Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1122868
C A S Q U A R T E R L Y S P R I N G 2 0 1 9 63 like that performance took place in an actual location and is not something that became sterile because it was too cleaned up. What was your background before joining the RX team? I played in bands in high school and into college and was a his- tory major. After college, I came up to the Boston area and started at WGBH Radio as a production assistant and then eventually became an associate producer. That's where I took my love of music and a little bit of the history and ended up working on a lot of the classical shows and some jazz produc- tions and some shows for a national production. I started just at the tail end of the end of analog, so I was cutting tape with a single-edge razor blade and getting voiceovers cleaned up. Literally, I was slicing a millimeter of tape, of quarter-inch tape, marked with a grease pencil. And I remember I was hooked from the day they showed me how to do that. There was something incredibly fun and very Zen about cleaning up performances. And then, you know, you move onto other things, like working on full-blown voiceovers and cleaning up music. I went from that and doing freelance recordings to going to business school and earning an MBA. That's quite a turn. Then I was in the internet world, doing product management and business development. But then I went back in the production world as a freelancer for a while. I was a field producer and a writer on a History Channel show called Tougher in Alaska. I did some freelance writing and producing and found my way back into the production world, but on the business and product management side. What drew you to iZotope? As anyone who's freelanced knows, you have some incredible years and you have some really scary years. And so, there's a ton of music and performance up in the Boston area and we've got a real booming tech sector up here. I ended up interviewing at iZotope a little over two years ago, and really saw the connec- tion between the public radio, the editing, and the music/per- formance background. I still get to work with all the production and post-production professionals that I've always loved work- ing with and have a ton of respect for. iZotope was that convergence of music and business and technology and performance and my genuine love of arts and entertainment. So, out of college, I was the guy cutting mouth noises out of tape with a single-edge razor blade and now, I'm leading a team that makes industry standard software for doing that very thing. Talk to me about what it's like working for this company. Are there aspects that make it stand out or make it special? Friday meetings are actually pretty cool. They're led by our CEO and, at the end of announcements and discussion about where we're at with things in the company, he always asks if anybody has any gigs. And he, literally, hands the microphone to every single person who raises their hand and everyone in the The new Dialogue Contour module in RX 7 Advanced. company who has a gig coming up, whether it's a performance or they're attending something or they're recording something, whatever it is, they get to announce it to the rest of the com- pany. And then we also have a Wiki where people post gigs, so we can go to each other's concerts and support each other. So, it's really fun. And you know, there are events, too. We have a company event where the company books its own people to play at the event. So, then there will be a concert, maybe it's an annual holiday party or something, and I'll be looking up at my col- leagues, some of whom are DJ'ing, some are doing vocal perfor- mance, some are performing jazz, and sometimes it's rock. It's a full range of genres. But it's pretty cool to work with people like that where everything they do gets folded back into the products that we make. There's a real connection there. I've asked all the winners this and love the answers I get because everyone is passionate about their fields and it shows. What do you like to do in your free time? Oh, that's a good question. I've been looking for free time lately! (Laughs) If, hypothetically, you had free time! Well, if there was free time, I'd like to do something that sounds not like free time at all. I'd like to take the software that I'm working on every day and use it for some of my own per- sonal projects. I'm hoping to get some time later this year to basically recover, enhance, and take some music and some fam- ily recordings and just bring them back to life and get them into the current electronic formats we're all using. I want to put that content back into almost daily use, so to speak, and be able to get my hands on it again. Anything you want to say to the membership reading this today? I'd like to give a big "thank you" to the post-production com- munity for using the software, supporting it and, also, for being a part of helping us make it better. People contribute through beta. They invite us into their sessions, their studios, they share material with us. We couldn't do what we do without that input and we're very grateful for it.