Everything Girl

Our Man of the Moment for October is Carmi Levy: techie, photographer, blogger, and unabashed family man. He can paint a verbal picture of an every-day occurrence, capture it with his camera with a perspective no one else has, and then explain the technology behind both in ways no one can fail to grasp. Smart, funny, and confident enough to wear a Winnie the Pooh beret in public, he’s also an omnipresent media personality in Canada. If you haven’t seen, heard, or read him yet, we’re certain you soon will.

Please tell our readers a bit about yourself.

My goals are simple: enjoy my time on this planet and leave something behind that’s more significant than a retirement party replete with a gold watch and a meeting room filled with old Polaroid® pictures marking my promotion from junior data entry clerk to intermediate data entry clerk. At the end of the day, it has to mean something. I don’t know precisely what that something is, yet, but I do know I’m not going to find out by driving a cubicle for the rest of my working life. I owe it to my wife and kids to spend my days doing stuff that’s marginally cool, somewhat meaningful and very much worthy of a spirited discussion at the dinner table. Otherwise, why are we here?

I’ve always been the square peg in the round hole, the one who kept my parents awake at night, who forced my teachers to add an extra page on the back of my report card to explain why I was a particularly challenging student to have. With a name like mine, it’s never been easy for anyone who knows me to forget who I am. I guess I chose a line of work that makes sense, then, because conventional has never been part of who I am. I view the world through a somewhat unconventional lens, but I can’t imagine being any other way.

Corporate bios refer to you as both an “analyst” and a “strategic consultant,” while one of the hosts at AM640 Toronto refers to you as a “tech guru,” - can you describe what you actually do?

I’m a journalist by education, but somewhere along the way, I became infected with a form of technological DNA that forced me into the life of an IT geek for a while. By the time I was finished being an IT wonk and decided to go back to writing, I practically fell into this hybrid-like combination of these two apparently disparate disciplines and became a technology journalist with a strong foundation as a research analyst. I have this passionate - some might say pathological - desire to break down the needless complexity that surrounds us, to make it easy enough for my technophobe mother-in-law to understand. I learned early on that having a big vocabulary is useless if no one understands a word that you’re saying. Being able to make geeky stuff seem simple, then, is kind of related.

My original goal was to be a broadcast journalist. And I was well on my way when, during my undergrad years, I got a job in the newsroom of a fairly large radio station. I wrote scripts for the news and public affairs folks, and eventually talked my way into on-air work and an associate producer position. Somewhat oddly, I also seemed to gravitate toward the door anytime a new computer was delivered. I somehow always had the right answer whenever the lucky recipient of said machine had a question. And if something didn’t work, I knew how to make it work. It was weird: I had no formal training in computers, but the same bizarro gift that drove me to write was also pretty useful in making complex technology seem simple.

“I love those eureka moments when you know you’re on your game, and you’ve managed to help someone who, up until you meandered along, was completely locked in place.”

So fast-forward through all the media and IT jobs, and I’ve become something that even I have difficulty explaining some days. I’m a geek who’s worked in the trenches, learned how all those techie doodads work together, and can explain what it all means to anyone who wants to know. I love those eureka moments when you know you’re on your game, and you’ve managed to help someone who, up until you meandered along, was completely locked in place. It makes me feel good to know that I can give back a little as a way of honoring all the mentors who have given me so much since I was a kid.

Tell us about your time at the London Free Press?

Writing an op-ed column was probably the best gig I’ve ever had in my writing career. I had free reign to choose topics that I felt resonated with our audience. Through a very small, 650-word window, I was able to reach out to complete strangers and help them see their community - and their place within it - from a slightly different perspective. I felt connected to my city more closely through that column than I ever had previously - or have since. It cemented my belief that I was destined to churn out words for a living, and I needed to really believe in those words, to make them mine, if this writing thing was going to take off.

