By Jeremy Derksen

The radio crackles through a swirling white deluge: “Thirty seconds.” Those are two words warning avalanche techs that a charge is about to be detonated. It’s routine procedure for ski resort avalanche control, but the risks would make most of us nervous.

“We’ve got unstable weather, remote locations…the destructive forces of nature. And on top of that, we’re handling explosives,” says Troy Leahey, an avalanche forecaster at Revelstoke Mountain Resort in British Columbia. “Risk is a combination of probability, consequence and timing. We mitigate that as much as we can, but working in the industry for a while we become comfortable with the risks.” An element of personal, along with professional, risk not only comes with Leahey’s job – recognizing how to work with it makes him good at what he does.

Most of us won’t face the physical challenges or life-threatening conditions Leahey faces, but taking professional risks can be a good thing. Our instinct is to avoid risk. After all, too much risk could jeopardize your job, pension and house. Widespread corporate risk has undone financial institutions and rocked the global economy

But avoiding risk is impossible and, it turns out, unwise. Without it, business stagnates, careers stall. “Risk aversion can prevent us from looking at opportunities as they arise,” says Michael Ungar, a sociology professor at Dalhousie University, in Halifax. “As a result, we may jump too late rather than anticipate change.”

Why is shopping for shoes more fun for some people than shopping for groceries? Pscyhologists and economists have found that some purchasing decisions can buy a little slice of happiness. As Elizabeth Dunn, a University of British Columbia psychology professor told the Boston Globe, “Just because money doesn’t buy happiness doesn’t mean money cannot buy happiness. People just might be using it wrong.” The money that is.

In “Happiness: A Buyer’s Guide,” the Globe made the analogy that treating a friend (or colleague) to lunch will make you happier than buying a new outfit. “Splurging on a vacation,” the story continued, “makes us happy in a way that splurging on a car may not.”

A friend of mine once described a similar sentiment. “I prefer to buy experiences, not products.” (She’s a salesperson with a background in marketing, by the way.) Marketers have long picked up on this, selling the more complex, shiftier commodity of an experience for a premium. If you can make someone feel like they’re doing something good by upgrading the experience, all the better. And if you can hook they by giving them a taste of the experience – hence the neologism “trysuming” – your product, er, experience, is golden.

Happiness is everywhere these days. On mugs from Dollarama, in books (such as the new Happiness Project) and on the web (e.g. We Feel Fine). There are happy companies, happy cities and even a Happy Job Search. Tara Hunt, a Canadian social media expert working in San Francisco is even working on a book about happiness as a business model. And that’s not even getting into the niceness movement. As Slate blogger and Happiness Project author Gretchen Rubin puts it, “Making people happy make people happy.” Now if only happiness grew on trees. U

What was she thinking? In January 2009, as the economy started to fail, Eve Lessard traded her steady job in a human resources department for self employment. She took a few months off and then in April started bHired.ca, a freelance HR firm, on a shoestring budget from her Montreal studio apartment. “I started from scratch. I didn’t plan a lot,” she says. “I’d saved a little money but not a big investment for starting a company. I didn’t even have a laptop.” In a work ethic that speaks of her self-employment acumen, Lessard has found a path to early success – from her kitchen table.

How did you decide to become a free agent?

My parents were both entrepreneurs. It sounds cheesy, but maybe I have it in my blood. In 2006 I wanted to do it. I lived in Calgary and I had an idea to recruit eastern Canadians to work for western companies. The timing wasn’t right. It never happened. I returned to Montreal and then last summer it came back into my mind. I gave my boss four months notice. I knew all my life I was going to work for myself when the timing was right, and the timing was good for me but not with the economy. [She laughs.] I didn’t know in 2008 that we would be in a recession. When it was time to leave my job [in January 2009] I thought ‘What did I do?’

Are you recruiting for western companies?

No, the economy isn’t good for it right now. I’m doing recruitment working with small- or medium-sized companies that don’t have HR departments or big companies that need help. I don’t want to be a placement agency. I want to do things with integrity, quality versus quantity. I want exclusive contracts with companies, but right now I take what people offer me.

What were your fears when you started?

I didn’t have one that kept me up worrying. I can – and have – changed my life in 30 minutes. I like adventure. I decided I’m going to do it and see what happens. It was a good time for me to try because I don’t have kids and I’m young.

What skills do you need to be self employed?

