Archive for May, 2010

Ack. Eep. I have a new job.

Posted in life on May 11th, 2010 by Xiaochang Li – 1 Comment

So, I’ve been a little lax on blogging the past few weeks. Part of it is that I’ve been working incredibly long hours during the week, and spent the last three weekends in a row shuttling back and forth between NYC and Cambridge, MA for a series of very interesting events (more on that in a bit). But another big part of it is that I’ve been making something of a life transition: as of this week morning, I’m working as a Digital Brand Strategist in Weber Shandwick’s NYC headquarters.

It’s quite a change coming from the academic world and a series of mercenary consultancy gigs into the world’s leading PR agency, though a really thrilling one. I’ll have to wait until I’ve been there a bit longer before I can reflect on the adaptation process. All I can say right now is that, having always worked in shared spaces, you are hyper-aware of how decisions that are natural in office environments (like whether or not to close my office door) transforms your space and work mentality.

Altogether a very exciting development, and should lead to a much needed new layer to my thinking.

I hope to get back to blogging regularly again once I get settled, though I suspect that it will take some time to really hit my stride with how frequently I will be writing more lengthy, involved pieces. But in the immediate future, please look forward to a recap of the three great events I attended at MIT the last three weeks. First was the Comparative Media Studies 10-year anniversay, where I sat on a panel about media globalization with Aswin Punathambekar, Ana Domb, Orit Kuritsky, and Jing Wang. Then the weekend before last, I moderating a panel on “Running the Tubes” at ROFLcon, which featured a fascinating group of speakers that run the “behind-the-curtain” social and commercial infrastructure of your LULZ, including Jef Sewell (Despair.com, Amplifier), Aaron Peckham (Urban Dictionary), Larry Oji (OverClocked Remix), and Pete Hottelet (Omni Consumer Products). Finally, last weekend, I attended the always fantastic Convergence Culture Consortium retreat, where super smart folks presenting on everything from Swedish indie labels to transmedia lions (the lion is metaphor . . . I think) to how piracy can save media business models.

So once I get my bearings, keep an eye out for that, along with the long-promised thoughts on geolocation and public space.