Everyone has a guilty pleasure. Mine is watching all the youtube clips from the many music reality shows like American Idol, The Voice, Britain’s Got Talent, etc, etc. Hours and hours, late into the night I watch one after another – any clip with more than 1M views is a must see. I get extra excited when I see a new clip trending fast and I also love re-watching the classic viral auditions with 10M+ views.
The storyline is almost always the same – a young or old, definitely quirky, often less attractive person almost certainly with a boring minimum wage job is previewed backstage before walking out on to stage to face the judges. They give an awkward but short introduction and then take a deep breath as the music is cued. The judges and crowd have been listening for hours to lackluster or disastrous auditions and before that opening note there is absolutely NO WAY to know what level of talent someone has. They can look all hipster cool and yet sing like a tortured animal … you just never quite know what undiscovered talent is right around the corner about to step on stage.
And then they open their mouths and the first line of the song comes out in an amazing, and often shockingly great way, the audience erupts while big smiles, even tears emerge across the judges faces. A new talent is discovered. Their life will never be the same. In a normal/traditional world these people would NEVER get this sort of opportunity. But talent discovery in the music business has been democratized thanks to these reality TV shows. I think the reason I am so intrigued with these singing reality show contests is that I like to think CloudFactory is doing something similar in our own industry.
Talent is equally distributed around the world but unfortunately opportunities are not.
Be that singing talent or the talent to solve problem after problem in the midst of data entry tasks. A data entry specialist is far less sexy than becoming a rockstar, but getting the opportunity to have dignified work is a dream come true for many in developing nations. Day in and day out at CloudFactory we get to discover and celebrate new talent around the world. We get to connect them to important work that power key parts of our clients’ businesses. This opportunity is about more than just a paycheck, it is an opportunity to share their talent with the world.
After living overseas for almost 7 years and meeting a lot of people from diverse backgrounds I have realized there is always more to a person than I first think. There is more of a story, more talent, more hurt, more courage, more intelligence than can be conveyed in the limited time and context that we interact with someone. That is why we simply named our new photoblog, “I am more.”
I am more. I am more talented, more complex, more delicate than you may know. I am more than my work, more than my hobbies, more than a sum of my parts. I am more than you think I am.
In closing, let’s bring this thing full circle with a new song from American Idol Season 8 finalist Danny Gokey aptly titled, “More than you think I am.”
