For our Career Exploration I went to Bars+Tone! It was an amazing experience and learned so much from it. We took BART out to San Francisco and walked the rest of the way to the company. Bars+Tone is a Digital Media company that works with companies like Sprint and Sephora. They help companies do television and web advertising.
We got the chance to meet and talk to three of the partners of the company and one of their editors. Brian Nowac, Stefan Welter, Eric Steckel, and Gina. Brian is the director and worked really hands on with projects. He dealt with not only clients, but also did the directing on, on-set locations. Stefan is the companies founder, and now works in basically all of the companies business. He pretty much knows how to do everything in the company. Eric is one of the producers and works closely with clients. He helps with budgeting and scheduling for each project. Gina is a freelance editor that works with Bars+Tone. She does more documentary type editing, which she prefers.
During the trip we got the chance to interview those four people, asking them questions and finding out about them in groups. I really liked this because it gave me a chance to learn things that I wanted to learn, instead of just general things that everyone wanted to know. I’m glad we got to do this because it also gave me the chance to meet each person on a more personal level and I thought that made it easier to have a conversation and to learn. What I thought was also really awesome was that even though each of the people we met told a different story they all gave us the same idea. The idea that you should work at whatever it is you love and that you should stay in school, because its not important what exactly you learn about, but that its important that you continue to learn and use transferable skills. (Yeah, they actually talked about transferable skills).
I also really enjoyed the work environment, it was a lot different then I had expected. I thought that it was going to be a bit more stuffy and business oriented. But as we got the chance to explore and look around their office space the business had a low-stress environment, that was very relaxed (they had work-out music playing xD). Though the business was very relaxed, you could tell that when it was time to work, the people that worked their got down to business, which I thought was very cool. It had one of those work environments that I think I would really enjoy to be apart of.
I think the most influential thing I learned during the whole trip was that you can make what ever it is you’re passionate about your profession. All of the people we met didnt start out really knowing what they wanted to do, but in the end they figured out what it was they wanted to do and stuck with it. But the one thing they had in common was that they all found something they really liked and went for it. I think that was really admirable and showed me that I can go after my dreams and aspirations.
This whole trip helped me see that I can go after what I want and become successful doing it. I think the things I took away from this trip are going to help me make a lot of decisions in my future, so I’d also like to give a big thanks to Bars+Tone for hosting the whole Career Exploration trip!
