Thoughts before surgery

It seems like January 8, 2011 was ages ago. So many things have changed in my life since then. The reality is this: On January 8, 2011 I blew out my knee snowboarding in the lovely mountains of Colorado, I tore my ACL and Meniscus in my left knee and ended my snowboarding season early. Since then, I have come back to the East Coast and started a new life and new career in Boston. All these new changes brought so much excitement that I almost forgot about the burden of my bum knee. The time is finally here. Tomorrow is the day I finally have knee surgery. That means many different things, but mainly it means today after today, I will not be walking normal or driving for several weeks to a month. This is somewhat of a disheartening feeling, knowing that for the next month or so I can't jump in my car to get groceries, I won't be able to bike along the river, or even walk up and down stairs normally. This might be a skewed or dark way of looking at this whole situation, I agree.

Let's look at the bright side. I will have matching ACL scars on both knees now. When I do recover, I will rehab back to 100% and then some. After I had knee surgery 8 years ago on my other knee, I began running regularly and become much more individually active. I will come out stronger and more motivated than I have ever before, and let's face it, I will have an unfair advantage on the soccer field with 2 "bionic" knees. In all honesty, no I am not looking forward to surgery tomorrow morning, but I am looking forward to rediscovering my own ability to stay motivated and become stronger than before.

And yes... I will be tweeting & facebooking the day of surgery, I believe in transparency. This is who I am, getting my knee fixed and getting back to my active lifestyle is a top priority.

I'm Shipping up to Boston

Bergeron:

Burlington.

Boulder.

Boston.

Maybe its some type of weird coincidence. Maybe I secretly have an infatuation with the letter B. Maybe I should have been on Sesame Street teaching children about the letter B. Maybe it's all of these things or maybe it's none of these things. Whatever the reason, the letter B is even more prominent in my life.

After growing up in Burlington, VT, moving to Boulder, CO was a great experience. Moving to a new place without knowing anyone is always tough. I loved living in Colorado, it always seemed to be warm and sunny, I made some of the greatest friends and the mountains and snowboarding are just mind boggling. There comes a time in life where a series of events occur that are out of your control. There are many who believe that sometimes things happen for a reason. I'm not really a believer in fate myself, but who knows, maybe sometimes certain things do happen for a reason.

On January 8, 2011, I tore my Anterior Cruciate Ligament and Meniscus in my left knee. I was snowboarding at Keystone Resort in Colorado with friends. On that particular day I decided to pop the headphones in and listen to my new ipod, which I don't normally do while snowboarding. After a few laps through the park, I was feeling pretty warmed up for the day and came into a jump line with a bit too much speed. To spare the details, I basically overshot the landing on a jump by about 20 feet, launching myself through the air only to land in the flats, with all the pressure coming down through my front (left) leg.

I have returned back to the East Coast, to take care of all the fun of doctor's appointments and scheduling MRI and knee surgery, which turns out will be the first week of May.

In the midst of all my whole "knee situation" as I've been calling it, I've been given an amazing opportunity. You've probably heard the saying by Einstein, "In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity." While this saying has probably been used a million times, I can't think of a more relevant situation.

Recently, I accepted a job with Likeable Media in Boston. Likeable Media is a new age agency specializing in social media leveraging and advertising, word of mouth marketing and buzz building. I accepted the position of an Account Director of Social Media Strategy. This is a very exciting opportunity for me. The past 2 years I have been in sales roles, which were absolutely great experience I would not trade, but my true passion lies within marketing and social media. I am extremely excited to take the next step in my career, and make the shift from sales into social media marketing. I think Account Management in the social media realm is a very exciting opportunity and to be a part of such a great, fast growing company such as Likeable Media is even more exciting. Likeable began in NYC but I will be helping to expand their growing office in Boston. I will begin this exciting career with the Likeable Team in April.

In addition to an exciting new job, I will be in an exciting new(ish) city. Although Boston is one of the oldest cities in the country and I've visited there many times growing up, living there will be a while new experience. There is a lot going and definitely not a shortage of things to do. I'm typically a small town guy, or that's what I have been up to this point. I'm very excited to explore a new way of life, not to mention enjoy a brew and foot long at Fenway this summer!

