Last week my last employer celebrated their one year launch anniversary. That means this week is my 53 week anniversary since going solo. My goals were to start a company that I wanted to work for and to spend more time doing interesting things. So, here’s 53 things that happened over the last 53 weeks:

Self-funded a company through contracting

1. Recorded my first screencast (using Camtasia Studio).
2. Three Salesforce articles.
3. Learned agile from the product management side and led a series of agile adoptions in the corporate world.
4. Second edition of Regular Expression Pocket Reference.
5. Performed a technical due diligence for an acquiring company.
6. Led technology transfer of Odeo to their new owners.

Built a company

7. Built CrowdVine.com (682 code commits).
8. Formed an LLC.
9. Found a business model (networking services for conferences).
10. Got my first paying customer.
11. Got shat on by a bird while closing my first big deal.
12. Convinced someone to work with me.
13. Wrote the company values (Bias for action. Solve valuable problems. Love self-improvement).
14. Got my first adsense check.
15. Got my first repeat business.

Learned something about silicon valley

16. Presented to (but didn’t pitch) my friends at CRV.
17. Talked to someone at Sequoia (wicked smart).
18. Met with a big company about acquisition.
19. Read True North and realized it was ok to say no to both investment and exit strategies.

Read some good books

20. Snowcrash.
21. Cryptonomicon (should have read both 10 years ago)
22. Read The China Study and went mostly vegan.
23. Read The Game and learned there’s a big difference between first base and a real relationship.
24. The very dated Designing Web Usability (did you know Netflix used to be blue?).

Got involved in some conferences

25. Sat on my second Web 2.0 panel (but first time that I really participated)
26. Attended my 5th Foo Camp (also the first time I really participated).
27. Ran CrowdVines for SoCon, Maker Faire, FooCamp, BIF3, MX East, FOWA London, and Web 2.0 Expo.
28. Made some great friends in Atlanta.

Spent some time with my hobbies

29. Started Urban Hiking.
30. Found a Vegas poker game that I could hang with (the Flamingo).
31. Learned positive (anti-Cesar Millan) dog training techniques.
32. Shaped a dog trick (shaping is how dolphins get trained).
33. Officiated a wedding.
34. Smoked a turkey.

Switched

35. From MT to WordPress (thrilled).
36. From OS X laptop to pre-installed Ubuntu laptop (thanks System76)
37. From crappy server providers to a great one (thanks ServerBeach)
38. From phone to smart phone (so-so 8525)
39. From crappy car to the best car ever (thanks Scion).

Got involved with PR and Marketing

40. Wrote 73 posts here and 8 more on the CrowdVine blog.
41. Quoted in the NYT and the LA Times (about Twitter).
42. First video interview.
43. Wrote my first press release (which led to a TechCrunch story).
44. Got a story on the front page of Netscape (now Propeller). Took one week.
45. Got a story on the front page of Digg. Took two weeks. Key was the title.

Became a better developer

46. CSS skills went from a 1 to a 5 (out of 10).
47. Made my first logo in Photoshop.
48. Contributed to open source (XSS plugin, OpenSocial, and soon to release icalico).

Business partners

49. Integrated with Pathable for FOO and FOWA
50. Integrated with icalico for FOO and FOWA
51. Learned how to quickly end a call or delete an email from an inappropriate biz dev inquiry (”May I speak to the marketing department?” “No.”).
52. Responded to three requests for me to co-found someone else’s company. Flattered once. Disgusted twice.

Also

53. Accepted enormous amounts of help from my partner, Sarah. She was a sounding board, cheerleader, author of some of our marketing copy, and even convinced her group to do market research on CrowdVine for a Berkeley MBA group project.