Ryan Resella

Yep..

I've used it for about 1 1/2 days now and so far I like it a lot. We will see how a week goes of continuous use. I ordered an anti fatigue matt to stand on which I hear helps a lot.

☑ Register over 1 million voters online through GottaRegister.com ☑ Be part of the Technology Team that changes modern politics ☑ Meet the most amazing people on the campaign and create life long friendships ☑ Help Re-elect the 44th President of the United States Barack Obama ☑ Hang out with your friends on the campaign at the victory party on Nov 6th ☑ Get a hug from the President you just re-elected ☑ Attend the 57th Presidential Inauguration ☑ Attend a Presidential Inaugural Ball ☑ Attend the Staff Ball with campaign friends you'll never forget Next ☐ Spend your whole life making the world a better place with your talents

July to October was pretty much one big blur in my life. I spent hours and hours at the campaign headquarters working. Days were long, didn’t get out much and did not sleep much. Some of those days were spent not sleeping on a weekend and rebuilding GottaRegister. Travelled to Los Angeles twice during this time, Long Island and once to San Francisco for the Code for America summit. At HQ we got visited by the President, Vice President and First Lady. Went to Lollapolooza for the first time. Lots of Wednesday night fun at the Aqua building. November 6, 2012 is a day that I’ll never forget in my life. All the hard work and sacrifice that all of us on the campaign had put into it cumulated with us winning and re electing the President of the United States. The days leading up to Election Day and the days after were the best in my life because I’ve worked hard at everything in my life but on the campaign it was the hardest I have ever worked in my life for something. Then the day after the election, the President came in and teared up as he thanked us and told us “I’m really proud of all of you”. December went to Washington, DC and Roots Camp which was awesome. Got to spend a lot of time relaxing and trying to figure out what I’m going to do with my life next. As I look back on 2012 the thing that I will easily remember the most is being part of Technology Technology team at Obama for America and second the Los Angeles Kings winning the Stanley Cup. Most importantly though I'll remember the experiences that 2012 brought me and how many of them changed my life forever. There are so many great people that I met this year, some that I’ll have life long friendships with and others that I have lost touch with. There’s also a few people on the campaign that I wish I got to know earlier and then the campaign was over and those chances didn't pan out. I learned so much on what it’s like to fail at something then come back and succeed at something else. It’s hard to try and make a list of goals this year after the crazy year that I had in 2012. There is one goal that I have though and it’s this - find a job that I absolutely love. I believe that everything else that I want will fall together once I figure out what that job that I absolutely love is. This time last year when I wrote this, I thought there was no way that 2012 could beat the year that I had in 2011. I was definitely mistaken. I said 2011 was the best year of my life because I learned to take risks, love what I do and learned to appreciate life. Now I say that 2012 is the best year of my life because I took what I learned in 2011 and made it happen in 2012. 2012 definitely had its great moments and its crappy moments and still some regrets and mistakes, but all the great moments are what matter the most. While 2013 will have a lot to compete with I guess you never know. Sometimes things happen when you least expect it and change your life forever.

I've finally had some time in my life and a reason to build out RyanResella.com I've owned the domain name for a long time but always just pointed it at my photo blog. At this point in my life its time to have an actual web site pointed at my domain name. So I launched it recently. The site is built using Jekyll and hosted on Github using Github Pages. Jekyll makes it really simple to build a site out and reminds me a lot of using Sinatra. Github pages also makes it super simple to host pages. So there you have it.. check out

It's hard to describe what Election Night was like for me. It's something that I had never experienced or had been a part of. I remember the night before election day when Jim Messina told us to just take a moment and stop and look around and take it all in. He said that many people work their whole lives on presidential campaigns and few actually get to be part of a winning one. Remember what its like to be a on a winning team. Those words stuck with me as the polls were closing and numbers began to get reported. I stopped and looked around and saw the excitement that was in the boiler room and in the main room on the 6th floor. It was amazing. All the hard work was coming to an end and the goal was going to be accomplished. View of the Boiler Room View of the main floor I was lucky enough to be on the voter team for tech. All the tools we built would be used on election day and the days leading up to it. Our team was in the Boiler Room the last few days were we monitored everything we built. One of my favorite posters On Election Night the Call Tool went over 1 million calls which was so great to see: With that at 9:30pm Central Time we were told the board the busses and head over to McCormick Place where the election night festivities were going to occur. I remember sitting on the bus and reading through my tweets. The media had called Ohio for Obama. The race was over and we had won. Then someone yelled we won Ohio and everyone on the bus started celebrating. Immediately I began getting a bunch of congratulatory text, Tweets and Facebook posts. My favorite email from the night From there everything sped up and was nothing but celebrating all our hard work Election night was one of the happiest moments of my entire life. I gave my entire life to join the campaign. It was something that I wanted to do for so long and never made the choice to do it but then finally did. I'm so glad that I was a part of all of it. The next day it ended all with this:

