What do you mean you’re a journalist at a tech company?
What do you do exactly?
I’ve been working at Zeitspace for about a month now and these are probably the two questions I get most often when I tell people about my job.
Typically, journalists work at news organizations (I’ve worked at several news organizations during my career).
But, more and more, journalists are finding new homes and tech companies are a perfect place for us to land. We are storytellers, researchers, and observers.
“We had been thinking about hiring a marketer for some time,” says Zeitspace partner Mark Connolly. “The more we thought about it, the more we realized that we wanted to tell Zeitspace stories to the outside world and hiring a journalist to tell those stories was a much more interesting way to do it.”
Added Zeitspace partner Jeff Fedor: “We brought in a journalist to take ownership of our storytelling and tell stories about the work we do and the things we, as a company, are interested in. This isn’t about selling stuff.”
Journalists not only inform, but also help us reflect.
Reflection is a big part of what I’ll do here (if you’ve read some of my recent blog posts, this won’t be a surprise).
But I’ll also look at industry trends in user experience design and product development, along with industry best practices. I’ll write stories about some of the projects that Zeitspace has been involved with.
Along with that, part of my role is also to cover the topics that matter to Zeitspace as a company. It matters to us that we can choose to travel Waterloo Region without a car. It matters to us that people have access to public transit and can safely walk or cycle in their city. As members of this community, we care about issues such as women’s reproductive rights, and arts and culture. You’ll hear more about these issues in the weeks and months to come.
Why?
Because it’s important to share who Zeitspace is and what we care about with the broader community. We sponsor Fluxible, Canada’s UX Festival, the Open Ears Festival of Music and Sound, and Hold the Line, so I’ll write about those too. And I’ll write about The Zeitspace Sessions, our own series of hands-on learning opportunities that are open to everyone.
And like any journalist, I’m always looking for story ideas, so feel free to share any that you think should be on my radar. My DMs are open on Twitter, but you can also email me at kelly@zeitspace.com.