So I’m hosting mediabistro’s Start-Up Bootcamp and last week we had Eric Ries, founder of the “Lean Start-Up” methodology & a Harvard Entrepreneur-in-Residence, speak. He is all about getting companies/wanna-be companies “to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it’s too late”. In fact, he recommends meeting every 6 weeks (with your partners, or yourself) to evaluate whether you should persevere (in which case, pat yourself on the back, and carry on) or “pivot” (quick, change track and make changes before you run out of $).
His book comes out in September and his blog is very helpful, if a bit wonky (look, I’m just a journalist). But hey, if you are starting up a company, you better get wonky because as Eric says, “you are creating an institution, not just a product.”
P.S. For the technically minded, a few job listings via friends.
Position: Lead Solutions Architect and Engineer for “Who’s Who Wiki” Project Type: Full-time staff position (following 3-month trial period)Location: Mexico City, Mexico, Start Date: July or August 2011
San Francisco:
General Manager, INTEROP (IT industry’s Leading Event)
http://hiring.accolo.com/job.htm?id=273649200
Sales Executive, UBM TechWeb (Media/event/online ad sales)
http://hiring.accolo.com/job.htm?id=274511544
New York:
(Junior) Sales Executive UBM TechWeb (Media/event/online ad sales)
http://hiring.accolo.com:/job.htm?id=274499244
Sales Account Manager UBM TechWeb (Healthcare/Gov’t media/event/online ad sales)
http://hiring.accolo.com:/job.htm?id=274511885
NOTE: This position can also be based in the WASHINGTON DC area, although it would need to be run from a home office.
This lovely post from mediajobsdaily came to my attention today. I wonder if this new optimism on the behalf of employers is for show and self-assurance or if they really feel as though they’ve weathered the storm and are ready to refill the ranks.
Fifty-three percent of employers will be beefing up full-time staff in the next year, and 40% plan to hire contract or temporary workers, according to a new survey from CareerBuilder.com and Robert Half International Inc.
The companies that are hiring will be looking first for technology, customer service and sales staff, followed by marketing/creative, business development, human resources and accounting/finance.
This number seems more realistic:
40 percent plan to hire contract, temporary, or project professionals.
But maybe that’s just my view from the media world.
Journalists hoping to break into TV can be very discouraged when they read announcements like this one from NBC news via TVNewser:
I can’t tell you how many times I got frustrated and annoyed with “special correspondents” who were on the rope line with me at premieres and other events when I covered entertainment a few years back. Why was the wife of a basketball player/former Miss USA/etc. more entitled to a reporter job? And why were the PR people treating her a different then the rest of us?
Take heart. Let’s just assume Jenna will have an extremely talented and strong-willed producer to guide her.
A pretty interesting on-air part-time job in Westport, CT is listed on mediabistro’s job listings:
dLifeTV, an award winning nationally distributed TV program about diabetes, seeks qualified talent with diabetes or otherwise connected to the condition to host its weekly magazine style program and perform certain spokesperson duties.
With anchoring/presenting/hosting jobs becoming fewer and fewer, it’s heartening for us on-camera “talent” to see jobs like this out there. Even if it is incredibly niche, a show like this could be great experience and exposure.
Dina Kaplan is the COO of blip.tv, the online video distribution site. There’s a great profile of her in this week’s Observer. She went from local tv reporter to COO of a company that hosts and distrubtes 48,000 original web shows.
In the article she describes her ah-ha moment, when she finally decided to jump ship:
“Later that September, an interview she had with Andrew Heyward, then the CBS News chief, made up her mind.
“We had a pretty formal interview,” Ms. Kaplan recalled. “At the very end he said, ‘What else do you do? What are you interested in?’ And I said, you know, ‘On Wednesday nights, I get together with some really smart friends of mine and we are starting a company, which is a platform for people creating Web shows on the Internet.’ And—I will never forget this—he pulled his chair back and looked at me in a whole new light. That sort of glaze of interviewing yet another reporter, only the seventy-five thousandth of his life, ended and he snapped out of it. He looked at me directly as a person rather than another local TV reporter, and he said, ‘Do that. That is the future. Forget this TV reporting thing.’”
Dina goes on to explain how she secured venture capital and turned herself into an online video powerhouse. She spoke on Wednesday night at mediabistro’s panel on Producing Online Video Content (I hosted it- see the top tips gleened from the event here). She brought a male co-worker with here- and in the article, she explains why she feels the need to travel with a male escort. It’s pretty depressing- otherwise people don’t take her seriously.
Anyway, the story will inspire TV reporters wondering what their next move should be and get budding online video content producers to start shooting. Tell Dina what you think at the blip blog.
I haven’t told my friend Katty Kay that she looks like Alex from The Desperate Housewives (seriously, don’t they look alike?). I spied Alex at the sandbox in Cobble Hill a few weeks back. And yes, we were with our kids.
Katty’s book Womenomics is now #5 on Amazon’s Women & Business list. She wrote it with ABC correspondent Claire Shipman. I was Katty’s producer in the nineties when she first started reporting from the US for the BBC in Washington.
Her book is about getting the career you’ve always wanted without sacrificing your life. It applies mostly to corporate lasses…and I have to say, the freelance/consultant model is working better for a lot of us. I went and joined Katty backstage when she appeared on Colbert in June (watch it here, he was such a pushover for a strawberry blonde Brit!)…and went to Diane von Furstenberg’s studio that night for the book party. Very entertaining to watch the mainstream media machine move into place to support its own. Almost everyone I spoke to was looking over my shoulder to see if there was someone better else to talk to…not that I took it personally!
Speaking of women in mainstream media, Forbes recently posted its Most Influential Women in Media list. Only surprise on there was Dooce.
I just finished up a great all-day intensive on-camera workshop at mediabistro. Clients included a priest, interior designer, and toy curator. Much of the discussion focused on how to USE video not just MAKE it. We shot website welcome videos, a PSA, a show pitch, fitness tips…and discussed the various different audiences that these videos need to appeal to: potential clients, casting agents, journalists, etc.. Many of the students have multiple jobs (a fact-checker AND an actress)…so should they separate websites for their different careers? NO. Because these days you are the whole package. I, for example, am a better media trainer because I’m also a working journalist. My work informs my other work, and so on. So the key is to come across in any on-camera work you do as presentable, quotable, instructive, and likable. In other words, look good, speak concisely, don’t talk crap, and exude warmth. Personally, and I think I drove this home, I believeall that requires very thorough preparation. Winging it on camera doesn’t work for 99% of us. P.S. Thank you to Justine of GreenScoutReport for sharing her secret tip- before an interview, use a paper toilet seat covers from a public restroom to blot the shine/sweat.
Deeply buried in today’s Business section of the New York Times was a little gold nugget (read the full article here). Basically, in the midst of explaining why Yahoo is not a search service, the CEO said they’ll be adding more original material, from news items, to blogs, to analysis.
According to the NYT, “Yahoo will invest in its entertainment, finance, and news operations. Ms. Bartz said that there are plenty of unemployed journalists out there to pick up.” Too true. I met a lot of them last week at mediabistro’s Career Circus. And a confession: I read the article on actual paper, not on the Bits blog were it was published last week. Am I showing my age?
