coming downunder to New Zealand there’s a geek dinner just waiting to happen.

    Fantastic! 🙂 Waxy.org and Waxy Links were some of my first favourite reads, ever (and the first things I aggregated, I think).

    I wonder who’ll be uncovered as the first Star Wars Kids of the NEW WAXOLOGICAL ERA? 🙂

    Good luck! It was great being on a panel with you at Search Engine Strategies this year. Thanks for hopping in on that, and best wishes for the future..

    All together now:

    “But there’s no sense crying

    over every missed date.

    You just keep on trying

    till you run out of cake.

    And the Science gets done.

    And you make a neat web-service, um.

    While there’s people at Ask still alive.”

    I’m excited about the possibilities of waxy.org being a full time endeavor. You also always had a way with stats, investigations, following a story to the bitter end, and I hope you take that to the next level.

    I will say I think the lack of support Yahoo seemingly gave Upcoming was a crime. The site is still by far the best and most usable events site, but it’s a shame that (at least from the outside) Yahoo never allowed it to really become all it should be.

    Glad to have you back on to anything instead of just something. 🙂

    Keep the links coming, it makes things easier for us over at Rocketboom.

    Drew

    Congrats Andy. I’ve been subscribed to your blog for 5 years+ now. Looking forward to the new direction and thanks for sharing.

    Congrats Andy. Good to have you back here, you vanished for so long, I was getting worried. I’ve been subscribed for… I don’t even know, I just know you were the first blog I started reading. Good luck on future prospects!

    Congratulations, Andy! I’ve been silently lurking Waxy.org for a couple of years now (I even set it up up as my browser’s home page xD). Your Waxylinks tend to be utterly interesting, so were the articles you used to post in your scarce free time, so it’s great news to know that you are going to work on Waxy.org full time from now on. Good luck! 🙂

    Congrats and best of luck. I feel fortunate to have spent a couple of years working with you and the team. I’m sure both you and Upcoming will go on to do great things!

    Andy, best of luck with w/ever you are venturing into !!

    and yeah, the your linky/kinky farm has always been a treat to read.. keepthem coming !!

    Ooops, I’m quite late to the party (or totally missed it), but was quite dismayed to hear that you’re leaving Upcoming.

    Good luck with future projects – I’ll subscribe (again) to the Waxy RSS feed and look forward to seeing new stuff.

    Hope everything’s well.

    Congrats. I have been thru the two year stint after selling business as well. That was 8 years ago and I’ve been working for myself ever since.

    Heya, long time reader, first time commenter… Waxy’s been about the only site I check on a regular basis. I don’t blog, don’t spend much time in forums, and facebook bothers me… Anyways, it’ll be nice to ‘have you back’, so to speak! Enjoy the rest of the year!

    andy, you’ve put too much work in this blog. it’s high time you return to work on it with more time. goodluck pal!

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