Um, so Luca has the coolest sounding job around. He does digital strategy for Chelsea Football Club. He answered a whole bunch of my questions on working in Uni and how it helps prep you for the real world. Thanks for being a good sport, Luca!

Sarah: Luca, you have a degree in Music Technology, how did you end up working for a Football Club?

Luca: I wish I knew. I guess the answer is opportunity. While at University I ran an events management business putting on student club nights and gigs for unsigned bands. To market these events and to organise them with the 20+ staff I had I used Facebook (this is 2007 by the way). I learned the power of social media for my business. It was here that I developed the ability to influence with messages, simply because my business depending on it.

Fast forward to 2009 having graduated and relocated to London I was just another graduate. My business didn't account for much in text on my CV and I knew that getting into the music industry wasn't gonna be easy. I had been using Twitter at this point for a while, primarily for ego boosting but also for seeding blog content and networking with like-minded people. 

Twitter not only allowed me to network with relevant music industry people, but it allowed me to gain insight into other industries that I was interested in and the personnel that worked in those industries. Having been an advocate for social media and all things digital and having built my own blog and assisted others to use the web to build their own brands, it was only a matter of time until I landed a real opportunity in the digital sphere.

It was in the Summer of 2010 that a friend of mine @Mazi who at the time was working for SKY, tweeted there was a vacancy at Chelsea Football Club. I got in touch with Mazi and the rest is pretty much history.

I recently wrote a post as Twitter turned five years old documenting this whole journey and my appreciation for it.

Sarah: While you were in Uni, you were also working full time. How do you think that helped you find work after graduating?

Luca: When I graduated I didn't feel like fresh bait. Even at Uni I didn't feel like a student. I believe University is primarily about finding yourself, but it is also about building networks for the future (it's not about gaining a degree).

Having experienced management, finance, marketing, leadership, team building and all the fundamentals that matter in business whilst at University, when I graduated I was ready to take on the world... so to speak. Although it did not mean I could walk into a job, it meant I was a few steps ahead of anyone else who's sole selling point was a qualification printed on corrugated paper.

Sarah: I imagine a number of people think you have a dream job. Is it as great as it sounds? How do you spend most of your time at work?

Luca: For Chelsea fans, they believe I have a dream job. Others, may be envious, but working for a football club is no different to working for any other large corporation... except we have Sky Sports and Chelsea TV on all day. :)

My role has developed recently from Digital Marketing Analyst to Digital Strategy and Product Development. My time is divided up by product development, strategy, analytics, search engine marketing and consultation to other areas of the business.

Sarah: What’s the best advice you can give someone looking to follow in your footsteps?

Luca: Personal branding. In today's new media age, personal branding is everything. I believe the future is not in companies, but in people. More and more individuals everyday are becoming successful. Some are extremely lucky, others have built the fundamental roots and have planned for success. Eventually we are going to see a world where everyone has a website, a social presence and a brand that can be monetized. 

We are all built up of individual traits, DNA that makes us different. Therefore we all have different abilities. The key is to harness the strengths and be able to admit your weaknesses, because transparency and authenticity is everything.

Gary Vaynerchuk took this concept and wrote a book named 'Crush it!'. He turned his strengths, his weaknesses and his passion into a monetized business and shared his journey for us all to see. 

If you are seeking employment in digital or in a company that you expect to research into your background when you apply for a positiony, don't let their 'Google' search come up with the spell check because they found nothing about you. Even worse don't let the only thing they do find be Facebook.

• Invest in a website, whether it be your money or your time learning how.
• Create a blog giving your real voice on a topic that gets you excited.
• Be creative with your web CV and ditch the lame Word document as your first point of contact.
• Allow the world to see a dynamic personality that represents who you are and what you are capable of.
• Utilise Twitter to locate the businesses and the people who matter in the industry you want to be a part of.
• Build relationships that allow others to recommend you and someone will notice you
• Act confident in your ability and be positive even when it feels like you aren't moving forward.

By following the advice above I guarantee anyone can achieve whatever goal they have their sights set on.

Sarah: Do you keep regular hours, or are you working around the clock?

Luca: My job is contracted 9am - 5pm but it always varies depending on the workload. I believe it is important to relax as much as possible and exercise frequently. We all spend our whole days working out our minds but don't pay the same amount of attention to our bodies, hence why most people look run down, tired and moody. Everything is about maintaining a healthy balance.

Sarah: You also blog regularly and help others figure out how to use social media. How much of your time does that take up?

Luca: I maintain my personal brand by blogging rich content as much as possible and by assisting others in their journey to achieve. Usually I post twice a week, which includes one 'Industry Spotlight' and one topic post.

When Tony Robbins spoke of the six human needs and the sixth one being 'contribution beyond ourselves' I wanted to utilise what strengths I had to help others achieve. I help anyone I can who seeks advice with personal branding, digital marketing or business development.

