Jonathan Chiang/The Ubyssey
Being awesome isn’t just a job title for Rick Chung.
The former UBC student tweets, blogs and drinks his way around town as the social editor for the local blog Vancouver is Awesome. As his Twitter profile says, he is a junior detective, and his job is to seek out the awesome from the mass of events happening in Vancouver every week.
“That’s probably the worst part of my day, reading all these pitches. Managing them, seeing if I can go to them or not, responding. It’s a good problem, and it’s not unusual for me to go to three or four parties in one night.”
Chung wasn’t always the prolific partier and man about town that he is now. “I think I’m more involved with UBC now than when I was a student,” he said. His metamorphosis into social butterfly didn’t come until after he graduated from UBC with a BA in political science. Chung went on to study broadcast journalism at BCIT, where he found his niche through blogging. “I just started blogging on my own…I didn’t take it seriously until just before the Olympics. I was really scared because all my friends had gotten these awesome jobs and I hadn’t even tried.”
Instead of working, Chung decided to enjoy the giant party that was Vancouver. “It was as simple as listing all the free events, going to them, walking around the city, taking pictures, and blogging about it.” Post-Olympics, Chung realized that he was making a name for himself and could turn this into something else.
“After the Olympics, I thought, that was kind of fun, and I met some cool people, and so I started to make more of it on my own. I’d go to random meet-ups, tweet-ups, general events open to anyone, and I would blog about it. And then slowly, I was meeting a ton of new people…and they’d invite me to these other, more exclusive events, and I became something of a man about town.”
Chung utilized both his online and offline personality to create jobs for himself, first as social media intern for CBC and then with Vancouver is Awesome. Networking is what he does, and he has made a career for himself as a professional partier. But make no mistake, he takes it seriously. ”I am super diligent in managing everything.”
In order to attend multiple parties per night, he has to streamline events and build relationships, like in any other career. “People are going to use you. You’re using other people, people are using you, it’s how you build a relationship.” However, instead of networking to get clients, Chung’s relationships have led to many open bars.
“Hands down, the best party was the Playboy energy drink launch party,” he said.
“It was a secret party…they turned it into a pop-up club and it was insane. There was a lounge where models would just pose nude, I have no idea why, and there was an open bar in every room. I couldn’t believe where I was.”
Though his time at UBC may have been devoid of parties, he loved studying political science and finds it to be applicable to his career now. “I always wanted to know more about the world we live in, and poli sci is really just the study of now…I love it because it’s how people deal with each other, what their roles are and how they interact.”
Social media has been an important aspect of growing his personal brand, which he attributes to his studies. “There really aren’t any rules; people are making rules all the time. That’s something that’s interesting to me. It’s just another field of how people interact and do things.”
Attached to his iPhone, the internet is Chung’s office. “Being offline for more than an hour is so painful,” he said. He writes the same way online as he does offline, offering an honest stream of consciousness to his audience.
“Sometimes when I’m tweeting, I think, why does anyone hire me?”
(+4 rating, 2 votes)
Loading ...
