On Friday I participated in a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything), where users of Reddit could post questions for an entire day and I would go through and try to answer all of them! It was an awesome opportunity to give insight to some rad & dedicated GoPro users and fans.Β The following is a highlight of some of those questions.Β Thanks to everyone that participated!
If you haven’t checked it out, the official GoPro Reddit page is an awesome place for inside info, fan videos, and helpful tips.
- Could you share a litte bit on your personal experience getting connected with and eventually hired by GoPro? I know that a lot of people here would love to work for GoPro, and I’ve heard from an… inside source… that being hired by GoPro is pretty fun/interesting.
- What is a typical day-in-the-life for you? Do you work remotely or in the office with everyone else? What is your favorite part about your job? Is it true that you guys have free cereal in the cafeteria? π
- You mentioned that you do most of the in-house testing… do you work closely with the product design team? Do you give your prototype products to the end user for testing, or only internal testing? Does GoPro do ethnographic work when researching new products and improvements?
- Also, will you add me on LinkedIn? Or, can I add you?
EDIT: thought of another one:
- Since what you do is fairly recreational in nature, how much time do you dedicate to work when you’re doing something recreational? For instance, if you go skiing, do you go skiing specifically for getting footage, or do you go to ski, and just happen to get footage while you’re out?
- This first one can be answered pretty well in this interview – scroll down to how did you get started in the industry:http://www.shayboarder.com/2011/08/industry-profile-gopro-production-artist-abe-kislevitz.html
- I am in the office about 2/3 of the time now probably. I work in the office with everyone else, we have a media dept of about 20 people in house at any given time (lots of contractors in and out). Everyone is always working on different projects – when I’m in the office sometimes I’m on a big project where I’ll lock myself in the edit suite we’ve got and crank away. Othertimes I’m on smaller tasks like commercial graphics, commercial formatting, helping with some coloring here or there. Favorite part is owning a big project – feels good to take on something huge and see it through to the finish. Equally as good is being on site at rad events like Euro X Games.
- I don’t do most of the in-house testing, but I do do a lot as sort of a personal thing – I’ll ask what product designers are working on and see if there’s anything to test. I have some of the most experience actually using GoPros in the field at this company so I usually like to think my feedback is pretty valid. Our engineering/design team is being built out ridiculously fast so protocols are changing daily, not sure what sort of background research they’ve got in place right now. *LinkedIn – I usually don’t check friend requests on FB or LinkedIn.. I try to get to personal messages but a lot slips through the cracks :/
- For skiing and doing USC edits it’s probably about 50/50. If I know it’s going to be an epic park day I’ll get the cams out sooner than later. If it’s an epic pow shred I’ll think about skiing first and filming 2nd – that usually entails just making sure I have some sort of POV on to capture the experience. I’ve had a few injuries over the seasons so filming has always been my fall back, but i really do love getting awesome shots. A lot of it depends on the mood of my riders and the weather, just gotta be on your toes if something is gonna go down. I always have at least 2 GoPros in my pocket on the hill.