I have consulted to an array of clients and companies (there is a list on my About page) and am always locating for new opportunities. 

Sarah: What do you see yourself doing five years from now?

Luca: You know, I really have no idea. You have this goal when growing up that you and all your mates say, it goes something like this. "By the time I turn 30, I wanna be a millionaire." Im pretty sure every young lad has said that. Back then, success may have involved money, nowadays, not so much.

Since University my philosophy has been to help others achieve and that philosophy has only grown stronger. I believe that humans were made to contribute something and we don't do enough of it. 

As I mentioned above in reference to Tony Robbins, self-fulfilment comes from many different human needs and emotions. I like to think in five years time I may be in a position where I have utilised my skills, my strengths, my opportunities and my network to contribute in a way that means others can benefit on a large scale. 

To help the sheep you have to learn to howl like a wolf, which means you have to grow up, learn to lead and teach from experience. As Jay-Z said "and I can't help the poor if I'm one of them.'

The future is in people, in individuals who realise they can leverage themselves but also how much they can achieve by leveraging each other. 

I expect the game to change very soon and hopefully for the better, with it being less about how 'me and you' develop individually our brands, our products and our personalities and more about how 'us' and 'we' develop together.

If you'd like to learn more about Luca, you can follow him on Twitter or check out his blog. 

Today on I know smart people, Conrad Whelan. He’s a fellow Calgarian working at Uber, the app that gets people from A to B. The first time I hung out with Conrad, we made plans for coffee at 730. I assumed this meant am, he assumed it meant pm. Hilarity ensued.

Sarah: What do you do?

Conrad: I write dispatch and ops software for a startup in San Francisco called Uber.  I've been at Uber for a year or so, coincident with my moving to San Francisco.  My current days consist of implementing new systems for an upgraded architecture for our product to enable us to quickly roll out new cities.  I wear a lot of hats, writing code in a number of languages and administering a number of systems to keep Uber up and running.

Sarah: How did you end up there?

Conrad: I ended up where I currently am primarily because I wanted to change of scene from Calgary. I was working at an engineering focused scientific computing startup called Acceleware. The work was related very closely to the topic of my masters thesis (Electromagnetic simulation for cell phone antenna design), and we were on the forefront of writing scientific codes that made use of GPUs to speed up simulations. It was a great job, but after 4 years and a yearning to see someplace else in the world, I decided it was time to move on.  

A good friend of mine had built the Uber prototype and when I told him that I had resolved to move (rented out my condo and so on), he asked if I would be interested in helping to launch Uber (then called UberCab).  I said yes, and within three weeks was working in a tiny shared space inside an office with one other member of the team and we got to work on making the project go.  It was a bit of a change for me, as far as the technology stack was concerned, but we had a good year in 2010.  I had actually intended on staying at Uber for the short term, in order to look for another job in the bay area, but I realized that the product was too cool for me to not stay on for a while longer.

Sarah: Is this what you thought you would be doing when you were in school?

Conrad: I actually think I'm pretty close to where I thought I'd be when I was in school.  Engineering just seems to suit me, and through grad school, Acceleware, and now Uber, I think I've been able to work on some pretty amazing products with some really amazing people.

Sarah: What is your favorite part of what you do?

Conrad: The best thing about an engineering job is the feeling you get when you're being really productive and making things happen.  Especially in the tech startup game, there's a level of creativity that many people might not think about. A bunch of people with ideas building something out of nothing.  I actually enjoy the odd bit of crunch time because of the focus it can bring (though too much crunch time is not so much fun). 

My favourite task, maybe weirdly enough, is writing solid software testing code. It may sound lame, but it's something that I never really learned at school, but now love to do it on a daily basis.  I have seen the two opposite ends of the spectrum where software testing can be considered essential. Scientific simulations often take hours or days to run, and if there are parts of the code that aren't correct, that could be like wasting those days completely.  On the other hand, automated dispatch software is used to negotiate a complex transaction between two people in different locations who have never met each other before.  If something doesn't work, it's an immediate waste of time for these people and a missed opportunity for us.  Smart software testing just makes a person confident that their product is working as intended (and in turn, lets me enjoy my time off a bit more)

Sarah: What is the most tedious, boring or annoying part of what you do?

Conrad:  I guess there are certain kinds of software that I'm not super keen on writing.  I'm a math / physics guy, so writing UI code is not exactly my cup of tea.  Otherwise, configuration.  Always necessary, always slightly a headache.

Sarah: What are you most excited about?