Likeable on Facebook

Likeable on Twitter

From Filtrbox to Vodka Shots

I will start this off by saying... Yes, if you are looking at my blog and thinking, 'wow this guy never writes' then you are halfway correct. It is true, that yes I do not typically set aside specific time out of my day/week/month/etc to write blog posts. It is great and I am by no means downplaying blogs, I just have a hard time sitting and thinking of what to write. This is why I typically only write a longer post when there is a significant change in mylife, the rest of the time, I find everyday occurrences are sufficient in 140 characters or less. So with that said... now you can probably guess that I am writing about a significant change that does not fit into my tweets or facebook status.

[If you don't have time] to read all the details right now-

The abridged made-for-tv version of this post is that after much consideration I have decided to pursue a new career that will allow me to further my skills and experiences in field sales and marketing. There you have it.

[If you do have more than 30 seconds], please continue reading.

It all started in September 2009, when I moved from Burlington, VT to Boulder, CO to work for a small startup company called Filtrbox, that offered a social media monitoring software.

Just when I was beginning to feel settled-in and adjusting to life in Boulder, Filtrbox was acquired by Jive Software in January 2010.

Jive Software is a leader in the social business software for the enterprise. The small Boulder-based startup social media monitoring software was a perfect fit to integrate into Jive's collaborative online communities. The new acquisition provided an opportunity for the software giant to connect employees and customers with social web engagement.

At Filtrbox, I was part of a two man sales team. We tag-teamed deals and wore many hats, including sales, customer service, training, consulting, support, and the list goes on. After the acquisition by Jive Software, we became part of a larger team. My new role in sales support allowed me to work directly with the inside reps and field reps. This gave me great insight into how things work with enterprise based software.

I worked with some of the best individuals in the enterprise software sales industry. Throughout my time at Filtrbox and Jive, I have learned not only about how enterprises work, but about technology and social software. The experience was unmatchable compared to any I have been exposed to. I would not trade these experiences for anything. With that said, everyone comes to a point in their life where they are ready to take the next step. For some, that next step might be into a new role within the same company. For others it might be a similar role at a new company. And for some, it might even be a completely new and different role.

Recently, I have accepted a position with a local Boulder spirits company, 303 Vodka. This is very significant change from supporting an enterprise software sales team.

303 Vodka will allow me to further my career with a different role as a Field Sales Representative. This position will allow me to have face-to-face interaction with clients, which caters better to my outgoing personality.

Also, since 303Vodka is a family-owned local Boulder, CO business, and I will be assisting in spreading the brand virally throughout Colorado. I am very excited for this new sales and marketing opportunity promoting a local brand, and will be using the knowledge, skills and experiences I have learned in

the past year.

This is a significant change not only in my career, but in my daily life. It is a bittersweet change, as I am an advocate for Jive Software and all that it stands for. However, I saw a new opportunity calling my name and decided to take it. I think 303Vodka will be a great change that will allow me to be out in the field, interacting with people face-to-face on a daily basis, and I look forward to be part of another successful company!

With that said, I am closing out this week as my final week with Jive Software. Next week marks the start of my new career with 303VODKA.

Buckle your backpack, Tie your boots

What if you could go to a place where the sun shined 300 days out of the year? A place covered with 2 feet of snow before Halloween and somehow miraculously a week later you found yourself wearing shorts and dripping sweat, that's right all of a sudden its 74 degrees in November. A place where 90% of the population is physically fit, and goes running, hiking, biking, climbing, skiing and snowboarding on a regular basis. Maybe this does not fit the description of your ideal place, but for me, this is my Utopia.

Well, the reality is YOU CAN go to that place. You can go to any place you want. Too many people I know are stuck in dead end jobs in a gray boring place they don't enjoy. Growing up in Vermont was awesome, I could not have asked for any other place to be a kid. Vermont is a great place and I would never trade my experiences there. However, as people change and grow up, it is good to experience living in other places. Most people do this when they move away for college. I ended up staying in Vermont and attending Champlain College. Champlain gave me a great experience to shine and grow as a person, but at the same time I also felt like I was not experiencing other places the way other people my age were at the time.

A few months after graduating I decided that I really needed a change. I needed to experience life outside of Vermont. It's not that I wasn't happy or didn't like the beautiful city of Burlington, it was that I wanted to explore and find new places, meet new people, and climb over new hurdles. Burlington is a small place. I found myself running into people I knew everywhere I went, even desolate gas stations in the middle of nowhere.

