Just two days before my first day at the Middle Eastern outpost of Carrot Creative, I was completing my last day at my previous job. I was standing on the pit wall of Yas Marina Circuit in the UAE’s capital Abu Dhabi for the final round of the Maserati Trofeo Middle East. As the twelve Italian V8 thoroughbred race cars thundered their way around the Formula One track, I contemplated my latest move into the great unknown.

The past decade has been filled with petrol, tire smoke and a great deal of exhaust noise. I’ve been a web monkey, news hound, road test dog, editor gorilla and PR unicorn – all within the great and disparate world of automotive awesomeness. My work allowed me to travel East and West to visit motorshows and factories, drive on some of the greatest roads in Europe in supercharged SUVs and fuel-sipping city cars (and plenty else besides), blast through deserts in the world’s fastest and most expensive cars and write an absolute stack of copy for websites, magazines and newspapers.

My final eighteen months had seen me cross over to the dark side and saw me represent some fantastic brands both through traditional and social media channels. I gained an appreciation for the fair automobile from a different perspective, and how a brand creates a real connection with people.

It’s that connection, that relationship, that feeling, that buzz which a hunk of metal, rubber and hydrocarbons can evoke with people that excites me now. But it’s not just cars that stir people’s souls and imaginations – you’ve only got to look at the hoardes of Apple fanboys out there (guilty as charged) who go all doey-eyed over a hunk of electronics wrapped up in a svelte case to see that we humans are simple creatures after all.

Social media is a platform that can really help craft and develop that affinity between a brand and the end user. It’s a real leveller that exists without boundaries and with the right knowledge and understanding behind the message, can be hugely effective.

And it’s the bunch of peeps within the Carrot family who I believe are in a seriously strong position to best achieve this. With the first move out of Brooklyn being into unchartered waters in the UAE, I couldn’t think of a better company to hone my skills with.

As the token Brit within the company, all that’s left for me to do now is introduce the guys to some proper English comedy and instill some new traditions such as afternoon tea and crumpets. Cheers!

This article is copyright © 2012 

I studied neuroscience in school because I was curious about how people work, and I still am. I learned about a lot of really amazing things our brains can do. For example, we are super good at understanding language. In fcat, I can wtrie a sentnece wtih all the lrettes in wdros scebramld up, and you wluod siltl be albe to urtnnesadd it pltefecry. You can understand someone who has a strong accent, slurs their speech, and uses improper grammar nearly as well as anyone else. Right?

We are also good at analyzing and classifying visual objects in 3D space. If someone throws a baseball, you can predict where it will land within about 5 feet just by eyeballing it. You can see a pattern in the stars and relate it to something you read about in a book 3 years ago. If you’ve ever taken a physics class, you would know that the calculations and measurements that are happening instantly and subconsciously in our brains here are pretty incredible.

If you think about the logistics of how our brains actually work, it’s mind blowing. Although some of the best programmers and scientists in the world still have not been able to crack these problems (speech and visual object recognition particularly), our brains compute them instantly, perfectly accurately, and subconsciously. That’s something to marvel at.

Our Lazy Brains

At the same time, our brains are mind-numbingly terrible at some things. Take, for example, remembering lots of things – we are so bad at this. You can be told someone’s name and forget it a minute later. And if I asked you to remember two phone numbers without writing it down? Forget it. Also think about math – although we’ve figured a lot out, we’re pretty bad at the calculations. We’re very slow and usually require a calculator to figure it out at a reasonable speed. In fact, we’re pretty bad all around at repetitive tasks. We do them slowly, and get bored with them quickly.

And this is for a good reason – the gorgeous and super talented brains we have shouldn’t be wasting time with trivial, boring, and repetitive things. We are born with the most complex and advanced logic in the world built in to us. Billions of dollars are poured into scientific research to try to figure out how our brains do it, and billions more go to computer scientists trying to replicate the things our brains can do. But guess what? We’re not even close – on either front.

