Octavia wrote in asking about moving to San Francisco. She is finishing cosmetology school and would like to know if it’s worth it to leave Connecticut and head West.
I had a question about your move to San Fran! I’m 19 years old and I’m attending cosmetology school. i graduate the summer of 2011 and I’m planning on doing big things after i receive my cosmetology license. my dream since i was 9 has always been to move to California. i visited my aunt in palm dale at age 9 and fell in love ever since. my dream is to move out to California (San Francisco) and begin the new chapter of my life. i wish to have my own spa/salon. i want to find the woman of my dreams (i forgot to mention I’m a totally out lesbian) and start a family. i would love to raise a family in the bay area. I’m excited about my future because i know it’s going to be positive and successful! but my question to you is how long did it take you to finally make the decision to move out to San Fran? and is it totally worth it? I’m a down to earth girl just looking for a new breath of fresh air. living in Connecticut isn’t doing it for me. i feel as if no things here for me. your opinion really matters, and if you have any tips for me i would gladly appreciate them. thank you xoxoxo Octavia Farmer
I’ve arrived at my one year anniversary consulting with Zendesk and have been offered a full time position at Zendesk in Business Development!
Moving On Up: Business Development
In this new role, I will work to bring on new companies to Zendesk and expand our integrations + partnerships. So basically it’s geeky stuff plus relationship building. Right up my alley! I’m both excited and squeamish about the opportunity as it means learning new things and creating measurable success for Zendesk yet I will have to put my personal brand on hold. I start full time January 2010.
Want to come and work with me? Check out Zendesk Jobs including:
A year ago, I agreed to undertake creating the Zendesk webinars. At that time, Zendesk was receiving several requests a week for demos. This was not efficient. Since I’d been a long time customer of Zendesk, having left Cerberus in favor of a cloud based helpdesk solution, and a vocal customer, they asked if I would be interested in creating a webinar series for them. Uhm, think about it….heck yes! And so began the journey of chubby buddah, Adria and San Francisco. The Sunday after Blogworld ended and I’d delivered my 500 hugs for John Chow, I flew to San Francisco for the very first time… The goal was to reduce demo requests and increase conversions of trial customers to paying customers. Also, if the webinars could answer common questions customers had, there would be less support tickets in the queue. I set the work learning what the customers wanted to know. I interviewed Zendesk staff (much smaller group a year ago), looked at tickets and talked with customer support advocates. I drafted an outline for the very first webinar, Zendesk 101 and out it went through the Zendesk email system for feedback. After a few tweaks, a brief set of slides and a lot of practice, I was ready to hold the first webinar! Initially we had technical problems with the internet and audio quality. Webex was the first company we went with to deliver the webinars and thankfully now we’ve switched to Citrix’s GoToMeeting / GoToWebinar / GoToTraining packages. I made sure from the first day surveys were sent out to collect feedback. Being a consultant, it’s very important to collect feedback early on and then keep it coming in. Not only for quality validation but to improve the delivery of your services. I used Google Docs spreadsheets for the form to collect the survey responses. We’ve now switched to SurveyGizmo which has advanced reporting and survey logic.
I’m no longer doing the Zendesk webinars. Amy has come on to run them.
Zendesk Webinar Content
Since I have a technical background and and enjoy training, the webinars were focused on showing attendees how to accomplish things within the Zendesk backend like creating tickets, managing queues and activating widgets. I spent time doing QnA, taking people through specific questions they had about workflow. Eventually we started doing special webinars that dove deeper into a specific aspect of Zendesk like customizing the CSS or setting up email routing. Webinars featuring partner integrations came on soon as well. Of course, I picked Harvest as the first integration to do a webinar with because…well, they rock! They were also how I found out about Zendesk. I was using Harvest for my time tracking and invoicing and they mentioned on their blog about their integration to Zendesk and probably in a newsletter.