Thankfully, it did. And every time I look back at those carefully crafted vignettes, I feel privileged that I had to chance to learn the ropes with a paper that, for a while anyway, understood why local voices like mine needed to be heard.

You’ve also contributed to JPG magazine; which came first, writing or photography?

They actually took root in me around the same time. I got my first real job over the summer between 10th and 11th grade. Where I grew up, you graduated high school after the 11th grade, and I had already signed on to be part of the yearbook staff. My goal: get published any way I could.

I was a lifeguard at a summer camp, and when I got my last paycheck, I knew exactly what I wanted to buy with it. I always wanted my own camera to help me illustrate the poems and short stories I had written. I would read photography magazines and wonder how neat it would be to have my own serious camera, an SLR. I figured I’d learn the ins and outs of photography while building my capabilities as a writer. I brought home a Minolta XG-1, a laughably simple camera by today’s standards. But in those days, it was way beyond a 16-year-old’s abilities.

I stuck with it for years afterward, ruining more rolls of film than I care to remember, eventually upgrading my equipment as I could afford it. The photography always supported the writing, and it kind of evolved in the wake of my words. It came in handy when I was freelancing for local newspapers: I could get the story and the picture while reporters for competing papers were stuck waiting for their photographers. I can’t imagine not having both tools - a pen and a camera - in my hand when I leave the house. Kids have blankies. I have my camera bag with a notebook tucked in the side.

A Google search of your name brings up links to Reuters, Yahoo news, various Canadian television and radio news shows, and your very own page of quotes at ThinkExist.com; did you engineer this, or is it just luck and circumstance that has made your words so widely available?

I don’t think I could have envisioned any of this when I first started out. The media- related work that I’ve done has been beyond anything I ever dreamed. I think the reason I’ve made it onto so many journalists’ lists is because I call them back promptly and I give them what they need. I also treat them with the respect they deserve. It’s simple, really, but so many others in my field have apparently forgotten the lessons we all learned in kindergarten.

When I was working in radio, one of my responsibilities was booking interviews for our noontime news and public affairs show. From the moment I came in at 8 a.m., I had, maybe, a couple of hours to convince total strangers to drive across town and sit in a studio where either I or one of our anchors would relentlessly grill them. Oh, and they wouldn’t get paid, either. As glamorous as that sounds, it still bothered me that so many people didn’t want to talk to me. They either wouldn’t call back, they wouldn’t show at the appointed time, or they’d lie to my face and hope I went away. For a while, I took it personally. Then an amazing thing happened: I got to know a small group of people who really wanted to help me out, who were willing to invest a little time to help me fill that very big hour of radio. I came to rely on my Top 20, and I knew I could call any one of them, any time, any day, and they’d always come through for me.

Fast-forward a few years and I’m now on the other side. I get called by people facing tremendous deadline pressure and bosses who may or may not “get” what they’re trying to do. The right thing to do is quickly give them what they need so they can produce a report, an article, a message that resonates with their audience. I’ve been in their shoes. And by being there for them - and juggling my own accountabilities in the process, I get to pay it forward.

The net result: I get a lot of repeat calls from the same folks. Then they chat with colleagues, so I get more calls. Some days, it’s downright insane as I try to juggle work that pays the bills with inquiries from “journos.” But it’s worth it when I get a call from my parents saying our cousins saw my name in the paper in Mobile, Alabama. Most days, I still have to pinch myself that this is happening. That someone would call me out of the blue and ask me for my opinion on anything is nothing short of a blessing.

In addition to your professional work, you publish a highly popular blog. For someone so techie, blogging seems like a natural evolution, but what drew you to the medium?

