Late review units, travel, and a bulging content schedule
Hands up: today’s newsletter is probably going to be a bit of a ramble. To be honest, it’s more of a journal entry than anything else, but I guess that’s partly the reason I opened this Substack account.
It’s a window into my mind. And, today, a window into the mind of a very jet-lagged content creator who is facing the busiest period of the tech calendar and an equally bulging production schedule.
This is going to be fun. Hopefully.
I’m writing this in the back of a car on the way home from China, where I’ve just spent four days moving between product briefings, keynotes, product demonstrations, building tours, and some driving range action. No, really. This was a long-haul press trip, and if you’re familiar with such jaunts, you’ll understand how I’m feeling right now: tired, overwhelmed with information, and conscious that normal service must resume - immediately.
I love this part of my job, but there’s a frustrating juxtaposition in which I’m placed each time where I equally loathe the time away from my family and in particular, my little son, who is too young to understand why dad isn’t there. It’s part and parcel of covering tech for a living, though, and invites to such events are both a privilege in terms of brand and product access (and the opportunities to strike up friendships with industry peers) and an indication that your hard work hasn’t gone unnoticed.
However, the problem with the tech industry is that these launch events and product briefings arrive with incredibly short notice and often clash with other events from competing brands. That’s frustrating enough but it’s somehow even more challenging when two events arrive just days apart. I now have four days at home and in the studio (technically, two for the latter, given that today is a Friday) before I head to Berlin on Tuesday for IFA (Europe’s answer to CES) where I will remain until next Sunday.
Oh, and then iPhone season kicks in.
Amongst all these shenanigans, there are a bunch of devices that need reviewing and sponsor obligations that need fulfilling. A further challenge this year is that several of these review units are late, for reasons I won’t go into. This can’t always be helped and I don’t envy anyone whose job it is to distribute that hardware among journalists and YouTubers. But it does complicate things a bit, on my end.
The good news is that I do have a team these days, and while they’re always immeasurably brilliant at keeping the business engine humming, they do come into their own during periods like this. It has been all hands to the pump in terms of event attendance (I can’t be in London and Shenzhen at the same time, even if my Instagram story feed might suggest otherwise) and we’re working hard to ensure the production schedule doesn’t drive us all insane. That means managing our expectations and those of the brands whose products we’re committed to reviewing.
I’ll sign this note off once again by confirming that this remains the best job in the world and I wouldn’t swap it for anything else. You can just expect a similar ranty ramble like this every August.
Until next time…