Each year I look back to review what I’ve done.
For the last several years, I’ve kept my professional resolutions here and my personal ones elsewhere. Here, I aim to do something of a look back on myself and share it with you all.
As I share more after the list, importantly these are about my individual professional progress. So I’ll write elsewhere about the progress of Technically Media, which did $1.67 million in revenue in 2016.
Here are some choice outcomes by month for constraint:
- January: I helped launch the Tomorrow Tour, an impressive six-city events and reporting series with title sponsor Comcast NBCUniversal.
- February: I looked back at three years of tracking email introductions I made.
- March: Recognizing we had set unrealistic sales goals for Technically Media, I was part of updating and building a team to execute more accurate ones. This was incredibly hard, a year-long in the making, involved many teammates and was quietly incredible important, both organizationally and for my own development.
- April: I keynoted a cybersecurity conference. (Oh yeah, and the seventh annual Philly Tech Week!)
- May: I launched a personal newsletter curating links I read. Find archives and join here.
- June: I co-wrote and edited the Tomorrow Toolkit, an ebook accompaniment to the Tomorrow Tour. We’ll be further promoting this in 2017.
- July: I spoke to a journalism educators conference at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.
- August: I was again part of the Philadelphia Podcast Festival.
- September: I spoke at the Online News Associate national conference in Denver. (Oh yeah, and the fifth annual Baltimore Innovation Week).
- October: I led a six-city entrepreneurs dinner series called TableTalk with a corporate client. More on that soon.
- November: I was a part of organizing the inaugural {OpenBracket coding competition. (Oh yeah, and the second annual Delaware Innovation Week).
- December: Folio magazine called me 100 of the country’s leading media disruptors.
I’m taken by how, relative to other years, these outcomes are more tied to me as an individual. I put some thought in to why and in truth, I think it’s because Technically Media reached an important ledge in which it can’t only be about my cofounder and I. So our big organizational goals aren’t entirely the responsibility of us. We must share the stage.
Still, I’m proud of my involvement in some incredible strides at Technically Media — those crummy sales projections of ours served as a forcing function to mature our team and process. As part of it, we’ve pushed forward the development of our market model, the mix of events and sales and challenged how our editorial fits, which will become a major part of what we must accomplish in 2017. (For instance, Generocity.org will be following a Technical.ly model of having consistent events across all five markets there)
My biggest priority at TM is to grow margins by tying revenue more closely to our newsroom, by articulating the business case for journalism. Founding this company has made the person I am today, and that’s among the biggest goals I want to accomplish.