I wanted to know what it was like to write for an audience without being surrounded or constrained by the infrastructure of conventional media. Blogging is writing in its purest form: no editors, no limits on what you can or cannot say. Just you, a blank screen and a “publish” button. It’s about as real, as directly connected to a reader, as you can get. The easy back-and-forth between writer and audience is something no newspaper has ever had - or ever will. Sure, I used to get a kick out of the letters to the editor, or the occasional e-mail from a reader so ticked off with something I wrote that he felt compelled to spend half his morning ripping me to shreds in a very long, elaborately worded message. But it’s so much more personal when it’s your own venue, with your own tone, surrounded by your own cast of characters. It’s like sitting around the neighborhood and having a chat with folks you may as well have known forever. It’s a natural kind of interaction that no traditional media can touch.

That said, traditional media are jumping on the blogging bandwagon because, frankly, they have no choice. The way people consume content is changing. They increasingly expect to be part of the process, to drive the conversation, to have their names heard. And they are, thanks to Web 2.0 and the emergence of new generations of social media and networking tools. It’s hard to go a day without feeling privileged that we get to exist now, when all of this is so new and exciting. It’s all potential, and whatever direction it takes is truly up to us. Pretty cool, in my book.

Most writers are also readers. Where do your reading tastes lie? What would we find on your nightstand or in the bookmarks of your browser?

I’m as eclectic a reader as I am a writer. Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald were early and lasting influences on my writing style. They could describe a scene like no one else by using words like so many layers of paint, richly covering the canvas and leaving it up to you to keep track of the colors and patterns in your head. I wanted to write like them when I grew up, to move people with words and write stories - short, long, it almost didn’t matter - that stuck in my readers’ minds long after they had closed the book and placed it back on the shelf.

Mitch Albom, author of Tuesdays with Morrie, is another writer seemingly struck by lightning at birth. No one writes about people better than he does, and his soft touch was a huge influence as I developed my own columnist’s style.

Although I’m not a big sci-fi fan, Ray Bradbury always struck me as particularly resonant because his writing was so relatable to today. I often keep a post-it with the word “poignant” stuck to the wall facing my desk. My words have to be just that. Bradbury’s always have been, even if many of his readers simply viewed his work as sci-fi. It wasn’t, and it isn’t, and I hope my future works also fail to be categorized into established genres.

The explosion of RSS feeds and readers has made it easy for me to keep up with some of the leading columnists on my BlackBerry®. I don’t always have a lot of time to read, but I like being able to grab a moment here and there - even a couple of minutes while walking the dog can often be enough for a quick shot of inspiration. PBS’s Robert Cringely is a technologist who eerily seems to not only have his finger on the pulse of the industry, but on that of society as well. Like the other writers I’ve followed throughout my life, I want to be like him when I grow up. Dan Neil, the Pulitzer-winning automotive columnist for the Los Angeles Times, writes with a frenetic sense of poetry that I can only dream of. It’s hard to finish one of his columns and not be inspired to inject more life into something you’ve already written. Joe Fiorito, who used to write for the Gazette in Montreal, now pens a column about for the Toronto Star. He writes about ordinary people and their ordinary lives, managing to find the extraordinary every time he publishes. I try to read from all over the spectrum, because you never know where you’ll find the words that’ll spark something in you.

Similarly, photographers are often art aficionados, whose work inspires you?

Ansel Adams has been my icon since a 13-year-old me wandered around a summer camp north of Montreal and shot my first roll of black and white film on a laughably ancient camera. To him, it was never about the equipment. He could out-shoot anyone with the simplest box camera. He knew more about composition and graphical storytelling than I can ever dream. His work stands the test of time, and continues to inspire anyone who wants to tell stories in two dimensions.

Read anything he’s ever written and you can easily see how he was always composing scenes in his mind, even if he didn’t have his camera with him. It’s that photographer’s mindset that makes the difference between a picture and a memorable moment.

I know from reading your blog that you are extremely devoted to your family, but also that you travel a lot. How do you balance the two?