Extend your brain

The power of programming is that we can use it to extend our brains’ abilities. When it comes down to it, remembering lots of things and doing repetitive tasks quickly is extremely important for many things in life, and it turns out computers are extremely good at these two types of tasks in particular. If you have a fluency in getting a computer to do what you want, you have transformed yourself into a superhuman – you can now do anything your brain normally can, plus you can remember vast amounts of information and you can do repetitive tasks extremely quickly.

In addition, offloading these kinds of tasks to a computer frees your super amazing brain to do more of… well, what it’s good at. You will inevitably run into problems that require remembering lots of info and/or boring & repetitive tasks, and if you can’t get a computer to do them for you, you will have to do them manually – this is a waste of time. We were not meant to remember tons of things, or do boring repetitive stuff – we were meant to learn, grow, and innovate. Don’t let yourself get bogged down by these wastes of time – the ability to program allows you to maximize your brain’s potential.

Increase your value

Many people see programming as a very domain-specific task. People who can program work in technology, right? Absolutely not. You can be just as valuable, sometimes even more valuable, in other fields when you can program. You add a lot to your base efficiency at work by being able to control a computer and offload certain tasks to it. But it’s not only you who will benefit. With your skills, you can create a more efficient work environment for everyone you work with. I bet you work with a bunch of people that waste tons of time on things computers could do better (almost everyone does) – stop that from happening. Build tools to make things you do often easier. Then build tools on top of those, and don’t stop there. If you keep doubling your efficiency, you will find that the way everything works tends to change very fundamentally.

So how to get started? Education is typically absurdly expensive and time consuming. Years ago, one would have said that the way to learn about computers is to major in computer science in college – a commitment of huge amounts of time and money. But today there are an overwhelming amount of resources available for free online (and offline) that can help you start to hone your superpowers. A couple that come to mind…

• Udacity
• Coursera
• Kahn Academy
• Skillshare
• Code Academy
• RubyMonk

…and there are certainly many more, but these alone should get you more learning than you can handle in a year of college, easily. So get out there and start upgrading yourself. Once you start, you’ll never want to go back.

Example

Remember that mixed up sentence from the first paragraph? I didn’t do the mixing manually – I wrote a short program to do it for me – and now anyone can use the program to sensically scramble any number of words. ‘Open sourcing’ programs (releasing all the code to anyone for free) is a great way to spread knowledge and build on what other people have done, and the open source community is vibrant and thriving among programmers. I open sourced the sentence scrambler program, and you should check it out! It’s hosted on github (the social network for programmers) and written in ruby.

Sensical Sentence Scrambler – Source Code

This article is copyright © 2012 

I arrived in New York on a Sunday and started work with Carrot on a Monday. A bit over-ambitious in terms of jet-lag, but as I packed up my life in San Francisco, I just kept thinking about the line from When Harry Met Sally that “When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.” Now I don’t plan on proposing to the office dog anytime soon, but I did have a gut feeling that my life was waiting for me in New York and it was time to jump in head first.

I’ve spent the past four years bringing people from around the world together off-line through the conference and incubator space my team and I built. I’m excited to start my next chapter as a part of the Carrot team in helping to create our strategy for bringing people from around the world together online – engaging and inspiring people to interact with global brands through digital campaigns. The work that’s happening in Brooklyn right now on the production side is the best in the world. We have videographers, interaction designers and digital engineers working at the forefront of the industry. Carrot has the unique opportunity to develop world-class campaigns on the edge of what’s possible and share those stories around the world through their expertise in social media. I’m thrilled to be along for the ride.

This article is copyright © 2012 

Things really do have a way of working themselves out – especially when you’d least expect it.

I’d say it all started with a tweet from Mike. Well, technically it began with a near 20-year-old friendship with Neamo who has worked as a designer with Carrot Creative for the past 8 months. He tipped me off to a tweet his boss made about looking for a Media Planner to join the crew. Of course, this came at a time where feeling stifled at my old job, I had given up on looking for new creative outlets and had come to terms with being just another cog in the machine. I would be lying if I said I didn’t want to work for the best social media agency in the world. So, I agreed to start the conversation.

