It finally happened to me. I received my termination letter this morning from b5media President & CEO, Elaine Kunda. There’s been quite a bit of chaos around the b5media world the last few weeks as they continued to dump bloggers as part of their ongoing quest to re-focus and reconfigure themselves as a new media company.
I’ve been writing for b5 since the early days, and actually started when original CEO and founder Jeremy Wright invited me to the team back in December of 2004. Since that time I’ve written for a number of sites and on a variety of topics for the network.
As the company continued to grow and gain funding, I surfed the wave of bumps and bruises along the way and enjoyed the community around the network. It was a great time and I learned a ton about myself and the topics I wrote about.
I’ve always thought that the strength of b5media didn’t necessarily lie with the idea behind the network, but it was because of who was involved, both at the top, in tech support and all of the individual bloggers. It was a great community.
As things began to shake-up and shake-out, I avoided numerous rounds of cuts, pay contract changes and restructures. I wasn’t sure how long the ride was going to last, but I committed to continue writing and just "keep my head down" and see where I ended up.
I ended up at today.
My time with b5media is over.
I’ll miss the memories of b5, but I’m looking forward to taking a little bit of a breather and starting to write on my own sites again. They’ve been sorely ignored with everything else I’ve had going on.
If you enjoyed my writing on all of these topics, stayed tuned here to see what I’ll be doing next and be sure and follow me on twitter as I’ll continue to be active there.
So long to the past and here’s to the future with more of my investment and time going to my own deal with Bnpositive Communication & Design.
Hi, Jason. So sorry to hear about this. My heart hurts for all of you. But, I am hopeful that you are all able to bounce from this. You guys are great! It was so good to have met you back at BWE. Do take care and keep in touch. I wish you all the best!
Much love Jason. I am glad you lasted as long as you did. You have grown a lot in the last 5 years and I know you appreciated the experience. Time to move on to bigger and better things. xoxox~
That's sad to hear about b5 as a whole (I don't know if you recall, but I talked to Jeremy early on about being the go-to person for setting up & maintaining the blogs, but at that point it wasn't going to work out for me). Anyway, I enjoyed seeing them "make it".While it's ran it's course, I'm sure that you've learned quite a bit and am looking forward to see what you go after on your own. And Jeff & I are serious…if you ever want to sit in with us while recoding Utter Oddcast, just let us know.
I was considering getting my WordPress export file from b5media, like you mentioned, and then having you set everything up. I have no idea where to write, though! Do you know?
I was considering getting my WordPress export file from b5media, like you mentioned, and then having you set everything up. I have no idea where to write, though! Do you know?