New Media Director

photo credit: ineffable_pulchritude

I am the New Media Direc­tor for Cool Stuff Inc. Cool Stuff has been the spon­sor of Man­a­Na­tion since 2008 and I am now work­ing for them! I will be work­ing on Man­a­Na­tion for them, as well as other video and pod­casts, and putting my skills to use to help them develop their busi­ness using some new dig­i­tal avenues. I’m very excited about this opportunity.

So, remem­ber that roller­coaster week where I pro­posed to Katie and then got fired? Yeah, let’s scroll back a few days before the pro­posal. The Thurs­day prior to propos­ing I went to Cool Stuff and met with them to dis­cuss the pos­si­bil­ity of sell­ing Man­a­Na­tion to them. I wres­tled with this idea, but the bot­tom line was that at the time work had picked up and Man­a­Na­tion was suf­fer­ing for it. So rather than let the show die, I was look­ing to sell it and let a com­pany that was able to — take it over.

Then while they were toss­ing the idea around, my life changed and the roller­coaster began. On Mon­day I got fired. Obvi­ously the first idea was to now get a job with them, and we had a fol­low up meet­ing sched­uled for a week after the first one, three days after becom­ing unem­ployed. They, not know­ing my sit­u­a­tion, had come to the same idea — they would rather have me join their staff and con­tinue to man­age Man­a­Na­tion, among a num­ber of other projects right up my alley. We dis­cussed it and laid out the basics, and on Fri­day I had an offer from Cool Stuff.

And so the tan­ta­liz­ing dance of nego­ti­a­tion began. I had another inter­view to go to and wasn’t sure how it would go. On Mon­day I got a call from Mat with OpenIn­spires ask­ing me to come do a con­tract gig with them for this week. On Tues­day I went to the con­tract and then that evening sent an email to Jerry at Cool Stuff out­lin­ing two issues I had that were nec­es­sary to rene­go­ti­ate. Now here is an impor­tant les­son. After a day with­out a response, I sent a polite fol­low up email ensur­ing he received my pre­vi­ous email. Sure enough it had got­ten lost and over­looked, and had I not sent the fol­low up it could have proven prob­lem­atic as he wouldn’t have seen the nego­ti­a­tion email, leav­ing me angry and frus­trated at going with­out a response, and the world could very well have ended.

In any case, they con­sid­ered my nego­ti­a­tion points and we called for another meet­ing, again on Thurs­day. Dur­ing which we locked down the terms and I accepted the job. But we had to hold off announc­ing it. I wanted to make it part of the episode for ManaNation,

On Mon­day I start with Cool Stuff and I will be get­ting in a car with two of my bosses and dri­ving. Now nor­mally that would be extremely uncom­fort­able for a new employee, since we’re dri­ving from Orlando FL to Indi­anapo­lis IN. But it’s going to be awe­some for a few reasons:

1. I already know these guys. We’ve worked together for over a year in a more relaxed fash­ion as part­ners and as the spon­sor for ManaNation.
2. The des­ti­na­tion of the trip is Gen­Con, one of the biggest gam­ing con­ven­tions out there. Some­thing I haven’t been to before.
3. We’re going to brain­storm­ing and lay­ing out the goals and projects for me to start with.

As you’re read­ing this, I am prob­a­bly on the road. I’ll be blog­ging and post­ing pho­tos and videos from Gen­Con in Indi­anapo­lis IN. And if you’re going to be there — say hi and let’s grab a drink!