PDF links to my cover letter / story and Podcast experience
My name is Jonathan Hanley ( jonathan@hanley.co ). I live in Vancouver Eastside although I also lived for many years in Montreal.
I have a linkedin.com profile at https://ca.linkedin.com/in/jonathanhanley but the real story is how all the pieces came together to where I am today. As I always tell people I’m interviewing, I’m looking for the passion in their eyes, because then I know I’m onto the good story. So here’s the story that fuels my passion and why I think I can make a contribution to your team.
I have always had an interest in people’s stories, going back to my childhood when I mostly read biographies. I was curious to find out the secrets to how people were happy, successful, in love, in part because it might give me clues on how to better live my life.
My curiosity about people and the planet led me to get a Geography degree. By chance I found myself working at Communicopia, which was progressive in their approach in promoting sustainable practises using the internet and other new media technologies.
From reading stories I moved to telling other people’s stories by getting involved in Communications & Design and creating web sites for clients. In 1995, the web was a very different place than it is now, but I always imagined a time when people could view virtual reality worlds, watch videos, and listen to audio. I always loved the interactive aspect of the web and how it enabled the user to explore a stories in many different ways.
Around 2008 two distinct undertakings begun when I started reporting for web magazine Vancouver Observer and creating a new committee called Festival Stories for the Vancouver Folk Festival.
I covered a broad range of stories for the Vancouver Observer based primarily on my areas of interest: Environmental issues, Sports, Arts, Film, Startups, Dance, and more. The article titles demonstrate the diversity of topics I covered for VO: “Highlights of Vancouver’s Eco Fashion Week“, “Pecha Kucha interviews with Wang, Calder, Bollwitt, Farr, Meadows & Steinberg”, “Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh at Grow conference“, “Adam Chapnick of Indiegogo on the art and science of a million-dollar campaign“, “Projecting Change Film Festival“, and many more articles here.
More recently I wrote “High-Energy Vancouver Startup Week Hackathon Crowns Winners” for Betakit. and StartupCanada’s #EveryEntrepreneur Vancouver stop highlights west coast innovation“ for Techvibes. I did many audio interviews at both events, so I have material ready for use in podcasts.
My original plan for Festival Stories was to interview volunteers at the Festival to listen to and share their stories. We expanded interviews to musicians, vendors, volunteers, and Festival goers because people loved sharing and hearing other’s stories. By 2012 I was managing a crew of 12 volunteers on the Festival Stories committee. The team consisted of members with background in videography, photography, writing, film, and the arts.
I trained the volunteers with the knowledge I’d gained after interviewing hundreds of people from Startup CEOs, Burlesque dancers, Film Directors, Activists, Musicians, Artists, and people in the street. I knew how to find that twinkle in their eyes and get them to share their passions and I guided the team on how to get the best interviews.
We captured interviews and photos and then edited them and published while the Festival was going on, which required quick management of the content. Festival Stories ended up taking thousands of photos, hundreds of interviews with the goal of creating multimedia archive of the Folk Festival’s 33 year history.
My passion for interviewing turned into several web ventures including canadatalent.com which is all about Canadians doing great things, intervu.us which is a curated showcase of the web’s best and most inspiring interviews, and startupswest.com which covers the westcoast startup community.
