A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned in passing that we’d decided to move to Toronto. There were a few reasons for this, but by far the largest was b5media. While the VCs were very happy about the idea, they didn’t really push for it. From a business perspective, there were a few big reasons to do this:

1. The size of the team in Toronto will only increase. We’ll never be a “big” team, but the growth is almost certain to happen in Toronto.
2. Travel. The truth is I travel too much right now. Much of it is to Toronto, which means less travel. But, much of the time it takes for me to travel is connecting back and forth to Toronto as well. For example, it takes me 16 hours to get to San Francisco. From Toronto, this would be a direct 5-6 hour flight (minus customs).
3. Networking. While we’re a virtual company, the reality is that content will always have value, and we do lots and lots of content. Networking and partnering a huge growth areas for us.
4. Permanency. There’s something about having a real business address. Both for customers and suppliers, but also for the team.

End of the day, it really comes down to creating a sort of nexus of energy, resources and skills that the rest of b5 is able to draw on, and that’s able to represent b5 to the local and national community here in Canada.

Ultimately, lots of great business reasons to move. But, a great business reason isn’t exactly enough to convince my gorgeous wife ;-) So, yes, lots of good personal reasons as well. Closer to family, closer to friends, closer to potential longer-term baby sitters (so we could take our first-ever vacation), an IKEA nearby, etc.

But, this is an incredibly sad move for us. The community, people, nature, church and weather here in St. Stephen have become home over the last year and a half. I’ll be honest, we’ve moved a lot in our lives. I’ve moved more than 30 times personally. I don’t normally get all that attached to places. But St. Stephen has become, for the first time in more than 5 years, a home for us. Which makes this move incredibly hard. The goodbyes, the tears, the “last” everything… It’s incredibly hard.

I’ll have a post later this week trying to properly come to terms with the leaving. Not sure what words I’ll find, but yeah, to not try and find them would be a disservice to all of our great friends here :(

In terms of the move, the schedule looks something like this right now:

Nov 2: Movers come and pack everything up
Nov 3: Movers take all stuff and our car away
Nov 5-8: I’m in NYC at ad:tech
Nov 9-11: Staying in a hotel here in town
Nov 12: Last day at church (maybe I can play drums, Dan?), flight to Toronto (our first as a family, Evan’s flipping out, jumping around, running into walls excited that he finally gets to go on a plane with Daddy, hehe)
Nov 15: Move into new house

And, Nov 12-24 or so is a series of on-site meetings with the b5 management, ops teams, VCs, etc.

Crazy.