With great difficulty. Travel is one of the tools I use to build my career. A strong career builds a future for my family. So by definition, travel is an investment in my family’s future. My wife and kids know that, and they know that my being away always - or at least hopefully - opens doors that will allow us to do more in future. I try to use my travels to teach my kids that sometimes, you need to get out of your comfort zone if you want to move to that next level. I’ve learned to never settle for the same old. By extension, they’re learning, too.

The gifts I bring home from the road help smooth things over as well.

I heard you talk about the concept of Tikkun Olam on BlogTalkRadio. Can you tell us more about what that means, generally, and what it means for you?

The phrase, Tikkun Olam, literally means “repair the world” in Hebrew. A few years back, it was the year-long theme at our children’s school, and it resonated strongly with me. It teaches us that we are all responsible for improving the world around us. It doesn’t have to be a major or obvious act. Something as simple as holding the door for someone or helping a stranger cross the street is more than enough. Our world has become so frenetically multitasked and inner-focused that we often forget the little niceties that defined life barely a generation ago. Tikkun Olam is the kind of mindset I want baked into our kids’ DNA so that, perhaps, those around them will learn by their example. It seems overly simple, even trite. But it’s the kind of rooted empathy that’s so often lacking in children today. Indeed, it’s often lacking in their parents, too, which is kind of the root of the problem.

“Our world has become so frenetically multitasked and inner-focused that we often forget the little niceties that defined life barely a generation ago.”

The fixing process, then, has to start somewhere. May as well be with me and my family.

You’re both Jewish and Canadian. Do either of these things make you feel like a minority among bloggers? Does it matter?

I’ve never wanted to be part of the majority or to be part of the so-called “in” crowd. I have no interest in fading into the mainstream, so being Jewish and Canadian has very much defined who I am and how my life has evolved. Growing up as a Jew barely a generation after the Holocaust allowed me to learn the lessons of this terrible time directly from those who survived it. From a very young age, I’ve heard their refrain, “Never again,” over and over, in countless forms. It’s been instrumental in forming my sense of righteous indignation at the core of my work as a journalist and as a blogger. I write to shed light on issues that matter, to ask questions and seek answers, to teach others and to help those around look at the world from a different perspective. I rather like rooting for the underdog because it has so much more meaning than simply going along for the ride with the popular kids. I don’t think I’d have been as passionate with a pen if I hadn’t been a Jew.

I recognize that wearing my ethnicity on my sleeve has come with its own costs along the way. I’m certain I’ve lost out on jobs because I was perceived as the Jewish Journalist. From some of the comments I’ve received on my blog and letters I’ve received while I was a columnist, I know there are people out there who would rather I keep my religious and cultural background deeply buried. My perspective? Tough. I’m proud of who I am, and I’m not about to suppress it because some people aren’t comfortable with my Jewishness. I relish the opportunity to learn about others and can’t imagine telling anyone to keep it inside. Silence is what’s gotten us into trouble so often in the past, and I have no intention of repeating that old mistake.

Being Canadian has similarly helped me carve out a bit of a different writer’s persona. We’re a very small population spread out over a huge land mass, immediately adjacent to the overwhelming cultural influence of the U.S. Our geography challenges us to reach out and connect because, let’s face it, the winters here can be long, cold and lonely. We’re a kinder, gentler nation, it seems, and we look out for those who may not be able to look out for themselves. Blogging fits that national psyche. It builds a sense of virtual community that, I suspect, isn’t taken for granted on our side of the border. I often feel like I’m sitting in the stands, watching the show. I don’t think I’d feel the same way if I weren’t Canadian. Sometimes, it’s a good thing to be at the edge of the story looking in.

You’ve been interviewed by various podcasters. Do you listen to podcasts? If so, which ones?

I’m a sucker for anything newsy or geeky. I’ve watched PBS’s NOVA since I was a kid, so I was thrilled when I realized the franchise had its own podcast, too. I’ve started watching podcasts of interview-based shows like NBC’s Meet the Press and CBS’s 60 Minutes because I can never remember when to catch them live on television. I believe interviews are an art form, and podcasts let me slow things down and learn a bit more about what works and what doesn’t.

