The first time Richard became aware of me was in January 2007 when I left a comment on a poll asking if AJAX was an RIA technology. To my surprise, Richard apparently liked my comment so much that he turned it into a full post. A few days later, I saw RWW feature writer Alex Iskold leave a comment on my personal blog and struck up an email conversation with him -- which I continued a month later when I sent him a congratulations note about the funding he landed for his company, AdaptiveBlue.

Toward the end of February, ReadWriteWeb wrote a post about OpenID that I thought I had a killer response to. So I wrote up my thoughts on my personal blog (sadly, that post has been lost to the ether) and emailed a link to Richard. After receiving a reply, I followed up with an offer to write some guest posts for RWW, saying that I'd been planning to write up a comparison of online IPTV providers. And that's exactly what I did -- my first post was published about 2 weeks later.

After a couple of more guest posts, all three of which landed on the front page of Digg, Richard invited me to hold down the fort while he was away at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco in April 2007. I was still writing for that political site, but I thought -- who needs sleep for a week if it gets me a crack at writing for my favorite blog? After that first trial week, Richard hired me on a part time basis, and I worked both jobs until July 2007 when I joined RWW on a more full-time basis.

In the 15 months I have worked here I have learned a ton about blogging, made a lot of great friends, and met a lot of awesome people. ReadWriteWeb has been very good to me, and I'll certainly miss it. It was, however, time for a new chapter in my life. I'll still be blogging, but I'll be joining a new outfit. Where I'm headed isn't exactly a secret (I've told plenty of people), but I'll leave off saying here. If you're curious, I'll announce it soon on my personal blog, mockriot (a very occasionally updated tumblog).

I want to sincerely thank everyone who has read and commented on my work over the past year. It means a lot to me that anyone cares what I have to say and I hope to continue interacting with you at my new gig. ReadWriteWeb will remain my first daily read, and I want to extend my congratulations to Corvida and Frederic. Richard: You've assembled one hell of a team, and RWW rocks because of it!

Thanks again, everyone!