Crystal Williams

My parents have long learned to, if not worry, at least be curious when I suddenly fall off the radar. It’s true, when I stop pushing photos to flickr, calling every other day, writing here, twittering… it usually means periods of extremely high stress, major projects, and at times, mulling life-sweeping changes.

It’s been radio silence from me for a couple of months now, but decisions are made now and it’s time to come out with it. July 2nd will be my last day at Warner Bros. Records and I’ll be moving to Seattle, WA on July 10th.

These last few months in the Music Industry have been a fantastic learning experience and I’ve gotten to work closely with some truly amazing people. I’ve worked on web promotions for Madonna, the Raconteurs, Disturbed, and V.I.C., and ran point on Mission:Metallica.com. There are some amazing people in the WBR building, and I will miss them, as well as the artist management I’ve worked closely with, terribly.

The move is partly a personal one. As many of you know, my partner, Dan, lives in Seattle and we’ve been commuting over the past year. This is an incredibly exciting and happy time for both of us. I’ve had the chance over the past few years to get to know Seattle like a 2nd home and have already forged bonds with a few barristas up and down Pike St. who don’t know I don’t live there already. Please extend your condolences to Alaska Airlines.

Seattle is also home to a bustling tech scene (more than Microsoft and Amazon), some really fantastic live music, great weather (almost 3 months out of the year!). I attended the first BarCamp Seattle just a couple of weeks ago and met loads of interesting individuals from Microsoft, MySQL, and quite a few entrepreneurs. I hear they also have coffee there.

I’d like to take a wee bit of breather to get settled and attack some long-patient personal projects, but consulting opportunities are already in the works and my schedule is starting to fill out. I do plan to transition to Consulting full time, so if you know anyone looking for some major project management help, CMS implementation/planning, event production, or new media centric brand outreach, I’ll be available for new projects in September.

I will miss Los Angeles like no other. This city has become a true home for me over the last nine years. I know it as well as I think most people ever know it, and adore its layers upon layers of language, culture, and peoples. I hereby commit to a 10 (or maybe 20) favorite things about Los Angeles post here in the near future.

But most of all, I’m going to miss my friends and the community here. It’s no secret anymore that the LA tech scene is buzzing. We’ve seen BarCampLA grow from 100 to 300 attendees since Fall of 2006 when I came back from my stint in Vancouver. Some weeks, you can go geek out with lovely people over drinks 3-4 nights of the week. The start-up scene is firing up. VCs, Journalists, and top talent are taking notice, and LA is really carving out a niche as the rightful home of media-centric technology. New companies like Mahalo, Hulu, Topspin, Gigya, as well as creative branches of many of the media giants are right at home here.

I’m really proud of what we’ve built together. I’m still dedicated to planning DrupalCampLA 2008, and BarCampLA-6 (omg really, 6?) looks like it already has a great crew of new and veteran un-organizers to take it on (but don’t think I’d miss it for the world). Geek Dinner is going strong after 2+ years, Mindshare is all fired up, LA Drupal is becoming a force to be reckoned with, and The Hollywood Hill is doing some amazing events lately… I really hope to make it down soon and often to stay in touch with everything going on here. I <3 LA, indeed.

And most of all, to my friends… everyone I’ve danced all night with, invited out to dinner last minute, dressed up with, cooked for, picnic’d with at Hollywood Forever, brunched with at Millie’s or Lazy Daisy, hiked Runyon Canyon with, drank whiskey with at Seven Grand, seen movies with at the Arclight, wandered Santee Alley or LACMA with, or just taken a minute on a gorgeous day in LA and said “wow.. we actually live here…”… I’m going to miss you all terribly. You know who you are. :)

The good thing is that travel is imminent. I will see you in Seattle (we’ll have a spare room – come see us), Berlin, San Francisco, Tokyo, New York, Mexico, Tennesee, or right back here in Los Angeles. I promise to visit if you do the same.

And lastly, I don’t plan to leave without saying goodbye (for now), so save July 5th. I don’t have details yet, but I’ll be throwing something casual so people can come and go, hang out, chill and have a good time. I’d love if you’d please stop by.

Much love Angelenos,
Crystal