You need a thick skin. You face rejection all the time. I thought I had thick skin – when I worked for someone else I had no problem picking up the phone and asking for things – but now I find myself hyperventilating before making a call. You have to be okay with not being perfect. You have to stay yourself. I know I can succeed if I be myself. You have to be organized and manage your time. It’s easy when you work at home to start to do the laundry and a thousand other things instead of what you’re supposed to be doing. It’s hard to keep a schedule. I get up at 7 a.m. and go for a walk to get a coffee so that I feel like I’m going somewhere.

Do you have any home office guilty pleasures?

I love 3 p.m. during the summer. I can get up and take a one hour walk. That’s awesome. When I’m sick or hung-over I can stay in bed. I love that. I can go on a trip anytime; I don’t have to ask someone. I always felt like I was in a cage when I worked for someone else.

What’s the downside to self employment? Anything you miss from your 9 to 5 past?

I like to work in quiet, so I used to get really angry with my colleagues who were loud. But I miss taking coffee with colleagues and happy hour. I miss having a team. And I really miss having a boss who can answer my questions. I have lots of questions, but no one to ask.

How did you feel when you were suddenly working for yourself?

There’s nothing like that feeling when you get that first cheque. It’s awesome. I did something all by myself and really earned it. That’s the feeling I was looking for.

How will you know you’re a success?

By next year I’d like to hire someone to help me part time. The day I do that, when I have lots of clients, things are going well. U

Free Agent, Pt. 1: How Vancouver’s Jeff Hamada grew a small online community into a global phenomenon – and made some money in the process

Jeff Hamada has succeeded where so many web-savvy people have not. And he did it all by accident. Hamada took a blog, created a loyal, interactive online community and then monetized the whole deal. The result was Booooooom! – that’s seven Os – which gets 1.7 million visitors every month. A sign of how successful it is: GM advertises on the site.

Hamada trolls the net for work by virtually unknown artists and posts it under the sections Art! Design! Film! Music! Photo! Junk! and Projects! (exclamation marks are his). Unlimited talked with Hamada, a former Electronic Arts staffer who graduated from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, about his unexpected international following.

How was Booooooom! born?
I took a year off school and worked at Electronic Arts. EA paid for my final year, but when I graduated, the company didn’t have a job open for me. I was sad about that. I started freelancing as a graphic designer about four years ago. I started Booooooom! about a 18 months ago as a personal blog to show all the art I made and the trips I took.

It’s changed a lot, though.
It changed early on. I didn’t think it was interesting for people to hear what I was doing, so I started posting art I liked, mostly work by lesser-known people on Flickr. I’d post something, email the artist to say I like his work and that I’d posted it on my site. The artist would get excited about it and mention it on his website. It became a conversation for art admirers. The site grew mostly by word of mouth. About six months in, everything went crazy, and now I get 1.9 million page hits a month. I wasn’t trying to make it grow. I just lost control.

Describe Booooooom!
It’s a daily inspiration site about photography and drawing. It’s different than a lot of other sites out there. I find artwork that I like by artists all over the world and I post it on the site, like an online art gallery. I really want to create a collaborative community.

I have another side to the site where we do group collaboration projects. I come up with an idea for a project and ask people to contribute. It’s an avenue for people to get inspired and make stuff that inspires others. I hope it becomes more of a focus of the site.

Could you describe a few group projects?
The last group project was a music video. Everyone downloaded the same music, filmed their own footage and submitted it. I stitched all the footage together. (See the footage here).

How much time does it take to maintain the site?
Now it’s a full-time job. I spend eight to 10 hours a day working on it. When I had freelance clients, I’d work on the site all night. I set it up to have three posts a day, so no matter where someone lives, when they go to the site there’s something new for them to see.

Jeff Hamada’s own art work. Hamada has worked for clients such as Converse.

How does the site generate revenue?
This is something I’m still learning about. There are three ways to make money: You get paid to write about a product. I’ve never done that and I’ve turned down a lot of opportunities. Or you can run advertisements from networks. I work with three or four networks that represent a bunch of companies. They pitch campaigns to me and I pick ones that work for the site. The third way is by having local companies in Vancouver sponsor the site. This is a one-to-one relationship.

The trickiest partnerships are with networks, because the products a network wants to advertise on your site are not always a good fit. They also want to sign long-term contracts, meaning that you lose control of what ads appears. But I can be pickier the more popular the site becomes.

