Raven B. - Outside Is In
User Interface Designer with 20+ years in Startups, SaaS, Healthcare, and e-Learning
DID: 2016
I grew up feeling like I never fit in anywhere. Moving often, new cities, new schools, and new social groups meant that, I became comfortable feeling like an outsider. I was a nerd when it wasn’t cool, and spent more time programming computers, playing with reel-to-reel tape decks, and making weird music than socializing with others my age. I valued my time alone. I didn’t appreciate at the time how well that would serve me later in life.
As I got older, I felt more like an outsider as I watched my friends and peers grow up and make the best of what the world had to offer, pursuing careers and committing to the daily grind in hopes of extracting some great reward at the end of it all. I never felt I could trust the promises this way of life offered. I have always felt that if the work I do doesn’t feel rewarding in the moment, there is something wrong in the choices I made that led me to that work.
“Trusting your intuition isn’t something that is well ingrained in our education or work culture. If anything, we are taught to ignore our better judgment, to soldier on in the path we have chosen, until we have run ourselves aground with life choices that are no longer tenable, or fulfilling enough to feel worthwhile.”
Being a nerd and an outsider has served me well in my career path, in a zig-zag kind of way. I developed an understanding of computer programming that opened the door to many job opportunities, and my interest in graphic design led me into a niche area, User Experience design, which has been one of the most rewarding kinds of work I have done.
I’ve worked with some great people in marketing agencies, startups, and fortune 500 tech companies, but working in full-time position always presented the same problem: I got bored. If you’re working in User Experience and you’re doing it right, eventually, you run out of things to do. In 2017 I was let go from a full-time position on amicable terms. They were a small startup, their funding had run out, and after 2 years of revamping their UX, the work was done. My employer became a client, and I would continue to do occasional work for them when they needed touch-ups.
Working as an independent contractor opened up new opportunities, with some clients in other provinces, and others in the US. The switch to being an entrepreneur is not always easy, there is no manual for it, but what I learned over time is that I could gain more stability working independently than I could working in a full-time position. The IT industry is too volatile and unpredictable to offer the kind of stability previous generations could expect from a job. Having a few irons in the fire, with a variety of clients and projects, was better for business, and better also for my overall well-being. I don’t get bored. Nothing keeps you on your toes like being stumped by a problem, and working with a variety of clients in a variety of industries presents new challenges and new learning opportunities on the daily.
“Making that leap to self-employment comes with lots of risk, but for me, the benefits have always outweighed these risks. Being able to choose who I work with, and the terms I work on, has allowed me to find more fulfillment in the work I do, and more importantly, have more free time and flexibility in my way of life.”
I have always had an interest in music, arts and culture, and I’ve worked on a variety of community projects in this area, but the dream for me has always been to find a business model that would allow me to do this kind of work as a career. As it turns out, people who work in IT, the nerds, the creatives, the entrepreneurs, are often the same people who are supporting our local music, art galleries, and film festivals.
So many many of my friends and colleagues are closet artists, and after a series of conversations, a small group of us realized that with strength in numbers, there could be a business model that would allow independent creatives to develop their careers, alongside artists and musicians who can benefit from a supportive and collaborative community.
These conversations led to the formation of Industrial Parks Collective. Drawing on our local heritage as an industrial town, we built it on the idea that what artists and creative professionals seek most is a way to earn a living doing what they love, and we can make that easier by creating a network that offers the same kinds of benefits industrial businesses have simply by being in close proximity.
Growing up as a nerd and a loner helped me to pursue my own interests and trust my own intuition about things, but finding a community among people with similar interests has made it possible to do things I couldn’t do alone. In a way, finding a community of peers helps to support our individual needs and goals. So for me, the path to independence has come from finding other nerds, loners, and creatives who share common interests in the broader community.