I am a fan of being useful and making an impact alongside inspired teams. I’m also a natural connector who enjoys making introductions that help others succeed, whether it’s connecting people to collaborators, resources, music, or friendships.
Sooz.com is undergoing renovations. Here’s a chronological tale describing my world over the years after relocating to Boston from Nebraska “for the Summer” in 1994.
My digital marketing career began in 1999 at Wild Web, a CBS-syndicated television show about pop culture on the Internet, filmed in Newton, MA. Before working there, I pitched Wild Web about Swanky.org, a collective of web designers and writers I was part of in the late 1990s. We were included in the first episode of season two (August 7, 1998). I need to digitize the VHS tape! A few months after starting my job there, I met a journalist online who then wrote an article about Wild Web for The Los Angeles Times. Take a stroll back in time and read the article.
In 2000, I was an event planner for The Geek Pride Festival, a 13-hour event for geeks and tech enthusiasts at The Boston Park Plaza Castle featuring a 500-person Quake gaming tournament, geek celebrity speakers, and music performances. Earlier that morning, the Massachusetts Governor’s office advised that we increase security, concerned that a large group of geeks were gathering on April Fool’s Day. We waited for someone to finally arrive around 5 p.m. to ask: “Is this the greek pride festival?” Press coverage included ABC News, MIT Technology Review, CTO Magazine, The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, and radio stations throughout the United States. Later that year, Boston.com’s online publication DigitalMASS included my profile in its “Digital Master” series.
An early participant at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival, I served on its advisory board from 2002 to 2016. In 2002, I co-hosted “Independents Day” panels with web pioneers Jeffrey Zeldman and Carole Guevin. The early 2000s SXSW Interactive attendees may remember the giant LEGO pile—an “Interactive Playpen” conceived by Ryan Gantz, festival director Hugh Forrest, and me. I love this photo of The Sims creator Will Wright immersed in 2007’s LEGO pile.
From 2002-2008, I published a music blog called Exploit Boston!–one of the first websites to use blogging software to power an event calendar. And that’s when I became a concert and event photographer. One of these days I’ll get more of my photo archives added to Flickr.
In 2008 I collaborated with The Drupal Association as the first paid event planner for that year’s Spring Drupalcon. I worked alongside Drupalcon Boston’s host team, Acquia.
From 2015-2017 I had an adventurous couple of years helping an entrepreneur bring his next great idea to life: Circl.es (now CircleSpace). At the time, I was located in Oakland, California (during a 3-year hiatus from Boston), and he was in Barcelona, Spain. Here’s what the CEO had to say about my work:
WOW. I got lucky. Sooz jumped in, grasped the idea, helped research, built our site, set up our tools, took command of social media, helped design the product, edited, used her network to refer several other people we worked with (design, UX, coding, hula hoopers), project managed, supported advisors and clients, ran operations, and did this all hours because we are in 5 time zones, and all in a high-energy breathless way, just like this sentence.
Since 2017, I’ve worked as a project manager–collaborating with digital agencies, cooperatives, growing businesses, nonprofits, and startups. I’m known for taking a hands-on approach to driving projects. I became a Certified Scrum Master in 2021 and I highly recommend Chris Li’s team at Spark Plug Agility and their training programs.
In 2020, I founded Oh, Hello Boston, a labor of love and online radio station streaming music by bands in Boston and around New England 24/7 from the 1970s to present day. The station has been profiled in The Boston Globe, The Boston Business Journal, and Worcester Magazine.
Spring 2023 I started a deep dive into health and nutrition topics, inspired to make positive changes for myself. And now I’d like to share what I’ve learned along the way. I’ll start writing more about this in late 2024.
To be continued!
I took the photo at the top of this page on my iPhone outside Truckee, California (July 2014) during a cross-country Amtrak train expedition from Boston to The Bay Area. Browse the photo gallery to see more photos from the trip out to California and then back to Boston.