Long story short, my conversations with Mike began with, “It’s important we discuss your future,” and ended with, “You should wake up every morning feeling there is purpose in what you do.” Those two statements, along with everything else in between, quickly made me realize that Carrot would be my new home. I’m thrilled to be undertaking this initiative for Carrot and plan to get my hands dirty with everything else I possibly can in the meantime. It is extremely exciting to be working with such a close group of people who care about what they do.

I strongly believe that we are in the business of making connections, and Carrot Creative is inherently a social force. Whether these connections occur between brands and consumers, or between businesses to form new ventures – we make them with the objective of creating important relationships for a substantial purpose.

This article is copyright © 2012 

Sincerely,

Carrot Creative

This article is copyright © 2012 

So the conversation went something like this:

Me (to my dad): I have an opportunity to work for Carrot Creative, a Brooklyn-based social media agency that works with brands like Red Bull, Disney, Budweiser, NewsCorp, Jaguar and Ford and I think I’m going to take it.
Dad: That sounds like a good opportunity. Moving to New York is a pretty big step.
Me: ….
Dad: What’s wrong?
Me: The job is actually in the UAE.
Dad: ….Wow. That’s far!?!

This conversation echoes many similar conversations that I’ve had with friends and family. Most understand my reasoning for wanting to make the jump to work for Carrot. From a purely business perspective, it’s a logical fit for me after investing nearly nine years of my career in digital and legacy marketing alongside some of the best brands in the U.S. Likewise, Carrot’s reputation, global brand portfolio, work in the social space and company culture are among the best in the industry. Yet in conversation, both casual and intimate, I am often faced with explaining just why I have chosen to move 7,810 miles to live and work in the Middle East.

The best way for me to answer this is to point out some of the observations and experiences that I’ve had since my arrival in the UAE.

Opportunity

I’m definitely not alone in my decision. Looking at the population breakdown of the UAE, over 75% are expats. As strange as this sounds to most people in the U.S., it begs the question, “Why?” Opportunity is the main reason cited for business-related moves to the UAE, be it for the “endless oil money” in the region, the tax-friendly benefits, or the fact that it is a major launchpad for business in Africa, Europe and Asia. I’m not what one would call a dreamer, but I am at the very least an enthusiastic opportunist. The Carrot UAE team and I see opportunity for our business every day. On a scale of one to ten, I can confidently say that social media marketing ranks at 9.9. Social is on the cusp of becoming (if not already) a major consideration for local, regional, global brands in the area. We are here to capitalize on this opportunity and are quickly making waves. Here are some stats that quantify, in part, the opportunity within the region:

• Nearly 50% of people in the Middle East and North Africa turn to print as their primary source of news. If recent trends in the U.S. and Europe are any indicator, print revenue will soon give up ground to the likes of social.
• The total number of Facebook users in the Arab world stands at 27,711,503 (as of April 5, 2011), up from 21,377,282 (January 5, 2011), having almost doubled since the same time last year (14,791,972 in April 2010).
• The digital revenue growth rate here is expected to be three times that of the rest of the world.
• Oh yeah and just a few months back, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, invested $300 million in Twitter. I gather that he sees that there might be something to this whole social media thing.

Life Experience

I’d be dishonest if I didn’t address the “life experience” factor. At 33, let’s face it: I’m not going to have too many more opportunities like this. Aside from the obvious impact of having “start-up” and “international experience” as part of my professional portfolio, there is something just amazing about working and living here.

For anyone that has been following the Carrot UAE Team’s exploits, you are well aware of some of the things we have been experiencing. A quick scan through some of my recent Facebook posts, tweets and personal emails stand as a reminder of some of the amazing things I have encountered in the UAE that I would never have experienced in the U.S. Here are a few snippets:

• On a clear day, I can look out my window and catch a glimpse of the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world.
• I recently attended an outdoor concert on a 5-kilometer-long man-made island shaped like a palm tree and almost daily, I drive by the world’s only 7-star hotel that is shaped like a sailboat.
• While at a traditional “Friday Brunch”, the DJ jammed Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind”. I’m not from New York, but listening to a quintessential American track right smack in the center of the Middle East was amazingly surreal!
• While traveling down Sheik Zayed Road, a main thoroughfare, I saw camels within 100 feet of the roadside.
• I watched my colleagues order Margaritas from a local Mexican restaurant that, to their displeasure, turned out to be “virgin” due to local alcohol laws. Hilarious!
• The Carrot UAE team had a weekend vacation cancelled on account of a sandstorm.
• And lastly, Ravi. Oh my God, Ravi! Ravi Restaurant has reshaped my world from a food perspective. I’m officially now a Pakistani and Indian food lover. I could eat naan bread and Butter Chicken for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The UAE is clearly a great place to be a Carrot. For anyone in the industry that reads this and decides, “hmmm…I think we should open up shop in in the UAE,” be aware that we are a formidable team, both locally and in Brooklyn. Our work speaks for itself and our corporate culture is tighter than any I have experienced in my 10 years of professional life. If you open up shop here, prepare for battle.

This article is copyright © 2012 

A little over two years ago, I flew to Austin, TX for my first trip to SXSW Interactive. After three full days of surrounding myself with the two things I’m most passionate about: learning and meeting new people, my brain swelled beyond capacity with new ideas and names. Needing to round things out, I went in search of a couple beers and a good party (my 3rd passion). I eventually found myself at one of the legendary SXSW after-parties going beer-for-beer with a guy by the name of Mike Germano.

Unbeknownst to me, Mike was the CEO and co-founder of Carrot Creative, an agency I had admired for some time. Since starting my career in the advertising world, I had kept close watch on competing agencies and Carrot had certainly stood out from the crowd. Carrot’s strategy and branding was particularly impressive. They’ve purposefully honed in on social, took on clients and projects that only made sense for them, and developed a unique brand through (yes, their logo and theme), but also, the way they talk online, present themselves at industry events, and carry the Carrot flag in person. Carrot had succeeded where many agencies fail. If you’re going to be a marketing company, you need to be able to market yourselves first.

Over the next two years, Mike and I (as well as Bobby and Chris) had stayed in touch through my tenure at the agency, and eventual departure to co-found FashionForward, a digital marketing event in the fashion industry. Meanwhile, Carrot was growing fast and looking to expand. And not just anywhere, but to Dubai, looking to launch an office taking on the MENA (Middle East, Northern Africa) region. When it came down to them asking me to carry the Carrot flag, I had to say yes.

I’m glad I did. Here I am in sunny Dubai, getting to work for the best social media agency in the world, helping to start their first international office working on some of the biggest projects in the region. I had also joined a group of people that were second-to-none in their field including a VP and Director at different startups, a manager who launched Disney’s social media presence, and a former agency founder who had searched high and low before eventually calling Carrot his home.

The magnitude of what we’re trying to accomplish is no doubt challenging and certainly very exciting. But beyond the long-term goals, I get to interact with an amazingly talented and intelligent team, build and create innovation in social, and learn from a news feed much better than Twitter–the Carrot internal email chain. From Brooklyn to Dubai and beyond, I’m proud to carry the Carrot flag.

This article is copyright © 2012 

I was doing just that, more specifically, at the Zya Music Party with Nick Cannon spinning behind me. There I was catching up with some friends from PepsiCo when I realized I was down to the wire (8% battery) and it was only 9:30PM. As a compulsive mobile and social media user, this was the equivalent to seeing “last exit for 100 miles” when you have less than a 1/4 tank of gas, know what im sayin?

So, with the whole night ahead of me I knew I needed a charge. As you can imagine, the ladies bathroom counter was a congregation of makeup retouches, and …OUTLETS! Four outlets with a line longer than the one to use the restroom.

As a SXSW n00b, my impression of festival attendees is generally friendly and approachable. It certainly helps that everyone is wearing their identity around their neck most the time. Sidenote: when I bumped into Eric Friedman he brought up a great point about badges; it makes the most sense to wear a badge on your right shoulder so it’s in line with the sight path you follow when going in for a handshake. It’s so much more difficult to read a badge hanging from a lanyard with so many variables in height. Let’s be honest, it’s just plain awkward to watch someone attempt to read your badge without slowing down the pace of their stride, it becomes this neck-cringing side-eye kinda look, it’s just plain scary.