Moving to Boulder was a big step for me. I had never lived outside of a 7-8 mile radius within the confines of the Burlington, VT area. In September 2009 I found myself in Boulder, living a new life, new job, making new friends, and embracing a new lifestyle. I have been here for nearly 5 months now and have neglected to write about it. Recently I came into contact with several people who are avid bloggers, they read, write, repeat all the time. I was never really a reader or writer. I am more of a talker, I love meeting new people and talking to them. Live conversations are how I typically like expressing myself. This is probably why I haven't gotten around to publishing this blog post for so long. I actually wrote the first paragraph on November 11, then saved it and forgot about it. Right around that time things were really starting to pick up for me in Boulder. I was making a lot of new friends, shortly after I became a member of the Boulder Snowboarding Group, which has brought me an awesome growing group of friends that I can ride with on the weekends.

Last night I attended Ignite Boulder 8. For those of you who aren't as familiar, it's a night of presentations on a variety of topics, each presenter gets 5 minutes to present their topic with slides automatically advancing every 20 seconds. Watching some of these presentations amazed me. But what was even better, was meeting all the other people who attended. These are normal people like me, with similar stories of moving to Colorado. People who love "geeking out" and talking about social media for hours on end. People who love the outdoors and relaxed lifestyle. It was great to connect with people who know what it is like to have that deep drive to find and explore new places.

At last I did it, I buckled up my backpack, tied my boots and began my adventure. So maybe my adventure differs from yours, but for me, this is my Utopia.

With arms wide open....what started my journey.

In August 2008, I traveled to Cape Town, South Africa where I was exposed to a level of poverty most Americans do not even know exists. This life changing opportunity opened my eyes. This was giant leap in my journey of personal growth. The following passage was written on September 15, 2008, two weeks after returning from Cape Town:

All expense paid trip to Cape Town, South Africa? How could I possibly turn down that offer? When I first learned about the project I saw it as a great opportunity, not only to become exposed to new types of work, but also to gain the credentials of putting the UN on my resume. An all expense paid trip to South Africa was an added bonus. As the days progressed closer and closer to the trip, all I could feel was excitement, for going to such a different place.

When we finally arrived in Cape Town, all that excitement was channeled into something else. When we first walked through Langa, I could not control the emotional stir that was occurring deep inside me. I didn’t know whether to feel sad, guilty, depressed, uneasy or fortunate. The first full day we were in Langa, and had the opportunity to watch some children perform a gumboot dance. After their performance we chatted and took photos with them. I could not believe how talented they were. After a few minutes of timid pondering, I finally asked the children if they could do the thunderstance pose for a picture. One child followed my lead, and the others followed him shortly thereafter. I was immediately overcome with a strong connective feeling of joy. To me the thunderstance is just a silly thing I started doing, but after that it meant so much more than that to me. It became a feeling of empowerment and cultural bonding. From this point forward I knew it was already going to be a life changing trip.

As the week flew by, I had the chance to meet with more children in townships and help tutor some kids after school. I had some great conversations with some very bright children. We taught each other about our cultures and shared different cultural practices. Another very moving experience for me was when the children of Langa came up to us and stated holding our hands, playing with us, and giving us hugs. This showed me how open and accepting they are. This gave me a whole new perspective on life. I now feel like I want to be more open and accepting of everyone. It reminds me of the expression, “live life with arms wide open.” There is such a strong sense of community and togetherness that it makes me envious of what they have, even though it is not big houses, lots of clothes, or trendy electronics. A common perception of many in South Africa is that we as Americans are rich, however, they greatly surpass us in being spiritually rich, with such a strong communal bond.

In the few days right before South Africa, I had a weird feeling overcome me, knowing that it would probably be a life changing experience. Now as I sit here, a few weeks after returning from South Africa, I realize how much of a life changing experience it really turned out to be. After seeing such extreme poverty, as well as such extreme happiness, I have a much strong appreciation for everything I have. I have also come to the realization that life is too precious to find fault with others. While I may never walk the streets of Langa again, with the hand of a child resting in mine, that picture will always be in my head. I will never forget my trip to South Africa, and all that it has helped show me who I am as a person.