Why do you think the site is so popular and continues to grow?
I am obsessed with analyzing the site and improving things that aren’t getting lots of hits. I paid a friend to make it more searchable and the topic I chose helped. No big sites are collecting the work that I’m collecting and there’s nothing going on for the community side of a lot of blogs. I put a lot of time into the site to make it feel alive.

There’s a stigma about art that only experts can talk about it. I try and make art inclusive. No matter what your expertise, you’re allowed to comment about the stuff you see. You don’t need credentials. I think the overall feeling is open and accepting.

Content-wise, I was uncovering a lot of unknown people, like people with only 30 followers. But when I mention one artist, he tells all his followers and then 30 people are checking out the site.

What would you like to see Booooooom! become?
I want to take it offline. I want to see some of the art on the site be shown in a [bricks-and-mortar] art gallery. I want the site to generate interest in the artists I feature. Beyond that I want to travel and meet the artists I cover and write about it. I want to publish a book of art. I don’t want to get rich. I’m not a business person that started this site thinking I could make money from it. The site is a lot bigger than the site I originally imagined. I’m definitely missing an opportunity to monetize completely, but I don’t want to be the mega-corporation of art sites.

Why?
My audience is a tricky demographic. It can get turned off by advertising if it isn’t done right. I could lose credibility really easily, especially if I include some covert ads. U

Stuart Bailey is a private person – at least when it comes to work. In agreeing to speak with Unlimited about his job, for instance, he cheerfully and apologetically said, “I can only speak for myself, not for the government.” That’s because Bailey is an information management and privacy strategist for the Ontario Ministry of Finance, where he navigates the complex, sometimes intangible and often confidential world of data. Not that he’s necessarily trading in top-secret information – “I don’t have a lot of sensitive material,” he admits – but for someone whose work is all about managing, sharing (and sometimes not sharing) information, Bailey is sensitive to the challenges of describing what he does without saying too much. He gives it a try.

The Man Who Wasn’t There: Stuart Bailey’s official office at the Ministry of Finance

“My job is to help regular people in different program areas integrate practice and information into their daily work.” Huh? “Really, it’s helping people deal with information overload,” Bailey adds. Oh, right.

That could range from helping staffers manage email to helping colleagues understand the logistics and legalities around sharing information. “Storage is cheap, but finding it is very expensive,” Bailey says. A gigabyte of storage might cost only 20 cents, but a company will have to shell out another $1,300 or so to manage, share and protect that information. “It’s not just about an object sitting in a space.”

“The type of work I do is about understanding broad abstractions. Information,” he points out, “is always part of something else that you do.” In that sense, we are each de facto information managers, even though we might not consider this part of our real jobs. It is always, Bailey explains, wrapped up in our other tasks.

After earning a BA in cultural studies and philosophy from Trent University, Bailey went on to complete a master’s in information studies at the University of Toronto. Warm and engaging, his philosophy background quickly surfaces. “A large part of the work I do is – pardon me for lapsing into code – to understand basic metaphysics, entities, attributes and relationships. I have to operate in abstract areas. Privacy is not a monolithic object. It’s not a like a shoe,” he says. “A shoe will have certain dimensions, it goes on your foot, you can wear it in certain weather. But privacy could be a whole range of things.”

Bailey’s Virtual Office

Bailey, whose official mailing address is for the Central Agencies Cluster at the Ministry of Finance in Toronto, in actuality divides his time between three offices.

Bailey telecommutes from his couch-office

+ This office in the picture is where I’m stationed, but sometimes I work with the rest of the team in Oshawa. I also work at home. My employer has a great teleworking project and a lot of flexibility. I spend more time focusing on work and less on additional stressors like whether I’ll make it home in time to pick up my daughter before her daycare closes.

+ I have one computer and BlackBerry. It’s not like I produce a certain number of widgets a day. Where I’m located is sometimes not as important. I don’t always have to be tied to a desk, but I do have to ingest, analyze and provide comment on information for colleagues.

+ Yeah, sometimes I can’t find things. It’s like asking a ditch-digger where you put the shovel. Well, you can just find another shovel.

+ That’s a tennis ball on my desk. I bounce it around to relieve stress or think about things in a different way. Sometimes the best way to focus on an abstract problem is not to focus on it. You have to let the brain refresh and let your mind wander.