My point is, I met three really interesting people in the ladies room that night, all which could possibly result in future business for both Carrot Creative and Digital DUMBO. All in part because I had to charge my phone – in a bathroom – at a bar – at 9:30PM – in Austin at SXSW. You never know who you are going to meet, so be friendly, be open minded, and see every person as a new friend or business opportunity.

This article is copyright © 2012 

We’ve always been known as the most fun company on the block, and at the same time we’ve always been just as serious about who we hire. Thankfully, those people that we now call Carrots helped us grow from a tiny startup to a small company to a global family. Our culture still feels like we’re that that small basement startup, but Carrot Creative has had the opportunity to grow and mature right along with our work, clients, and employees.
We’re trying to grow this family of ours with even more of the best so we want to make sure candidates know what they are getting when they apply to Carrot. From our application process, to culture, to offered benefits – yes, benefits like 401(k), health care, dental, vision, and your weight in Cheddar Bunnies. Carrot.is/hiring was created to do just that. Visit the page and you are taken to every possible open position, information about our culture (but you already know about that), benefits, and even an explanation of what to expect after you’ve put in your application.

We put a lot of consideration into each and every application and we wanted carrot.is/hiring to reflect that process. We respect each applicant’s time and effort and really wish we were able to respond to everyone. We predict that this will become increasingly difficult for us, but we are making efforts to improve that process. In the meantime, check in with Carrot.is/hiring, check in with the orange couch, and stay connected!

This article is copyright © 2012 

SXSW has come a long way since its humble beginnings. My music business friends have been going since the early days, and the veterans among them tell me about the times of a twenty band music festival. Today the festival is part interactive, part film and all music, pulling hundreds of thousands of people to the epicenter of cool in the Texas capital city.

I’ve gone to SXSW for the last five or six years. They’re all a blur, and it’s difficult to actually separate one from another. One thing is clear though – each year’s conference gets exponentially larger. There are so many people there, and every attendee has a very different agenda. It’s no longer possible to experience every panel, or every band, film or event at SXSW. And then there are a few hundred thousand people added to the mix…

People complain that “the khakis” have arrived, and that the festival is now filled with brands, CMOs and PR people who have no idea what the festival is all about, but who attend because “we keep hearing about this SXSW thing”. To some degree, there’s truth here. SXSW has indeed grown past what the city of Austin’s infrastructure can handle. Its constituency has exploded to include the uncool, the politicians and the people who don’t belong there. And this is life. And like life, SXSW can be overwhelming at times.

If I’ve learned one thing through my years at SXSW, I’ve learned that like anything, SXSW is what you make of it. You can go to learn. To have fun. To see great things. To eat BBQ. To make deals. To catch up with friends. What you get from SXSW is very much dependent on how you approach it, and what you desire as an outcome. Sound a lot like life? It is.

I’ve spent early years at the conference going to panels, meeting with friends, and making deals. And every year, came home smarter, more inspired and filled with business. Early on, I went without goals. Today, I approach SXSW differently. I approach the conference not too dissimilar from the way I approach a project, my career, and life. Set goals, aspirations and plans. And shoot for the best.

Before hopping on a plane to Texas, I’ve answered a few questions for myself:

• What would be a fantastic outcome to my participation?
• Who would I most like to meet for the first time?
• Who would I really like to catch up with that I don’t have time for in normal life?
• What kind of experience(s) would leave me inspired?

The answers to these questions (and the importance in the way they’re prioritized) will be different for everyone. Asking yourself these questions before attending SXSW…or any event in your life, for that matter…will directly impact the results of your approach, participation and success. (And finding great BBQ is pretty cool, too.)

The photo above is one that I snapped of St. Lucia immediately before interviewing them as a part of a video series that my team produced while at SXSW. This shot is reflective of my experience this year – outside of the conference center, surrounded by creative people, and filled with soul.

This article is copyright © 2012