Gadgetory

this episode of TechnoBuffalo is brought to you by lynda.com what's going on everyone and welcome back to episode of retrogression we're continuing with our get to know the staff series we've already talked to Roy Choi we talked to Todd Hazleton now we're talking to the man himself mr. Brandon Russell if you ever read an article on TechnoBuffalo com chances are probably usually about a 40% chance maybe 35% chance is written by this gentleman sitting right here Brandon Russell is our senior editor of special projects and mobile so Brandon welcome welcome so tell us a little bit about yourself how you came to TechnoBuffalo a little about myself I like I enjoy soccer interesting I enjoy reading a good book do you remember her about soccer I do actually I've read a few they're pretty good a little bit about how I came TechnoBuffalo about three years ago I decided on a whim to reach out to John I didn't hear back unfortunately the first time I reached out I was actually interning at a local magazine here so I thought you know why not I'll just reach out see what happens I didn't hear back about three months later I still see that email went to spam boxing yeah I don't really think that's true about three months later I actually finished my internship I actually started working for the company but I thought why don't I just follow up and see if anything has changed by now and actually you reached out he said hey let's start talking you fed my information to Sean and then kind of the rest is history yeah Brandon's timing was perfect his first day was actually our first day in the office that were announced we're looking to sort of staff up and it was sort of a yeah it worked out perfect perfect fit so bring your really prolific writer how many articles per day would you say that you're right on average you know I'm not quite as fast as Todd he could kind of crank them out and out of seconds it seems like but you know it just depends on the news of the day what's interesting what's not interesting cuz I kind of get fed up with some of these articles that are out here but I mean on a good day is probably like 10 or 12 on a slower day it's like five or six it's obviously in tech there's a lot of topics you write about how do you pick what you want to write about versus what you don't want to write about and how do you sort of marry the having the right content versus writing constants interesting to you well I guess the first part is what we think the audience will find if you're seeing beyond that you know I know myself and the rest of the staff kind of have a preference of what to write about that's why we kind of go with a lot of opinion pieces and that's why I've kind of gravitated towards the longer stuff because that's what I enjoy I try and put a story behind a lot of stuff that I do I may not come across in shorter pieces you know just like the quick this device is getting an update sort of piece but I mean with the blimp piece and with some of my opinions and a little bit in my reviews I try and tell a story because that's why I enjoy doing the Occulus piece yeah exactly so I kind of gravitate towards that that's why I was lucky enough to get the special projects I got some stuff I'm actually working on right now so what does that mean so special products might sound too nebulous to people you know we try to give it a tech angle but if it doesn't necessarily have an immediate technical we try and look at it from the perspective that you know our audience our core audience would would like to see it at so you just got back you just got back from a trip yeah you know actually I got to participate in a NASA I actually went up to the Jet Propulsion lab in Pasadena and they showed us around the building up there we actually got to see you might have seen a little bit on Twitter we got to see the sister of the Mars Curiosity rover we got to sit in the control room of the launch actually that happened a few years ago and then the day after that we got to go out to Barstow California and we actually got to see the Deep Space Network so that was really interesting take a quick second from talking to this gentleman to thank our friends and overall good peeps at lynda.com if you ever wanted just to learn new things lynda.com offers thousands of engaging easy to follow video tutorials taught by people that know their stuff experts in their fields from software creative and business skills Raman had a video edit I want to be a better speaker whatever it is lynda.com has you covered membership starts it's just twenty-five bucks per month provides unlimited 24/7 access that's kind of cool you can learn at your own pace from either tiny little tutorials if you got a little bit of a TD like me or you want to learn serve larger courses things like web design programming design photography business audio and video 3d animation and all those other things that I wish I knew how to do so you can watch the new calm on the go anywhere you're at from your computer tablet or mobile device I got a pretty awesome mobile app you can try it lynda.com free for seven days by visiting lynda.com/tekzilla Buffalo that's ly n da calm so that check no Buffalo now let's learn more about you so Brent a lot of people might want to be exactly where you are sitting where you're sitting writing what you're writing what advice would you have for someone who's inspiring to be a tech journalist or not my journalist I think kind of what really touched touched on last episode just to kind of keep writing do as much writing as you can you know there's a period when I didn't even really want to write I just kind of happened to get into it and then I figured out more and more that this was something I really wanted to do so if you have an opportunity like I did to in turn somewhere you should definitely reach out to that and seize that opportunity you know like Roy said read a lot get writing out there you know criticism is okay because I mean I'm not perfect Todd's not perfect you know none of us are perfect here but I just learned from keep riding you'll grow I know early on when I first got here I was really struggling with you know keeping up with the amount of content we we need to push out to you guys just keep at it and you'll eventually you know you'll grow you you'll get better and then you know who knows you might get a job working for John one day working you know somewhere else that you're passionate about you're Brandon's was it your second day was the iPhone 5 event yeah the Brandon's second day here was probably the busiest day we've ever had it's yeah iPhone 5 is the the busiest day we've ever had in a company I was sure Brandon we're gonna go to lunch and never and never come back yeah I was pretty overwhelming that day so so if you can get through things like that you can get through you can get the reinvention and this is your knife later you well came back yeah thence events nowadays are kind of like second nature but you know back then when you haven't really experienced anything like that especially from a professional perspective it was it was pretty overwhelming today thank you guys for watching hope you enjoy the series and getting to know all of us and getting to know the people that write the content create the content hope you guys enjoy comes leave a comment down below until next time I'm John render from TechnoBuffalo and we'll back it back to regular riffy style episodes very soon see you guys next video buh-bye what's up everyone thank you for watching that video if you want to see more of the latest and greatest tech news you can subscribe to our main TechnoBuffalo channel by clicking the button right down below in my pants region or click on the buttons to your right to see more videos