What I Learned This Year 2011 #56: Christina Schroeder

By / January 18, 2012 / It’s crazy how much the world has changed in the few short years since we opened shop. We launched on July 1, 2005, about 3 1/2 months before Apple released the iPod Video, and 5 months before YouTube went live. Facebook was gaining traction, but it would be another year and a half before it would roll out to everyone and their mother. Twitter was still a twinkle in Jack Dorsey’s eye, and a Nook still was just a cozy space in a room. On day one, I never could have imagined that alongside traditional advertising we would be building iPhone and Android apps (because they didn’t exist), or creating digital books (because they didn’t exist either), and I could only blah-blah-blah about the “someday” when TV and the ads that go along with it would be in your pocket. Yep. It’s a different world. And then there’s media. It fractured long ago with the advent of cable networks. Then the Internet took a meat cleaver to it. Today it’s in splinters and shards. Media powerhouses have died and gone (Country Home, Gourmet, and Domino), and new ones have risen in their place (Food Network Magazine, Epicurious, Apartment Therapy). Now If you 1) have an Internet connection; 2) can write your way out of a paper bag; and 3) have a passion for anything, you, too, can be the next big thing. Case in point: Perez Hilton. The rules have totally shifted along with the power. And all of it is creating new complexities and battles for people’s attention. If I know one thing for sure it’s that when I wake up to tomorrow, the world is going to be different than when I put my head on the pillow. Whether it’s a new platform, a new device, a new medium, a new application, a new tool—something new will be there to greet me. It might be revolutionary or maybe just evolutionary, but in any case, it’s definitely won’t be business as usual. That’s dead and gone. And that’s a great thing if you’re a creative. Everyday there are new challenges to rise to—new factors in the creative equation. Everyday we have to pull off amazing feats that have never been done before and teach ourselves new tricks along the way. It’s both exciting, and yes, sometimes exhausting, but it’s also invigorating. Creative is better shaken not stirred. I like it like that. And while I may not know what’s coming next, but I know it’s never been a more exciting time to be creative than right now. Illustration by Matt Thomas