Then with the creation of the marketing team at Zendesk, webinars focused on product launches and lead generation came about. The goal of the webinars was to help prospective customers decide and guide existing customers embrace Zendesk more. I enjoyed developing the content, talking with integration partners and reading the awesome feedback attendees left! I’ve seen many of them at conferences like DrupalCon and Blogworld so it’s a nice way to circle back.
Hello San Francisco
Things were going well and I was liking this webinar thing for Zendesk! I came to find out I also liked San Francisco. I was highly focused on my first visit to San Francisco last October. I didn’t go out much and left exploring the city up to the real tourists. Several things about San Francisco gave me pause: the weather, the racial diversity of the people, the architecture, the food and the saturation of people working in technology. Zendesk wasn’t half bad themselves! They invited me to return in December for the holiday party and that’s when it truly hit me; I could move to San Francisco and work for Zendesk! Upon their invite, I contacted several people living in San Francisco, asking if they would meet with me to give me their opinion of the city. Cheryl Contee (@ch3ryl), C.J. Hayden (@cjhayden) and Mike all happily agreed. Wow, did it make a difference to hear their own personal stories! Just six months before at Blogging While Brown, my table had decided I should move to San Francisco vs buying a condo in Minneapolis and I had happily added it to my list of goals but had no idea how it would manifest.
The Zendesk holiday party certainly cinched it for me. I had an excellent time, the Danish food was great and the mood was festive. We had the first company meeting and I was awed by the CEO’s vision for Zendesk. I wanted to be a part of their success!
Moving To San Francisco
Traveling has always been a hard thing for me to do. I hate getting lost. I would print out my Google directions and hop into the car to see a client. God forbid, I had to make a change in my route because I would have to print out more directions! This all changed when I started using GPS and the TomTom software. This improved even more once I got my 3GS iPhone. Due to the number of conferences I was speaking out, I eventually overcame this dislike of travel in 2009 so then the thought of making that “Move To San Francisco” goal became a bit more realistic.
I began researching places to live and stories of moving to San Francisco. I talked with the kindly folks mentioned above. I told Zendesk my intentions, announced it on my blog and asked Twitter for help. I made the move to San Francisco in 4 months time (January to April) and it was the right choice. I spent a lot of time talking about the move and made quite a few videos. I have a lot of videos that haven’t been published yet. Thinking of how to
One of the things that’s been a challenge is settling into working in an office. I’ve been working remotely for four years so coming into an office with people everywhere has taken a while for me to adjust to. Being an introvert, I prefer to spend time alone and quietly. That’s when I do my best work. The office has people, stuff and everyones talking to each other. Oh well. Adjust I will.
Now that I’m living in San Francisco proper, one of the big things is to figure out where stuff is. As a long time user of Netflix, I enjoy that I don’t have to go any further than my mailbox to pickup and drop off movies. Unfortunately on my walks around the neighborhood, I realized I wasn’t seeing any mailboxes. photo credit: kevinspencer
What Is Netflix?
Netflix works by allowing you to select movies and put them into a virtual queue. You sign up for a plan and you are given a monthly number of rotating slots. They mail out your movies via USPS. You open them up, watch them and return them in the same mailer, postage paid. There are no late fees and Netflix is awesome when traveling and for long holiday weekends. I have the 3 DVD rental plan for $15/month. Read More…
Today I moved into the apartment. I cannot begin to express how relieved, happy, excited and grateful I feel writing this. I spent the day moving, moving around furniture and setting up my technology.
June 2009 the seed was planted about moving to San Francisco. That seed began to sprout after working for Zendesk. February 9th I announced I was moving. April 13th I moved. May 24th, I have a permenant place to live!
I never would have imagined my life developing and evolving the way it has in the last 4 years. What I do know is that I pretty much enjoy every, single minute of my life. The ability to spread smiles, knowledge and hope each day fills my heart with joy! I am seeing so much good here in San Francisco that I now regret not thinking of moving here sooner!
I’ll go to sleep tonight thanking God for the wonderful opportunities he has put in my path. I will continue to show my appreciation by stepping up and using my skills and passion to make every day count *smile*
Was I scared sh**less to do this?
