Introducing Paul Hosking - Past Present Future - introduceyourself

Hello to the Steemit community.

Steemit has pricked my profession interest; user generated content, crypto currency, social media platform. What does it all mean? Best way I know is to jump in and work it out through doing. 

I am no stranger to the world of user generated content as it is the mainstay of my own startup WhaTech, so I was very excited when I found out about the unique model and the "experiment" that is Steemit. 

I plan to regularly contribute a personal blog which examines future global market trends. It may not be everybody's "cup of tea" but there are those out there that really do care, believe me.

I am passionate about the future and always look forward to being part of it. To get me started in the community, and just for fun, I will look back and share with you some of my past. 

I dropped out of a second rate TAFE college course to become a rock star. Like most kids sharing that dream, it didn't go strictly to plan. However, I did make it on to the long-running weekly Australian music television show  (Countdown) in 87 for my 15(-9) mins 

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Yes, I'm the dancing keyboard player.

Washed up at 24, still wearing a pair of socks my mum gave me in high school; I got a job, teaching kids my only skill, how to play rock and roll.

This led me to University. Four years and a bachelor's degree in music and media behind me, I was not offered another job.

I decided to stay at the university, a bit like an extended sit in. Eventually, they started to pay me. Mainly because I worked for loose change, and perhaps because I was the youngest lecturer in the department; meaning I had a clue about these computer things.

By the turn of the millennium, my wife and I had started our family, and I had built up a freelance practice in video and web design. Working as a film maker and composer in avant-garde theatre company NYID 

 

At the same time exploring the as yet uncharted territories of technology content marketing.

The crucible experience of running a business as a stay at home dad with a house full of babies precipitated creative and financial success when I directed the music video for what turned out to be the top selling single of 1999 Jac Jac Jackie.

Soon after something strange happened. I was working at an advertising agency cleaning up someone's broken website. The creative director and I were having lunch, and somehow I got around to asking him how I fit into the agency. He replied, without blinking, "you're a writer". As a card carrying dyslexic, I just about fell off my chair.

At the time I was confused and concerned that his quinoa salad might have gone off, exposing him to hallucinogenic mould spores. But no, he was adamant. So I was a writer. What to write?

Seeing early how the internet was going to change the world, I devoted my time to a tech news startup http://itwire.com as a partner and site director. Following a meteoric early success, things settled into being just another job.

In 2005 my wife and I moved to the county making the picturesque Macedon Ranges in Victoria, Australia our home, with my eldest of three children starting his first year of school and my wife working in locally. 

In 2009 I launched my tech own startup WhaTech, https://www.whatech.com/ which is still my day job. WhaTech is a global news sharing platform for technology companies and market research report publishers. The WhaTech platform uses artificial intelligence to assist our editors to bring user submitted content in line with our editorial guidelines at an industrial scale.