davigno

Yeah, the rumors where true … I’m about to relocate to California. I’m flying to San Francisco via Frankfurt this monday. It’s not a random crazy instintive move the one I’m doing … if you want to know a bit more … continue reading :)I started doing icon design for passion when I was an computer-science University student, and all the good feedback I got for Nuvola icon theme pushed me to try making of my passion a job. So, back in 2005, while I was at last year of university I officially started an individual company registered in Italy providing custom icon design. I’ve been approached many times by several companies, my poor girlfriend first thought I was going to work at Telecom Italia in Rome, then I was about to work at a web agency in very northern Italy, but then I started collaborating with Suse Gmbh for 4 months, when this was over I almost got hired by Trolltech and I was asked if I would have been available to relocate to Australia, of course I was :) but in the end we ended with the Oxygen sponsorship from home … After all this, in May 2006 I was approached by a brand new californian start up called Meebo.

They were doing a very cool AJAX multi protocol IM service and where really needing a designer to help out with the visual re-design of their sites and services. So, after doing a small project contest “against” a couple of other designers they wanted to meet me and in June I was flying for the first time to world famous Silicon Valley, CA. After a long period working from home in Italy as a consultant, a lot of burocreacy and a bit of lucky I got a H-1B visa, which is a non-immigrant visa that allows me to work in the US as a highly qualified worker. My position at meebo will be “visual designer” and I’m really happy to start this experience. I’ll miss my family, my friends, my new apartment, my town, my food, my language and everything I like of Italy … but I think it’s a very unique opportunity and I’m really thankful to meebo founders that trusted on me and are giving me that chance … and I’m really grateful to my girlfriend too, who is coming with me and will stay until Xmas. I know I’ll come back stronger, more mature and with a lot of work experience that I would not have the chance to do get from my home studio.Meebo is also conveniently located in downtown Mountain View, so I’ll be just around the corner for the big KDE release party happening in January at googleplex :) I won’t desappear from the open source scene, the Oxygen Project is very important to me and I’ll take care of it together with my friends of the Oxygen Team.PS: I know, meebo.com still not allowing Konqueror :) I’ve been able to enter the site by changing the browser agent but seems the site ajax doesn’t work very well with khtml 3.x. Probably if/when Konqueror will use webkit it will work just fine. PPS: For the italians reading, I’m also starting a personal blog in Italian called Meno Nove where I plan to post about my experience living in Silicon Valley etc.