People Doing Interesting, Creative, and Strange Things…

The release of Avid’s Pro Tools First, a free version of the widely used recording platform (also mentioned in Dan Daley’s “The Last Word” column this month) at the NAMM Show got me thinking.

With Garageband having been bundled into nearly every Apple laptop, Mac, and tablet for years now, and with plenty of free (or nearly free) recording and sequencing applications available for download, home recording – and the number of individuals with some degree of skill in this field – has absolutely blown up. I realize this isn’t news to anyone. Bear with me.

It’s anecdotal evidence, to be sure, but of my own musician friends I’m hard pressed to think of anyone who doesn’t engage in some degree of home-demoing or actual recording, and a handful even run semi-successful studios out of their basements. Additionally, of the 30 or so medium- to large scale recording studios that existed in Boston as recently as the late ‘90s (two of which I worked at), I can only think of nine in 2015. Access to software, online tutorials, and a wealth of information via search engine has created thousands of experts (and semi-experts) in a discipline that used to require years of schooling, internships, et cetera, and a lot of time and money.

If you’re a motivated self-starter with a little innate skill, life online can, in fact, make you smarter.

“The Internet in the 21st Century has become a humongous idea-making machine,” said author Clive Thompson in a BBC report from last June. “Never before have we been able to disseminate our ideas with so many people, all over the world. From instant messaging to social networks, every time a new technology has come along [we find] people doing interesting, creative, and strange things… People were using them in ways that helped them to think in different ways, to learn new things and to solve problems they couldn’t have solved before.”

There are two big takeaways (at least) for employers here – and this applies to both retailers and suppliers in the MI realm.

The first involves applying to your own business that same creative, self-motivated attitude that drove the home recording market and decimated the recorded music industry. Resources such as NAMM U and MMR’s own monthly “Small Business Matters” column are valuable and should absolutely be taken advantage of, but why stop there? The experts you learn from through such avenues have already pioneered and mastered the techniques and skills they’re sharing, but someone did “it” (whatever the “it” in question is) first – who says you or someone on your team can’t be the individual who hits upon the next “big idea?” Be resourceful with the tools available and you could very well come up with a game-changer with respect to marketing, inventory management, e-commerce – anything.

Secondly, as an employer, make sure you’re truly living in the present when it comes to hiring practices. I’d never suggest formal education isn’t vital, but long held notions with respect to “higher education” are falling by the wayside. Important caveat: there’s lots of misinformation on the web and plenty of sites with clear agendas. Just because there’s tons of “information” out there, doesn’t mean it’s all accurate, impartial, or reliable.

Still, the point remains.

A poll conducted by Gallup and Lumina Foundation released in late February of this year, “found 84 percent of business leaders said the amount of knowledge of potential hires is very important, while 28 percent said a candidate's college major is important, and just nine percent said where the candidate received his or her degree is very important.”

It’s nothing new for the sales clerk working the floor at your local guitar store to not have a Master’s degree, but it’s long been felt that management positions require some college background. These days, knowledge is everywhere for the taking – for both you and your potential employees – and “no college degree” does not necessarily equate to “no advanced skill sets.”

Any employee or potential employee could well be doing interesting, creative, and strange things that could help your business. As could you.