You must spend time in NYC to really understand the media world, both the old and the new!

Where are the world’s best digital (and non-digital?) media professionals? I claim they are still in the Big Apple, New York City.

London is really strong in media (planning / buying), the Bay Area has it’s ad/tech companies, and lots of digital creative innovation seems to be coming out of Asia. Although one can learn much from all these, and we are privileged to meet great professionals in all these places and beyond, I am on average most impressed by the media industry experts I meet in NYC. This seems to ring true both for folks knowing the “Old stuff” like TV advertising & the rapidly evolving media publisher business models, and it definitely holds true for the “New stuff”, such as Analytics, Media Measurement, Big Data, and Ad Platform/Network utilization. Often I am deeply impressed with the NYC media pros by their serious experience from different fields within the media industry, as well as their level of knowledge about their area of focus and the players in that market.

Having worked in and with the media industry in various capacities only for somewhere between 5 to 10 years, I do get that I don’t have a complete picture of what is going on (and where) in this massive, fragmented and rapidly evolving industry. Thus, take these notes just as personal impressions from the last few years, and as my two cents for the debate of where to find the best knowledge & people for your media / mobile start-up.