#it's kinda rigorous like it has hills etc

[technicallymedia]

Meet Tyler Woods: an interview with Technical.ly Brooklyn’s Lead Reporter

Q: Tyler, tell us what you love about your Mom and Dad.

A:  I love how my dad’s brain works. He’s smart on a different level and it’s amazing talking to him. I love all the love my mom has for the people around her and for people not even that close to her. Her ability to love is something I aspire to.

Q:  Tyler, best and worst New Yorker article you've read in recent times? Favorite New Yorker cover?

A: I can’t think of fave new yorker articles off the dome, but I LOVE the one on plant cognition by Michael Pollan. There was a great one about the president of Afghanistan I read recently one night when I couldn’t sleep. I don’t have a favorite cover, but this is my favorite cartoon. I’m gonna buy a print of it someday when I have some money and an apartment worth putting something in it.

Q: Describe your typical Saturday.

A: I honestly don’t know what a typical saturday is like but I guess I wake up around 9 and make breakfast and read the New Yorker and do my laundry and clean my room. When I’m doing that I listen to new albums people are talking about or the best new albums on pitchfork and then hopefully some evening activity like a friend’s party? I might just be describing last Saturday… I don’t know.

Q: What’s your best friend like?

A: My best friend is actually proposing to his girlfriend tonight in a Quaker Meeting House in Chestnut hill that has like some art thing where one night a year (this one) the light comes in at a certain angle from a slit in the roof and does something cool? idk. Jason is an incredibly loyal, ferociously smart person. I lived with him and a bunch of other friends from college for years.

Q: What was high school Tyler like and how is he different than present day Tyler?

A: High school tyler cared about his life a lot less and also was pretty popular in school. And I think I am now less cool and popular and also care a lot more about my life and how it plays out

Q: What's the right balance of earnesty and sarcasm?

A: I don’t know if I know the right balance between sarcasm and earnestness. In fact I might be the worst person to opine on that as the great Juliana once said about me that I have only two gears: psychopathically ironic and embarrassingly earnest. And she kinda nailed it.

Q: Who makes you laugh the hardest and most often?

A: Who makes me laugh the hardest and most often: my brother Chris and my friend Chuck are the two funniest people to me. I hung out with both of them recently in Philly one night and we stayed until the bar closed and my stomach hurt from laughing.

Q: What's your favorite book and how/why does it inspire you?

A: Favorite book might be City on Fire. I don’t know  if it inspired me but it definitely made me feel not so alone in feeling how complicated and imperfect life can be. And that was deeply satisfying and reassuring. Plus it was also a fun murder mystery!

Q: When/Why did you move to Brooklyn?

A: I moved to Brooklyn Dec. 1, 2013. I had quit my job in Connecticut and had no immediate job in New York but I couldn’t stand being there anymore and I wanted to make it in the big city. A childhood friend put up a post on Facebook that November when I’d been thinking about it all for some time and I just took it. I hate to sound corny but I had like $2,000 in savings and I just was like I’ll figure it out.

The first night here I will never forget. It took all afternoon to move stuff in cause the girl that was there before me had just fuckin left her mattress.and my roommate’s little brother was up visiting for some reason and helped move her mattress out and mine in.And then we got pizza and a beer. And I just plopped my mattress on the floor cause it was dark already. And used a blanket that was lying around and it smelled weird and i remember lying on the ground in the dark in this new place like “well, here you go bud. This is what you wanted, let’s make it happen”

Q: What's the hardest thing about covering tech in Brooklyn?

A: Hardest thing about covering Brooklyn tech world is how it really is like part and parcel of gentrification. And especially for us being like a city and people and civic oriented site and not like a tech crunch which is just like technical and money oriented there’s a lot of tension there.

Q: Based on your time in Brooklyn, are there any cautionary tales we should be learning about here in Philly? RE: tech, social impact, etc.

A:  This would take some more thought, and I guess along the gentrification, which is out of control here, but honestly I think there is more to be learned on the positive side of what startups and an ecosystem can do. I think Brooklyn is really far ahead of Philadelphia in that way, and for no reason other than its proximity to New York, but still.

Q: As a fellow Philadelphia Native (proper noun), I’d love to gauge your opinion on the differences of basically everything in our hometown.

A: You know the changes in Philadelphia really surprise me like all the time, and I think because I’m only seeing them like every two months. Some of the changes like I’m not crazy about but at the end of the day those people are paying taxes and I want the city to do well and be able to pay for fucking books and teachers at school and that takes tax money. So if it takes a million condos with grey brick and like the one box that comes out of it that’s painted metal then so be it.

Q: What accomplishment are you most proud of to date?

A: The accomplishment I’m most proud of to date are the relationships I’ve built. I try to hang on to really compelling or smart people in my life and I had a beer one night this week with a couple startup people whom I’ve kept covering and I was like ‘Yo half these people are gonna be successful or famous af in 5 years.” I would also say the growth in the respect for and traffic to technical.ly brooklyn

Q: What's the best professional advice you've received?

A: The best professional advice I’ve ever received is, “THEN CALL AGAIN” from my editor in connecticut when she asked why I didn’t have someone quoted in a story and I said they didn’t answer my call. But also, basically anything Zack says. That man has incredible instincts and just gets it.The best editor I’ve ever had or could imagine.

Q: What was your first impression of Technically Media as an entity?

A: My first impression of Technically Media as an entity was as a reader in college and it was very favorable. It and Plan Philly were two places where I was like “yo these websites are writing about stuff I actually care about”

Q: What’s something you've picked up in our style of best reporting that others should know or do or understand or follow?

A: One thing I’ve picked up from our style is the informality of it. I think if you can mix informal language with more formal journalism rigor than you can sort cherrypick from the best of other kinds of web content

Q: How do you define an act of journalism? When do you feel like you're doing it, as you presently define it? Why does that matter?

A:I would define an act of journalism as being really nothing more than telling someone information they didn’t know previously, accurately. I feel like I’m doing it a lot, usually when in wordpress. Why does it matter? Man, that’s a big question. It matters only insofar as people want to make decisions about their lives based on reason. If you want to do that you need to have good information. Whether that’s voting, building a company, or like any decision, not just those.

Q: Do you have any fears or phobias?

A: I am afraid of failing to live up to my standards and of being lonely.

Q: Flight or Invisibility?

A: Flight for sure although invisibility would obviously be better for my career.

Q: If you could go anywhere, money not an issue - where would you go, what would you do, who would you bring with?

A: If I could go anywhere in the world it would be to Tel Aviv, I just loved being in that place which is Mediterranean and young and the feeling of being surrounded by Jews, who like have been kicked and spat at and killed for years and now have a place their own was an incredible, liberating feeling I’ve never felt elsewhere. There are obviously extenuating politics in that country I’m not crazy about but the feeling of energy and belonging there was incredible.

Q: Any summer plans?

A: Summer plans my fammo is going up to upstate new york for a week and i’m gonna join. Saratoga! There’s a lake and a tennis court and cottages and horse racing and there’s plants and trees and grass everywhere!

Q: What’s the life of retiree Tyler Woods going to be like?

A: Dawg, I’m trying to get to 28 intact, one thing at a time.

#lead reporter #brooklyn #ama