From Techno Music into the Tech Ecosystem
As a champion of culture and subcultures outside of the mainstream, I’ve always found it fascinating to learn about new technologies and how they impact those ecosystems where they play a role. Over the last year, I have been working on tackling the question of what is my ultimate purpose. The method comes from Simon Sinek and his book “ Find Your Why,” in which he presents one way of uncovering what motivates individuals. When you uncover your mission and vision, you can more effectively communicate this with the world.
My reflections on the journey so far
When I started a new job I wanted to review my own journey from my early days in the music industry to looking at my last few roles within the tech ecosystem. In doing so, I was able to look with integrity at some of the critical reasons I was attracted to working in both industries and consider what had changed for me and what remained the same.
When I think about what it is that motivates me today, the surface level trappings have changed, but there are elements that remain constant, at my foundation. In my current role as a Marketing Director at a software development firm for the world’s innovators, I still care deeply about making an impact on a global scale through innovation and honing my craft, and I want to positively change the world and become an exemplary marketing leader. I’ve discovered a company that holds some of these same values close, and a company that enables its collaborators to breathe their own passion into the work they do. I feel lucky to have found an amazing team, a mentor, and a company that cares about the community and really lives its values. I hope that some of the key strategies I’ve learned on my journey thus far may help readers of this blog too. If you haven’t found your sweet spot yet, don’t give up. It’s never too late to keep evolving and try something new.
When your path may not be what you think it is
When I started my career, I thought I would be a traditional journalist, but I soon realized that wasn’t the path ahead of me. My early hobbies were always entrepreneurial and all about building things. I ran my own little magazine and website and later hosted campus radio shows and was a music journalist. I wasn’t on a very mainstream career path. I liked being independent. After I completed my masters in journalism I found myself in digital marketing and content marketing within the broadcast industry, and from there I made my way into tech.
One thing leads to another
Flash back to 1996. I’m in New York City with my mother and we’re shopping downtown. We come across an imaginative store called Liquid Sky with a huge alien character (who I later learn is called Astro Girl) on all the clothes. This is my introduction to the rave subculture. I am too young to attend all night music parties, but I pick up the free magazines and flyers at the store and become fascinated. I start following rave production companies using AOL’s dial-up internet and I join message boards and IRC groups on ICQ. I become connected to ravers in real-time over night.
Through the burgeoning technology of the time I learned about the rave culture and I launched my own printed fanzine. I interviewed participants and launched a survey to hear about their values in the acronym PLUR (peace, love, unity and respect), an utopian code of conduct. I researched the origins of EDM music, with its european and American roots, and the musical sub-genres that surrounded house and techno. As time marched on, it occurred to me that there were very few women djing, so I started I launched a ‘zine called the ‘Women of Techno Project’. I produced a campus radio show and became a freelance journalist because I had access to many artists through my contacting of artist managers, without apology. I wrote for local magazines and interned for booking agencies.
Before I knew it I was off to university and it only made sense that I took semiotics and cultural anthropology. From the start I’d been fascinated with new technologies, subcultures and their ecosystems. Over time, I hosted one season of a digital cable TV series and wrote online. One year I was a juror for the Juno Awards electronic music category. During my time working in media and then in broadcast, I slowly made the switch over to the tech industry, and leveraged my solid background in foundational community and brand building, marketing, PR and communications. I look back fondly to my days in the music and media industry and I think about all of the things I learned and how I’m continuing to evolve today.
Digital disruption at scale
When I was working in the broadcast industry, I saw digital transformation at scale disrupting the entire industry. I saw the jobs in digital and the marketing side growing, and I was a part of that, and I saw how people had to adapt to develop new skills and new ways of thinking about their craft. I then became really fascinated in Toronto with the tech industry itself, and the informality of meetups and events supporting the community and entrepreneurs and startup founders. I found the newness of that, as opposed to legacy industries and large behemoth companies, to be more interesting and I knew that I would be able to more easily grow my own skills and add a lot of value in an upstart environment, where everyone was building something from scratch.
I worked a bit as a freelancer with some broadcast clients, to help them adopt digital marketing, and then did some PR for an agency in Vancouver, and was a pr and social media consultant for them and one of their clients, the crowd funding platform Indiegogo.
Saying hello to my new industry
While I was working in broadcast, we produced a mobile app, and I worked on the user acquisition strategy and promotion for it. Around a year later I met the founder of a then 6-person company, and joined them as their first community events and marketing lead. I led a 7 person marketing team there, on the executive team for over 3 years, and helped the company scale from 7 to 150 people. It was a real adventure, and before I decided to leave the company, we had won several marketing awards, and I felt we accomplished a lot. The opportunity I had was a formative part of tech industry knowledge, but I was ready for a change.
Finding my new team and work tribe
Flash-back to last summer when I was at startupfest in Montreal… and I met the team from TWG. I learned about all of the wonderful things that TWG was doing, including building a team in another country, and about their expansion plans and I was really interested in hearing more.
I went back to Toronto after the conference at met with the managing partners of TWG and I thought that joining on as their new marketing director was aligned with what I wanted to do in my career at this stage. They were in the process of hiring an amazing VP of Marketing who has many years of experience, and is a real mentor to me. I started in late October and we’re now building out our marketing team.
Working with a fantastic team as a group that is so passionate about the tech community, furthering the startup ecosystem as a whole and fostering innovation within traditional enterprises. I get to work with some of the most creative and smart people I know. We have a video producer, a content marketer and an events and community coordinator who is fantastic at what she does. We even have a director of impact and a Sr. strategist on the marketing team and I think everyone is using the best of their abilities to shine in their own way, and that’s exciting.