+ Those boxes are filled with paperwork. Although I work a lot with electronic media, I like the tactile quality of reaching for an article. I have to stay on top of new developments such as the use of wikis or policy development or a recent court decision. I make sure I don’t keep more around than I need. U

Jeff Hamada has succeeded where so many web-savvy people have not. And he did it all by accident. Hamada took a blog, created a loyal, interactive online community and then monetized the whole deal. The result was Booooooom! – that’s seven Os – which gets 1.7 million visitors every month. A sign of how successful it is: GM advertises on the site.

Hamada trolls the net for work by virtually unknown artists and posts it under the sections Art! Design! Film! Music! Photo! Junk! and Projects! (exclamation marks are his). Unlimited talked with Hamada, a former Electronic Arts staffer who graduated from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, about his unexpected international following.

How was Booooooom! born?
I took a year off school and worked at Electronic Arts. EA paid for my final year, but when I graduated, the company didn’t have a job open for me. I was sad about that. I started freelancing as a graphic designer about four years ago. I started Booooooom! about a 18 months ago as a personal blog to show all the art I made and the trips I took.

It’s changed a lot, though.
It changed early on. I didn’t think it was interesting for people to hear what I was doing, so I started posting art I liked, mostly work by lesser-known people on Flickr. I’d post something, email the artist to say I like his work and that I’d posted it on my site. The artist would get excited about it and mention it on his website. It became a conversation for art admirers. The site grew mostly by word of mouth. About six months in, everything went crazy, and now I get 1.9 million page hits a month. I wasn’t trying to make it grow. I just lost control.

Describe Booooooom!
It’s a daily inspiration site about photography and drawing. It’s different than a lot of other sites out there. I find artwork that I like by artists all over the world and I post it on the site, like an online art gallery. I really want to create a collaborative community.

I have another side to the site where we do group collaboration projects. I come up with an idea for a project and ask people to contribute. It’s an avenue for people to get inspired and make stuff that inspires others. I hope it becomes more of a focus of the site.

Could you describe a few group projects?
The last group project was a music video. Everyone downloaded the same music, filmed their own footage and submitted it. I stitched all the footage together. (See the footage here).

How much time does it take to maintain the site?
Now it’s a full-time job. I spend eight to 10 hours a day working on it. When I had freelance clients, I’d work on the site all night. I set it up to have three posts a day, so no matter where someone lives, when they go to the site there’s something new for them to see.

Jeff Hamada’s own art work. Hamada has worked for clients such as Converse.

How does the site generate revenue?
This is something I’m still learning about. There are three ways to make money: You get paid to write about a product. I’ve never done that and I’ve turned down a lot of opportunities. Or you can run advertisements from networks. I work with three or four networks that represent a bunch of companies. They pitch campaigns to me and I pick ones that work for the site. The third way is by having local companies in Vancouver sponsor the site. This is a one-to-one relationship.

The trickiest partnerships are with networks, because the products a network wants to advertise on your site are not always a good fit. They also want to sign long-term contracts, meaning that you lose control of what ads appears. But I can be pickier the more popular the site becomes.

Why do you think the site is so popular and continues to grow?
I am obsessed with analyzing the site and improving things that aren’t getting lots of hits. I paid a friend to make it more searchable and the topic I chose helped. No big sites are collecting the work that I’m collecting and there’s nothing going on for the community side of a lot of blogs. I put a lot of time into the site to make it feel alive.

There’s a stigma about art that only experts can talk about it. I try and make art inclusive. No matter what your expertise, you’re allowed to comment about the stuff you see. You don’t need credentials. I think the overall feeling is open and accepting.

Content-wise, I was uncovering a lot of unknown people, like people with only 30 followers. But when I mention one artist, he tells all his followers and then 30 people are checking out the site.

What would you like to see Booooooom! become?
I want to take it offline. I want to see some of the art on the site be shown in a [bricks-and-mortar] art gallery. I want the site to generate interest in the artists I feature. Beyond that I want to travel and meet the artists I cover and write about it. I want to publish a book of art. I don’t want to get rich. I’m not a business person that started this site thinking I could make money from it. The site is a lot bigger than the site I originally imagined. I’m definitely missing an opportunity to monetize completely, but I don’t want to be the mega-corporation of art sites.

Why?
My audience is a tricky demographic. It can get turned off by advertising if it isn’t done right. I could lose credibility really easily, especially if I include some covert ads. U

This is the age of endless internships, job offers that evaporate just as you get ready to sign the contract, and constantly shifting networks. Finding a new opportunity is no longer about simply applying to a posting or only about meeting one key person (though it doesn’t hurt). Which means that job seekers need to bone up on their math skills and combine two or more strategies to make a move.