Did I regret my decision at least once during the process?
Did I fear failure or some huge disaster?
The answer is, “yes”to all those questions.
Quotes To Live By
I overcame fear by looking it in the face. I will leave you tonight with some powerful quotes on fear, courage and fear. I wish you the best in going after your dreams.
The only way past fear is to go through.
- Author Unknown
You block your dream when you allow your fear to grow bigger than your faith.
- Mary Manin Morrissey
Courage is not the lack of fear. It is acting in spite of it.
- Mark Twain
If you’re careful enough, nothing bad or good will ever happen to you.
- Ashleigh Brilliant
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.
- Anais Nin
Leap, and the net will appear.
- John Burroughs, Naturalist (1837-1921) Read More…
I got back from the Zendesk BBQ and made a video to share just how happy I am to be moving on Sunday into my apartment in the Mission District and thanking all you wonderful folks for your help with this move!
Tonight I undertake a new skill set. Learning Ruby on Rails. For the next two days, the Ruby On Rail Outreach Workshop For Women will be underway in San Francisco and I’m excited to be attending!
We’ll be at Pivotal Labs both days getting our environment setup and learning the basics of programming in Ruby.
It took me 3 months to make the move, sell all my wordly items and leave Minneapolis after living there 26 years. I’m happy to say this weekend I will be moving into my apartment after staying in a sublet since arriving.
I’ve been living in SOMA but will now reside in the Mission District. It is full of young folks like myself, food and lots of stuff to do! I’ve already been to a few of the burrito places, Bi-Rite Creamery twice and Delores Park for movie night. So excited! Read More…
Folks I’ve made it here! I rock! In less than 3 months I made the decision and moved from Minneapolis to San Francisco! I am finally feeling a bit more settled. Food, weather, coffee and folks here in San Francisco are great! (Great is my new favorite word)
My legs were very tired last week from all this darn walking but now I’m liking it!
Tech status: On DSL. Getting about 4mb down/ 500kbps up Macbook Hard drive died. Being repaired at Apple store. Est return Friday UPS lost my third 23″ monitor. Fully insured. Will need to wait 8 days
I have my desk setup with my Dell. Thanks to my gracious host/roommate for getting this table for me to work on. I love the place I landed on Craigslist and *may* share photos later this month. I’m going to look at a place tonight (sorta excited!)
Overall, very happy I made the move from Minneapolis to San Francisco so I will continue to blog/video journal my experience.
Glad my posts are ranking high on google for “move to San Francisco”!
Dear readers, wow, what a week. Seven days ago I started a new life as a resident of California in the city of San Francisco. Allow me to give thanks and apologize.
Thank you to all the people who helped make this happen!Read More…
Today I came across “The Secret” and thought about how much it has helped me to focus on my goals and desires vs letting the daily drugery of life get in the way.
We are all empowered to direct our own lives. We just need to take action. The Law of Attraction has been working for me since 2006. I almost can’t imagine how my life used to be where I let others guide my life and kept negative thoughts hanging around.
Now, there is bad stuff that happens in life. I don’t discount that but it’s how you go about living with it.
Padmapper is a fast and easy way to keep track of new apartment postings via Craigslist. Watch as I show you how to tweak and configure Padmapper to be your personal genie for finding the best apartment deals in San Francisco!
Update: Thanks Padmapper folks for linking up to my video screencast post on your blog!
I’m packing I landed a sweet sublet/share in SOMA Turtle the cat and Bluey the dog will stay here for a month until I find permanent housing I’m donating a bunch of tech stuff to Free Geek Twin Cities I am looking at SOMA, Hayes Valley, Lower Haight, Portrero My party is next Friday at Azia Restaurant Shirt is based on, “Who Moved My Cheese“
I’m back from San Francisco and for tonight’s AskAdria live video show, I covered my trip to San Francisco including my strategies for apartment hunting. Enjoy!
