Farewell Medium, Hello Periscope

A little over three years ago I was angling for a new job. In an attempt to impress with the local cuisine I took Kate Lee to a streetwise burrito joint in the Tenderloin. And by streetwise I mean anyone might walk in and hit you up for change while you ate, and maybe take your half finished coke off the table and down it right in front of your face.

To her credit, she hired me anyway, after dissing “your little town,” and I joined the content team at Medium.

Since then a lot has happened. Holocracy happened. Curated collections. Beautiful stories. Responses. Matter. Backchannel. Cuepoint. The Nib. The Message. re:form. The White House and the State of the Union Address. Amazon vs. The New York Times. Millions of stories created, edited, read, recommended, highlighted, shared. (Some personal favorites: felix salmon’s crazily-timed Bitcoin explainer that propelled us to 1,000 simultaneous readers on Google Analytics for the first time — way back in April 2013 we thought that was something! Bruce Sterling’s epic reprise of “The Blast Shack”. Epic Magazine— an early partnership that prompted the late and great David Carr to write about Medium before most people had any idea who we were. David Axe’s unofficial foray into Syria, where in true Internet form he found a story about a cat. So many more.)

Medium keeps evolving and growing and I’ve been privileged to be here from close to the start. It’s been a fantastic opportunity and challenge, and now I’m thrilled to say I’m poised to take on a new one. I’m joining Periscope as Editor in Chief. I still love the written word and Medium, but I honestly can’t think of many things more exciting than helping build a new platform with mobile phones and real time video. Look for me there starting May 16.

Thanks to so many: Kate Lee, Steven Levy, Sandra Upson, Luke Esterkyn, Nick Fisher, Greg Gueldner, Jason Stirman, Dustin Senos✌️, Xiao Ma, Joe Polastre, Jonathan Shecter, Matt Bors, Gabe Kleinman, David Pescovitz, fat, Mike Sall, Grant Oladipo, Marcin Wichary, Sarah Agudo, Daryl Koopersmith, Nick Santos, Karen Jaimes, ☯ Brad Simpson ☯, Edward Lichty, Saul Carlin, Will Kabat-Zinn, charlotte druckman, Naureen, Lauren Smiley, Sophia Banay Moura, Vinícius Baggio Fuentes, Chad Rhyner, Pete Davies, Evan Solomon, katie zhu, Jonathan Fuchs, Alex Feerst, Bobbie Johnson, Matt Higginson, Jim Giles, Mark Lotto, Madison Kahn, Ev Williams