Indecision! Having spent about 6 or 7 years undertaking the occasional photography project for a number of different charities and non-profits on a voluntary basis, it crossed my mind several times whether I should ‘brand’ myself. One thing that definitely is not on the agenda is to turn professional! There’s something about doing things voluntarily, if money is not an object, that is immensely satisfying (you do it because its something you enjoy doing), it is emotionally rewarding (people appreciate you doing something for nothing) and if you’re lucky, you get to meet amazing people and make new friends. Furthermore, I’m not competing with professionals – the organisations I work with choose me for ‘in-house’ photography to do better than someone wit ha mobile phone!
So why brand? I can get some nice business cards, set up social media accounts, and generally keep my personal life and personal stuff separate from the things I do for other people. And apart from paying for a few business cards, it costs nothing! So here we go: PhaseFive Media is launched, cunningly known as ‘pha5e’ for short, along with Instagram and Twitter accounts (@pha5emedia) – how cool is that?
Why ‘pha5e’? there’s a short answer to that, and a long answer. The short answer is that prior to retirement, I ran my own consultancy company, PhaseFour Informatics, so now I’m just going through the next phase. The long answer deals with the origin of the name ‘PhaseFour’, which delves into the Gartner Hype Cycles, a training course that I delivered in Palm Springs, and a female delegate with a chip on her shoulder. Worthy of a separate post – shall I, shan’t I? Oh, alright then.