the onda

Today was our last day as Tabblo employees and my last day as CEO. To mark the passing of an era in the history of this group, we continued pushing fresh versions of the site (as we do every day) up to production even as the movers were taking our office out to HP's facility, one box at a time. In fact, I had the distinct pleasure of pushing out the last version of the site (including the soon to be announced "Caption of the Day" minisite) to go live from 810 Memorial Drive. And to commemorate the moment, I managed to clobber the private keys we use for storing credit cards on all of the application servers thereby rendering the shopping cart completely useless.

I mention it not because it was a fairly idiotic thing to do (it was) but because it was a bittersweet moment for me. One of the best things about working within a group of a dozen people is that every single person counts— a lot— and the fact that right up until the last day of Tabblo, the CEO had the keys to push builds out the door speaks volumes to the amount of cooperation and trust that we have all built with each other over the last two years.

As folks scrambled to retrieve keys from the offsite backup and fix the site and I walked on to the bar where we were scheduled to have our last Cambridge beers, I thought of how there are jobs you have where it is crystal clear why you get paid, and then those rare ones where you think you've pulled one over on the world because someone was silly enough to pay you for showing up every day. Running Tabblo has been from the latter category for me— mostly because of the folks involved. After all, at the end of the day, the only thing that is more rewarding than knowing that you are making a difference is the feeling that you've helped create a place where everyone can.