Diary of a transition: New Beginnings

Today is my last day at Mediacom.

It's my last day of running an account team, my last day media planning & buying and my last day within a big organisation.

Today is also new beginning.

As of Monday 29th June i will be joining the team over at The Population for what promises to be a bit of a radical change!

I started working in digital media in early 2003 when i joined a small start up search marketing agency based in a shoebox office situated above a carpark entrance, opposite a busy railway station in Surrey (UK).

Each time the carpark lever was raised to admit or discharge a car the loud, creaking, crashing noise would bring the office to a halt.

All conversations, both face to face and phone, were forcibly overpowered by the painfully slow rise and fall of the mechanical monster that ruled our working days....

Then there were the 'fast trains' which would come powering through the station at supersonic speeds shaking our desks and collapsing our flimsy filing systems within seconds, not to mention the foghorns that were sounded to announce their arrival (as if the minature earthquakes were not enough).

But apart from the noise, i do have fond memories of the shoebox.

Such as the hilarity that would ensue should someone want a toilet break (think Tetris but with human bodies and swivel chairs) and the team effort put into redecorating our 'environment' with a group shopping trip to Ikea to pick out a painting for our one bare wall.

After 6 months of success we upgraded from shoebox to stable-sized offices where we expanded from a team of 4 to 7. Now everyone had sufficient elbow room and we could go to the toilet without the need for others to abandon their tasks to aid us in our need for a synchronised exit (although anyone eating curry during the weekdays was not easily forgiven for it...)

For 2.5 years i watched the company grow from strength to strength and felt i had played a significant part in the achievements and advances we had made.

But alas, it was inevitable....London was calling.

So, with a feeling akin to chopping off a limb, i left for the bright lights of the City and i never looked back.

I joined a big full service agency within the digital department and called Carnaby Street my place of work and play.

I moved to Sydney late 2007 and continued working within a big media agency (Mediacom) as an account director across key finance and automotive clients. I worked with a wonderful team and learned a huge amount in a short space of time. I was also bitten by the social web bug and started to become interested in new communications strategies above and beyond what has always been done. Mediacom fully supported me in all avenues of interest and i was able to spearhead the social web movement internally with great success. My new interest drove me into research and i became a voracious reader of all new-media blogs, news and innovations. These new blogs led me to The Population and the rest, as they say, is history.

So now i'm back to a start-up agency from whence i came which is both comfortingly familiar and bizarrely nerve racking at the same time.

The Population, in my view, are at the leading edge of the digital space and openly embrace new solutions to traditional problems and non-linear thinking. To top it off they've got a great team of super-intelligent people.

So i'm switching from a big organisation in a high-rise in North Sydney to a team of 7 in a studio in Surry Hills.

I'm also leaving behind the comfort and process of a big company and downsizing to a non-heirarchal structure in a non-siloed environment.

It should prove to be a BIG change for me.
I'll miss Mediacom but the excitement of a new challenge is spurring me on....

So, naturally, i'm going to document it.
I am going to write a bit of an on-going journal about the differences between a big media agency and a small start-up strategy agency.

It will cover my personal experiences learning new approaches, being with a new team and it will hopefully de-bunk some of the smoke and mirrors which many people assume is part of a strategy agencies repetoire...(contrary to popular belief they don't all run on bravado...)

So Monday is my first day and i'll let you know how i get on!

Over and out.