On the geek side, This Week in Tech is a regular download, though I still can’t get past the twitty short-form! I don’t listen to or watch as many podcasts as I suppose I should because I’m more likely to read something while on the go than I am to listen to or watch it. I suppose if I drove more, I’d probably skew more toward listening to podcasts in the car. But around here, cycling with headphones is a no-no. I guess the written word really is my drug of choice.

Words and images are obviously key elements of your life, but what about music? What’s cranking out of your iPod or radio as you work?

I rarely share my playlists because I don’t want to frighten the children. When I write, I need just the right kind of music to set the tone and allow me to focus on the task at hand. If I pick the wrong music, I’m in trouble. So I tend to stick with tunes that bring me comfort. Then I listen to them over and over for months at a stretch.

I’m a huge fan of trip hop bands like Hooverphonic and Massive Attack. It’s the kind of music that paces me when I’m deep into a writing project and facing a heavy deadline. Trance music by acts such as Delerium, Brian Transeau and Above & Beyond and also helps get me into a writing groove. Movie soundtracks are another weakness of mine - and it’s never the obvious movies, either: The Truman Show (Philip Glass), Friday Night Lights (Explosions in the Sky), and Great Expectations (Tori Amos) are regular visitors to my ears. Canada seems to grow female singer-songwriters on trees, so I’ll often listen to artists like Sarah Harmer, Chantal Kreviazuk, Sarah McLachlan, Nelly Furtado and Jann Arden when I need to brainstorm or walk off some stress. I’ve been a huge Tom Cochrane fan since I was a teenager. He was a journalist before he became one of Canada’s top musicians, and he’s built his life around giving back to the musical community. He’s been named to the Order of Canada - our country’s highest honor - and in doing so has become yet another source of inspiration.

I’m particularly proud that I’ve gotten my kids to like New Order, Pet Shop Boys, Moby and Green Day. Once we realized that they had mercifully outgrown Barney and the Wiggles, we seized the opportunity to introduce them to music even my parents don’t get. I like that they’ve begun to explore their own tastes in music and are asking the kinds of questions about musicians and styles that I had never even imagined when I was their age. It won’t be long before they’re introducing me to new styles.

Corporate analyst. Tech strategist. Radio expert. Photographer. Journalist. What haven’t you done, and what can we expect from you in the future?

I haven’t published my own book. Yet. I published a best practices methodology for my former employer, a technology research firm, in 2004. But that wasn’t exactly the kind of read that’ll be studied in high school classes for generations or reviewed at book clubs. I’m already deep into at least two projects that will be ready for shopping around in 2009. If anybody knows an agent or a publisher, I’m all ears.

More than anything, I haven’t grown up. I’ve never wanted to lose the sense of wonder that I had when I was a child. Too many people seem to forget what it felt like when they were kids, when everything was new and cool and just a little bit mysterious. We asked a lot of questions then and never seemed to be satisfied with the answers that came back. Life seems to beat the innocence out of us as we fight to hold onto our jobs, pay the bills and keep all those adult-like balls in the air. I’m often laughed at for being silly, irreverent or just plain immature. I’m OK with that. I don’t much worry about what others think of me. As long as my wife and kids get me - and I know they do - then everything else is pretty immaterial. It’s a comfortable, happy place to be, and I’m lucky to be here.

You can interact with Carmi Levy via his blog, Written Inc, his Twitter feed, or most Friday evenings on AM640 Toronto.

Melissa A. Bartell earns her living by writing articles for an SEO marketing firm, and dabbles in essays and fiction on the side. She lives near Dallas, TX with her husband, two dogs, and more computers than anyone really needs. She is the Senior Editor here at All Things Girl. Find out more about her on our About Page. You can also find her at her website and various other places around the ‘net.

Share This Article »