Shortlisted for Business Leader of the Year

The reason for my nomination

Leadership is all about recognizing the needs and aspirations of a group and then leading them to achieve them. Too often leadership concentrates on the leader and not the led. In 2008 I found one such group who needed a community to support users of Digidesign Pro Tools software. In the last year I have gathered and galvanized a community of over 30,000 members from around the world.

All of this has happened whilst holding down a high profile job in TV Production and mostly at my own expense.

The community had three needs:

* They lacked training resources.

* They lacked software resources.

* Some of them had little or no money.

Using a blog based system the blog has delivered to this community over 100HD training videos, over 10gb of software resources, all FREE of charge.

The blog has been recognized by both users and those within AVID (the manufacturers of Pro Tools) as a major resource and of huge benefit to the users.

It has been suggested that the blog has done more for building the AVID brand than a $10million dollar marketing spend.

You can see the blog here www.airusersblog.com

You can see the WIKI entry here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_users_blog

Testimonials from within the AVID organisation:

“Russ has done an amazing job of creating and galvanizing a user community for AIR plug-ins through enthusiasm, hard work and a great vision. He has incredible energy and is full of amazing ideas about how to build a tribe, and also how to sustain it. He has real talent and passion for music creation and I hope he can carry on his great work for many years to come.” July 28, 2009

David Gould, Digidesign UK Product Specialist, Avid Technology'

In a world where community is becoming more and more fragmented, I recognized a need and then led a disparate group of people, with imagination and hard work and created and powerful online community.

Often leadership is based on personal gain, on amassing fame or fortune - this blog took the altruistic approach, that true leadership requires sacrifice, so that the group may benefit.