Town Halls and Job Reflection
This week was quite crazy, and it is very good that it is over. I spent Monday and Tuesday in Boston looking at a company that does some cool software for our merch department, and Wednesday and Thursday was spent celebrating the end of the year. In meetings.
The company has an annual Town Hall Meeting where we have breakout sessions between departments (like A&R meets Marketing!) and then the next day, we had individual marketing meetings (which I can’t discuss) and then a big blowout presentation of the year that was and the year that will be.
The year that was consisted of a reel of all the projects. Seeing them all in a row made me tired, as I worked half of them. You forget when the day to day is happening that you move from Green Day to My Chem to HIM to Faith Hill to Enya to Madonna and then start over again. When you see all these projects on a screen and everyone’s clapping over things you were involved with, you smile a bit more.
Town Hall also is new projects. I can’t talk about them. But we did get to hear cool new stuff, and we were also treated to some great performances. And then the party.
Fast foward through that………
And now we’re at today.
So today I’ve nearly been at this job for six months. It seems strange too. I have been associated with a WBR artist for almost ten years now. When I was sixteen, WBR was something that was kind of scary, as what I was doing was on the fringe. I never dealt with the label at all, and only in 1999 did I ever deal with the band themselves. My interactions with the label after that were sometimes frightening and sometimes left a bad taste in my mouth.
It wasn’t until maybe 2003 or so that I finally dealt with WBR, and it was fun, but I never thought it’d be a place that I worked. Now, while I love music, I never thought I’d work in the record industry. I always assumed I’d end up in media, but more in newspapers and the Internet space. When this job came around however, the description so fit me that it was uncanny. It even had “knows a lot about new technology, like tagging and bit-torent.” I had just given a lecture about both! It was kind of creepy.
When I started the job, I still felt like a bit of an outsider, like I still had the SuperFan! stigma about me. Plus I was coming off of being a student, and the adjustment to being a director, a manager and supervisor was somewhat tough. I don’t think it showed externally, but internally it still felt a bit strange. I think I really hit my stride about two months ago with the Madge campaign. At that point I knew the workings of the company enough to be forcefull with my opinions and my ability to back them up.
Now six months in, I love the job and I find it really fascinating on a daily basis. The record industry is so demonized that its refreshing to note (and also be a part of it), that the people behind the scenes, especially around me are just as geeky, curious and savy as the best of the blogosphere.
I know this may sound like I’m an appologist, and I’m not. At the core I’m a geek and I love technology. I live and breath it. I’m just glad that I can apply my love of technology to a medium that sustained me through my entire life.
On to the next six.