The Media Drop

Before saying anything, I’m linking to the place where the best tribute I’ve seen for something like this has been done.

For those of you who’ve known me for awhile, you’ll probably remember that I launched AdJab for Weblogs, Inc. back on Super Bowl Sunday of 2005. I’d been working on the project for months and months beforehand to get posts in the queue, and our formal “launch” was that day. Shortly thereafter, I was introduced to a number of bloggers who were interested in writing for the site. Some wrote for other WIN sites, some exclusively at AJ, and so on. One of those people was Adam Finley.

Adam was, for lack of a better term to start with, prolific. Not only could he crank out posts and content like it was going out of style, but he was friggin’ hysterical. With my background in marketing and advertising being the primary reason for my being the lead on the site originally (thanks, Jason! I’ll definitely never repay that to the fullest.), we definitely saw a need for people who didn’t have a background in that area, hence Adam’s joining on, along with Bob Sassone, and a few others who popped in from time to time from TV Squad. I had the pleasure, and like Chris, who followed me as lead on AJ, had my moments with Adam, but it was more about his ability to binge through anything and everything that was going on while the rest of us were actually doing our day jobs that was a source of craziness behind the scenes. A lot of that stuff settled itself out as we got a lot better at scheduling out posts throughout the days, and so on. Needless to say, Adam was always gung ho about posting up a storm, always let folks know when he would be visiting family or traveling elsewhere, and he was definitely proud of being someone who used his bicycle to get just about everywhere. It came up from time to time in team emails, it came up in his posts, and sometimes when we chatted on IM. Needless to say, I think most, if not all, of the AJ - and probably the TV Squad folks - knew of his penchant for bike riding.

For all of this reason, I almost found it (unfortunately) the way Adam may have wanted things, as he died doing something he loved - riding his bicycle - when he was hit by a bus last Thursday in Minneapolis. I was actually in Minneapolis this weekend for a wedding, and found out about this while I was in town and was just completely shocked. While I’ve absolutely read and heard of other people knowing bloggers who’ve died before and I’ve been a step away from it or two before, this is a first for me, in all the years that I’ve been blogging. It’s kind of funny to think of how “well” you can know someone, but I guess after reviewing / editing hundreds, if not thousands, of Adam’s writings, you have a decent sense of what they’re into, how they think about things, and so on. I definitely had that with Adam, and am really going to miss his “I’m not jaded because I don’t work in advertising or television” way of looking at advertising and television.

So, here’s to you, Adam, for all the fun and amusement you’ve shared with all of us over the years. You’ll definitely be missed by a lot of people, and hopefully this, if anything, can offer some solace to your family and friends that people appreciated you.