Everyone -
After five years at Gawker Media, Ian Van Ness is leaving Gawker Media to take on new challenges. His last day will be this Friday, April 8th, and he will be joining the JetSetter.com engineering team. Ian joined Gawker in late 2005, around the time we launched deadspin, commenting, opened the Budapest office (several of them), several site launches, site closings, the meetup office, the Crosby St. office, and 210 Elizabeth Street. His first major project was Gawker Stalker maps (http://gawker.com/#!160338/introducing-gawker-stalker-maps) in March of 2006 pushing traffic on gawker.com to new heights (boosted by George Clooney and Jimmy Kimmel). From there, the list of projects he has had involvement in is limited to just about everything. Seriously: everything. We’ve grown 10x however you want to measure it, and he has been a major part of that growth every step of the way. He has also served as a mentor to virtually everyone on the tech team. He will be missed.
It’s a huge loss but I look forward to seeing what he will do from here. We will be celebrating his time at Gawker Media with food, drinks, and possibly karaoke (though this might scare him off) this Wednesday. Please join us.