Black Bird Tees resume T-shirts, via Cool Blog

Twitter + LinkedIn

HOW IT ADDS UP Establish your personal brand on Twitter, tweeting about the industry you want to enter, then drive people to LinkedIn for the hard facts about your education and work experience. Also seek out the Twitter-based search engines like Twitter Job Search, a beta site that lets you refine your search by such parameters as location, salary, job description and tweet frequency. From our browse it looks good for people working in advertising, sales and management. Sample positions: Sales rep at Molson Canada in Toronto and finance clerk at Vancouver Coastal Health Authority. Bonus: Looking international? Check out the nifty Google-powered Job Map widget.

+ How to Find a Job on Twitter, Mashable

+ LinkedIn: The secret to the online business network’s success, the Telegraph

Mentorship + Internships

HOW IT ADDS UP Finding a position is about who you know. But it’s also about what who you know knows. Follow? A mentor has made mistakes so you don’t have to. Pair that with an internship (or two) and you can bank work experience and a reference.

+ Deloitte Women’s Initiative for Leadership Learning, Alberta Venture

+ What to Look for in an Internship, Santa Clara University

Education + Volunteering

HOW IT ADDS UP School isn’t just for credit; it’s an opportunity to discover areas you’re interested in (and will likely succeed at) and make connections that take you beyond graduation. Volunteering in your area of education opens up your network, shows commitment to your field and might lead to your next job. One person from Ontario that we spoke with volunteered in a national organization with members across Canada, which put her in touch with her future boss, an entrepreneur in Western Canada looking for a second-in-command. U

+ LifeHappens: School, Unlimited

+ Online Education, Unlimited

On my last stop of the trip, autumn arrives in the form of a cold wind ripping through Saskatoon’s streets. I head to the Mendel Art Gallery, not for the art per se, but for the coffee (I’m told its cafe, Museo, serves the best espresso in town). While the rest of the city is quiet this Sunday afternoon, visitors jam into the gallery to see three new exhibitions. I flag down a curatorial assistant, who introduces me to Troy Gronsdahl, alone in the basement, away from the crowds, where he plans the popular programming of the Saskatoon’s best arts institution.

VITALS: Troy Gronsdahl, public programs assistant, Saskatoon

For those unfamiliar with how museum programming works, could you explain your job?
I handle a range of programs, write interpretative texts, help with the website and develop new media. I manage our drop-in DIY art space called StudioXPRESS. People can work with professional art materials and the activities are designed to dig deeper into the themes of the exhibitions. I also spearheaded and launched a podcast that’s sort of like Mendel Radio. I interview artists or curators and play music by Saskatchewan artists. Museums are constantly going through self-critical analysis: What are we doing? How can we do it better? Are we reaching our audience? Are we responsible to our community?

How did you become a jack-of-all-trades Saskatoon’s art scene?
One of the great, but also most challenging, parts of working in the arts is that is is chronically understaffed. You learn a lot of different jobs and take on many roles.

As an artist and musician, I’ve always worked on DIY projects. I run an indie hip-hop label, Clothes Horse Records and an online record shop which used to have a bricks-and-mortar shop. It was a vanity venture that ended in… [laughs] personal failure. I’ve also had about five years of gallery experience before the Mendel, doing arts communication and a website, installing shows, running an arts placement program, working with artists, organizing talks. I’ve picked up a lot of skills along the way.

You’re definitely immersed.
My pet peeve is when art organizations hire from outside the community. Art jobs are rare and competitive, so it creates a fracture. They’ll parachute someone in from Toronto with a more illustrious professional background and that person doesn’t know anybody here or the needs of the community. They don’t have the sensitivity that comes from being a part of a place. So, yeah, I’m glad they picked me. U

Laura Trethewey is riding the train from Toronto to Vancouver and meeting regular Canadians along the way for our Job Training series. Every city she stops in she’ll ask one regular person about what they do for a living. Unlimited is posting the conversations on our interactive map.

While checking in my cumbersome bicycle at the Jasper Train Station, the VIA Rail agent asks what I do for a living. I’m used to asking other people that question, so I stumble, “Uh, um, well, I’m a freelance writer.” He’s intrigued, and asks if I’m working on any stories. I tell the agent about Unlimited’s Job Training series and he says immediately, “You should talk to Janice. She’s a character!” I’m glad I did.