It's hard to describe how I'm feeling right now, knowing that tomorrow is election day. In less than 23 hours the polls will close on the west coast. I'm right now thinking about everything I gave up to be part of this: friends, love and a dream job. For me right now this is the most important election in my life time because I'm a part of it. I've spent countless hours at HQ writing code and sleepless nights since I came to Chicago at the end of May. Watching the President tonight while he was in Iowa was one of the most inspring moments of this campaign. I'm just going to use the rest of this blog post to fill it with videos The video that got me motivated to join the campaign:

November 4th, 2008 falls under the category of "days that I'll never forget". Each presidential election is a "the most important of our lifetimes" until the one that actually is the most important of your lifetime comes your way. In 2008 I woke up early to vote before work. I headed to the polling place which was a retirement home in Valencia. It was impossible to find parking. By the time I finally found parking and went inside the line for the polls was long. I waited because later that night I had to go to school to attend classes for my graduate program. I remember going through my ballot and looking and at first glance I couldn't find the candidate I wanted to vote for. I scanned up and down and didn't see Obama / Biden and thought I must have a bad ballot. I took a deep breath found it and voted. At that point I ignored all polls and everything about the presidential race all day long. At this point I've had a bad history in voting. The previous presidential candidates that I had voted for had all lost. Later that evening I was at the College of Canyons sitting in class working on my Masters in Public Administration. It was the second class of a two year program and I think it was the Research Methods class. Earlier that year i'd been promoted to Senior IT Analyst at Santa Clarita and had enough time to start work on my masters degree. I remember sitting in class that night with my laptop open and glued to the CNN website to see how the race would be called. Our professor seemed to be oblivious that it was Election Day in the US. I remember being on the CNN website and refreshing the page as they called the 2008 election that President Barak Obama would be the 44th President of the United States of America. My friend interrupted the professor who was speaking nonsense at the time, and he decided to dismiss the class for the evening. I went to an election party night straight form class that night. I remember watching on television the thousands of people in Grant Park celebrating the victory. I remember President Obama giving his acceptance speech and how tired he looked, but how hopeful Americans looked. I remember watching the television coverage of so many people crying because history had been made in the United States. What a day it was to remember. Fast forward to 2012 and just four years later I look at the words that I typed above. Back in 2008 I would have never imagined I would be where I am today. 4 years later I'm working on the campaign to reelect our President. If you asked me 4 years ago where I thought I would be I probably would have told you that I would finish my Masters degree, finish up my 5 years in Santa Clarita and then probably start looking for other opportunities. I never though those other opportunities would lead me on this journey. It's crazy what happens when you just take a chance at things and see where it leads not knowing if it will be a failure or success. I've learned a lot over these past 4 years and most importantly it's doing what you love and using your talents to try and make a difference in people's lives. I can go on and on about how different my life is from 4 years ago but I've got to get back to work. Two days from now is Election Day in the United States. I can't really describe right now what I'm feeling or what I'm thinking. It's just unbelievable to think where we are at and what we've done on this team.

I recently read this article title [Letting People Challenge You So You can Learn and Grow](http://tinybuddha.com/blog/letting-people-challenge-you-so-you-can-learn-and-grow/) which I found particularly true in last 2 years. The article talks about "Surround yourself with people who constantly challenge you." As I think about the last 2 years I've done exactly that but before that it was not the case. Early on in my career and my job in Santa Clarita I had a chance to work with some really smart and talented people. I got to grow on both sides interpersonally and technically. As the years passed on those people left and I found myself replacing them. Since we were on a hiring freeze there were very few people coming in to help pass my knowledge on. Learning is a two way thing, people can teach you things and you can teach them things as well. Near the end of my time at Santa Clarita it got to the point where I wasn't learning any new technical skills and felt like I was falling behind. So after 5 years there I left on a crazy journey. One of the things I loved the most about being a Code for America Fellow was how challenging it was. It was 20 other people with diverse skill sets to learn from. Each person could offer something to learn from and the exchange in skills was something I value so much there. When I went to CfA as a Fellow I didn't know Git, Github, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, TDD, building a Ruby gem, open source practices, the list goes on and on. I'd never even committed code to my github repo. I remember submitting my first pull request on a project in Github it was such a great feeling to be able to contribute. Here I am almost 2 years later after leaving Santa Clarita and the amount I've learned is crazy. Knowing how to use Git, Pivotal Tracker, Ruby on Rails allowed me to hit the ground running in the current job I'm at now. I have a number of open source projects on Github and have written a few ruby gems as well. I would not have these skills today if it were not for the challenges of the work and the high technical skills of others on our team. People have so much knowledge and are willing to share and help others. It's amazing to work with people that can you show a better way to do thing and learn from them. It is also amazing to be on the other side and help people grow and learn new skills. The constant challenge and learning on a job is what keeps us going sometimes.

A little over 4 months ago I left everything behind in California but two full suite cases and moved to Chicago. 6 months to work on a presidential re-election campaign. This week I travelled to San Francisco to see what post November had in store for me. I had a lot of expectations but it turns out none of them happened except clarity. In an unexpected way things are clear for me on what I have to do next. In a lot of ways it brings more uncertainty as to what to do when this election ends. Today marks the 30 days to go. Let's go and win this thing.