VuPal Hires Executive Editor

It’s not exactly late breaking news but VuPal has recently-ish hired Jay Garmon, late of CNET, as Executive Editor. In the interest of full disclosure: I am on the VuPal content staff. My involvement removed VuPal is an interesting startup and its staff developments are of interest to the local startup community.

I asked Jay to describe his position at VuPal and to tell me a little bit about his background.

I joined VuPal in April of 2008, about two weeks after I left CNET. The main focus of my job is threefold: I run a small writing staff of bloggers and script writers which will grow as we build out the site; I’ll help cultivate the online community at VuPal, once we’re ready to open the doors to members; and I’m one of the guys that brainstorms the “concept” of the site, from the business model to the feature set. Since we’re a startup, that third part is the most exciting, because I really get to help lay the groundwork for something I believe in.

So far as what VuPal does? To my mind, video is the next big content frontier online. Dial-up is dead, WiMax is coming, and Apple is putting reliable video players on phones now. Video online is common today, and will be ubiquitous soon. That’s what YouTube and sites like it have done, mainstreamed online video. It’s an important first step, but I think we’re ready to go beyond it, to do something with video besides just consume it. Let’s do more than just watch TV on your computer. Let’s actually be interactive. That’s what I want for VuPal–to pioneer Web video as an interactive medium.

Now, before all this, I spent seven years and seven days at CNET Networks, working for one of their Web properties, TechRepublic. I started out as an e-mail newsletter editor, and quickly graduated to writing some of the newsletters as well. One in particular, Geek Trivia, I wrote for over six years. That’s where I learned about online community. Geek Trivia had a loyal audience, and on a lark I “outed” myself as the writer of the newsletter, and started appearing in the TechRepublic forums to get to know my readers. They audience loved it. That led me to experiment with more community-generated and community-directed content in other newsletters, which led to me forming a team with Shawn Morton (co-founder of Profilactic) and Beth Blakely (newly of Vibrant Nation) which was charged with designing and developing community features on TechRepublic. That’s where I got my feet wet with project management and product design, and four years later I think I’m pretty good at it. Along the way, I started a blog on TechRepublic which eventually evolved into a content franchise called Geekend, which focused on the non-professional interests of IT pros. It was one of TechRepublic’s most successful ventures during my tenure with company, largely because I learned what the audience wanted to read and watch by talking to them. As for my time working on community enrichment, user-generated content and activity went from an afterthought to a primary pageview driver for TechRepublic, and a core of the site’s SEO strategy. It touches everything. I still write Geek Trivia and for the Geekend as a contractor, mostly because I’ve invested so much of myself in those brands that they’re hard to give up.