Conrad: I think I'm most excited about my new life in San Francisco.  There are several parts to it. Playing a crucial role in a hot new startup is great.  The buzz and focus on technology companies in the media again is very exciting.  Trying to build a whole new set of friends in a new country is a great thing too. Plus, there are so many things about this place that make me feel right at home. Year round bicycle commuting is a new joy that I am finding every day; seeing so many shows coming through town; effing amazing coffee on every corner.  It's hard to not be excited to be in Northern California right now.

If you’d like to know more about Conrad, follow him on Twitter. Also, check out Uber! He’d love for you to try it and give some feedback. 

Alex is the first person I've connected with in Philadelphia! He co-founded the co-working space Indy Hall and works in a strategic role on a number of projects. 

Sarah: Alex, can you tell us a little about what you do for a living?

Alex: I've made a weird transition from developer into a pretty cool strategic role. Because I've been working in tech for almost 15 years, I tend to work with companies that are utilizing technology as a primary component of their business, but the companies are very different. In the last year I've worked with a top-tier advertising agency (helping develop their interactive department and strategy), a multi-million dollar t-shirt company (leading the in-housing of their entire technology stack), a few software product companies and teams, including Wildbit - the makers of popular products like Beanstalk and Postmark.

Exactly what I do for these companies varies a bit, but the consistent element is that I'm focused on helping them grow. Usually, it means assessing the company's strengths and assets and looking for ways to reassemble them to help the company grow. This means I'm looking for sustainable, exponential growth patterns that don't require excessive outside resources or intensive spending. The fun part is that because I've got a tech and development background, I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty and write some code if it helps. 

I tend to operate best as a hired gun: though most of the teams I work with now are long-term arrangements, none of them are full time. This lets me get all sorts of dirt under my fingernails, and if I'm doing a particularly good job...I'm making myself obsolete. 

Sarah: In addition to that, you co-founded that co-working space, Indy Hall. How did that come about?

 Alex: When I struck out on my own as a freelance web dev in 2006, I was working from home. I quickly realized that wasn't going to last long. I didn't miss going into work, but I did miss having coworkers. I met some folks that were doing the earliest experimentation with coworking in San Francisco, and figured, hey, that sounds pretty rad. I'll move out there!

When I failed an attempt to move to SF, it was an inflection point. Why was I leaving Philly again? It wasn't for the job, or the money, or even the weather. It was for likeminded culture and a "place" where I felt I belonged. Well...if I could find that in Philly, I wouldn't need to leave!

So I started going to every event I could find. User groups. Meetups. Happy hours. You name it. I was looking for anyone in Philly who was doing cool, interesting, creative things because that's what I wanted to do! What I found wasn't just people doing cool, interesting, creative things...but I found that they were looking for other people too! So Indy Hall started like more of a club than a coworking space. Over time, we started working together, even if we weren't working on the same things. Just being in proximity to one another once a week or so was great. 

When we got to enough people, I said, "hey...we could do this every day if this club had a clubhouse!" and we started working together towards opening our first office. Inside of 18 months that office was completely full and we had a waiting list. This drove us to expand into a ~4500 square foot location where we are today, which is home to over 100 members on our active monthly roster and many more friends who visit and drop in when they can.   

Sarah: What do you think is the most important thing about finding a good co-working space?

Alex: It's ALL about the people. A good coworking community is going to be your tribe. People should be interacting with one another. It should feel warm and fun. You should be able to feel productive, but not constrained. You should feel at home. 

I've become convinced that people don't really want a better place to work...they just want better coworkers. Coworking provides that far better than it provides the amenities you think you need.

Sarah: You must get to interact with plenty of companies in Philadelphia. What's hot there right now?

Alex: Mobile Games. Holy moly, everybody's making games. It's awesome. 

Sarah: As with most cities near larger cities, Philadelphia must get compared to its neighbours often. What sets it apart?

Alex: I feel bad for anyone who feels the need to compare Philly to its neighbors. A few friends decided we should throw a party for people who love Philly, and give them a reason to talk about the things they love about Philly rather than compare it to other cities. We're doing that party every other month now. You can check out the video from the first party and see for yourself why people love Philly: 

Sarah: Finally, what are you working on next that has you excited?

Alex: There's a couple of projects that I have to keep under my hat right now, which is totally not my style...but I can promise they'll be worth the wait. The next couple of teams I'm working with though have me really pumped. I recently started working with Philly design and development shop P'unk Ave to help take their open source CMS Apostrophe and make it a SAAS hosted product, I'm going to start working with friends of mine Amy Hoy and Thomas Fuchs on their product http://letsfreckle.com/, and I've got a new product that I spun out of my work with that T-Shirt company that should be launching in the next month or so. 

Bottom line is, I'm continually working to achieve my goal of working on great things with great people. Nothing is more gratifying than that.

Alex, thanks for taking the time to answer all of these questions! If you'd like to keep up with everything Alex has going on, check him out on Twitter, or on his blog. 

Photo by Chris Sembrot