VITALS: Janice Branch, station service attendant, Jasper

What does a station service agent do?
Half the job is customer service: checking in luggage and answering questions. When the train is in the station, it’s an intense hour of switching luggage on and off the train and assisting passengers. The work pace is a challenge. The first few hours of your shift are relaxed and then the train pulls in and we have to get it serviced as fast as possible.

What are the perks of the job?
I never want to work a 9-to-5 job. I work 25 hours a week for Via and then as a server at a restaurant in Jasper the rest of the time. Some days I work at the station from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m., which means I can mountain bike or hike in the morning. Everything I want to do is just outside my door. Other days I work from 11 to 3 and then rush over to the restaurant and serve until midnight. I like having a varied schedule. Plus, my “office” has a great view of the Rockies.

Right now this job only runs six months a year because there are fewer passengers during the winter. It takes about five years to work up the ladder and get a full-time senior staff job here. During the summer, I save on gas money by riding my bike to work. Then during the winter I live comfortably on my savings and travel. Last winter, I went to Nepal. Right now, it’s important that I have the flexibility of half a year off. At the same time, I know that in a few years I’ll work a steady job.

Does travelling help your job?
I’ve lived on every continent, so I can put myself in other traveller’s shoes. Sometimes people will ask you a question about bus service or something that isn’t related to Via, but I understand that. When you’re travelling, you just need information and I happen to be standing there, so I’ll help out. I also speak French and Spanish. That comes in handy quite a bit!

Working for Via means you can live anywhere in Canada. Are you tempted to hitch a ride somewhere else like, say, Pukatawagan, Manitoba?
I can’t imagine living anywhere other than Jasper. When I was looking to settle down in Canada, I visited Jasper for two weeks and I just knew I was staying for good. I do miss friends and family in my hometown, Bathurst [New Brunswick], but sometimes a position opens up there and I’m like “Nah. I’m here to stay.” U

Laura Trethewey is riding the train from Toronto to Vancouver and meeting regular Canadians along the way for our Job Training series. Every city she stops in she’ll ask one regular person about what they do for a living. Unlimited is posting the conversations on our interactive map.

At the Strathcona Farmers’ Market off Edmonton’s Whyte Avenue, I meet two volunteers from CJSR 88.5 FM, which is the University of Alberta’s campus radio station. After a mere 24 hours in Edmonton, I’ve heard a few people praise the station for its diverse programming and alternative news coverage. I was sure there was a brain running the show, and it turns out to belong to news director Samantha Power. Volunteers at the farmers’ market slip me her card.

VITALS: Samantha Power, news director, CJSR Radio, Edmonton

What does a radio news director do?
The station has a mandate to report on alternative, under-represented, marginalized and local communities. I train the news volunteers to do all the reporting, editing and production work themselves. I ensure that we’re covering a wide variety of issues: environmental, queer, feminist, arts, culture and politics. I also work with campus stations across the country and exchange local stories with them. On Fridays, I co-host a heavy metal music program and a news round up.

Do newbies expect to just grab a mic and start talking?
People sometimes come through the door and don’t understand that our volunteers create the whole story from beginning to end. They listen to the CBC and think “Yeah, I can do that,” but don’t realize that there may be five people working on one piece. A bigger challenge is training people in proper research skills and story collection. I feel a lot of responsibility to the community to report stories that represent what’s happening. And I feel responsibility to the volunteers, too. I want them to feel empowered covering that story.

How did you snag the only paying job at CJSR?
I’ll graduate next April with a BA. in political science and creative writing. I’ve always had a full-time job while I was getting my degree, so I can only do one course per semester. That’s put a real delay on my studies; I started in 2001. I volunteered for CJSR for five years and, during that time, I was also the vice-president, external relations and then the president for the student union. I got to know a lot of union organizers and political groups in the community; now I can direct volunteer reporters to the right reps.

What do you want to accomplish before you leave the CJSR’s World Domination Headquarters (aka the  Students’ Union Building) for good?
One goal is to set research guidelines for the news department. Community radio stations are often the last bastion of independent reporting, and 2010 is going to be an important year for Canada with the G8 Summit and the Winter Olympics. I don’t think community stations should ever try to compete with mainstream media – they should stick with their communities – but there will be huge opportunities for alternative reporting in the coming year. U

Laura Trethewey is riding the train from Toronto to Vancouver and meeting regular Canadians along the way for our Job Training series. Every city she stops in she’ll ask one regular person about what they do for a living. Unlimited is posting the conversations on our interactive map.