2018 - A Year in Review

To start off the New Year, one of my resolutions is to start contributing more on LinkedIn. Being that it’s the first month of 2019 (for another 5 hours) and this my first LinkedIn article, I decided to do a review of 2018 - a year that ranks first in terms of my professional development. The leap from being an undergraduate student to a young professional and the immense amount of knowledge I’ve picked up thus far at Blinkfire Analytics.

First and foremost, I graduated! After four years of spending countless hours in the Information Commons, with a view I can’t complain about… (sorry, had to include this picture).

In addition to the hours in the library, several more were spent shuttling from Lake Shore Campus to Water Tower, and then more classroom time learning about some of the intricacies in finance and economics that I found especially captivating. Paired with the outstanding classroom curriculum, one of Loyola’s greatest differentiators was its diversity. For the first time in my life, I found some of my deeply-held beliefs being challenged on a regular basis - something that forced me to sit down, review the facts, and come to a conclusion on whether or not I should / needed to change my ideologies toward certain subjects; something I’ll be forever grateful for.

Before my graduation, I started an internship at Blinkfire Analytics. Blinkfire is a real-time software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that uses artificial intelligence and computer vision technology to spot brands in images and videos across social media platforms. Upon spotting these brands, Blinkfire’s platform is used as a tool by rights holders (federations, leagues, teams, players, and brands) to understand and value their partner’s return on investment (ROI). This is becoming critical as the sponsorship marketplace continues to expand, as well as the shift to OTT content becomes more prevalent.

When I started, I was fully aware of most social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Sina Weibo, but was unaware of some of the complexities involved with advertising on these platforms. Since April, I’ve been a sponge soaking up as much knowledge as possible. From cost per engagements (CPEs) to cost per thousand impressions (CPMs) and engagement rates to keeping track of the plethora of intriguing digital activations that are produced throughout the year -- all of these have now become part of my “lingo”.

In addition to expanding my vocabulary, I’ve chosen four things that have shaped my initial months at Blinkfire:

1. Storytelling - Data, data, data. Over the last two years, 90% of the data in the world was generated, a truly astonishing statistic.  With this influx of data, what’s becoming critically important is how to effectively communicate insights from that data. At Blinkfire, we often point to our “80/20” rule - we aim to empower organizations to spend 20% of their time gathering the necessary data from our platform and 80% analyzing the data to frame their respective stories.
2. Make Mistakes - Sh*t happens, and all you can do is learn. I’ve made plenty of mistakes in the first few months, but those mistakes have enabled me to learn more - a lucrative trade if you ask me.  As the late Vince Lombardi once said, “It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up.”
3. Business Intelligence Platforms - During the last two years of college, I had the opportunity to work with Tableau for several classroom projects, as well as some consulting work. At Blinkfire, I’ve continued to learn more about various BI platforms that are extremely powerful, particularly Google Data Studio. While relatively new, Data Studio provides an easy to use interface and variety of API connections (like Blinkfire), that make effectively communicating a story much easier.
4. Teamwork - As a recent graduate, I am consistently awed by my coworkers and superiors. By demanding excellence from themselves, it collectively pushes the group to demand excellence as a whole. And, in order to be excellent as a whole, constant communication and teamwork is necessary, something I’ve had the chance to experience and grow into.

To conclude, I've learned a lot in this past year and a lot of it has to do with the continued evolution of digital media and advertising.  In addition, with the vast amounts of data available, I'm happy and excited to be at a company that enables organizations to tell their own stories. Through the process of immersing myself in the industry, I’d like to think I’ve gotten better at telling my own story as well.