Berklee College of Music

Texas Christian University

Director of Digital Strategy at C3 Presents

Austin, Texas, United States

- Lead Digital Product for festival mobile apps and websites – user research, scope definition, roadmaps, prioritization, and execution for sponsorship monetization

-  Responsible for the innovation of digital platforms (MarTech) for over 40 Live Nation music festivals in 8 countries

-  Develop and lead a team of product managers, data analysts, developers, UX designers, and third-party vendors

-  Lead analysis, discovery, development, and maintenance of data warehousing and business intelligence

-  Lead ongoing migration of older expensive architectures to newer cheaper and better architectures (proficient with most of the AWS stack)

-  Architect and deliver scalable customer service platforms, including virtual assistants (chatbots)

-  Lead ongoing analytics experiments and user research to Increase revenue and conversion rates

-  Lead research and analysis of pricing, pricing psychology, pricing UX, and price announcement timing

C3 Presents

Director, Digital Strategy

- Introduced the role of data analyst and evangelized data-driven decisions along with associated infrastructure such as Tableau, Google Analytics, and data warehousing

-  Led design, implementation, and maintenance of all customer facing digital properties and systems including servers, websites, mobile apps, and email service providers

-  Learned and shared knowledge across all company business units of data-backed best practices

-  Evaluated and developed paid digital marketing strategies and best practices

-  Reduced time-to-market while increasing reliability and performance through platform and process standardization

Digital Technology Manager

- Oversaw and helped design one of the international music festivals' first mobile app

-  Developed custom software for automation of tagging, collecting, and analyzing inbound links to concert and festival websites

-  Consulted with artists such as Robert Earl Keen, Band of Heathens, and Blues Traveler on digital marketing

-  Auctioned autographed Pearl Jam posters from ACL Music Festival on eBay for charity

Digital Technology Contractor

Founded a suicide prevention organization to serve high school and college students by using professional musicians, speakers, and cinematographers to communicate through music and video.

Better Off Rock'd

Executive Director

Assigned to key national accounts nationwide supporting our newest Business Intelligence offerings.  Also developed C# add-ins for the product Enterprise Guide when it would help close a sale.

Principal Consultant

This was my holding company for all of my various creative ventures - from record label to freelance web developer to artist development to analytics.  It was the hole into which I poured my 401k and got in return a better education that any university could ever offer.  It was a massive career change that led to the most exciting times in my life.  I mostly called it Fanbase Marketing and Analytics - using digital marketing techniques to promote musicians, speakers, writers, artists, and music related businesses.

Pickslide, LLC

Founder

Assigned full-time to our top revenue Telecom accounts, including AT&T, Cingular Wireless, Sprint, Worldcom, MCI, SBC Communications, Bell South, and Quest.  Some projects included activity based costing, long distance trunk routing optimization, fraud prevention, and call center optimization.

Led the consulting services for a 5-state region of TX, AR, KS, NM, and MO.  Led group to over $25M in annual services revenue and profitable - while primarily being a vehicle to close new software business.  Included personal oversight and contribution of consulting and pre-sales activities at our AT&T and Walmart accounts for over 3 years.  Some projects included price modeling and retail site selection.

Regional Consulting Manager

Led, scoped, designed, delivered SAS based solutions to Fortune 100 clients all over the USA in a team and individual contributor environment.  After being a SAS customer for over 10 years, I moved to their Austin location to help start their consulting services division, define implementation roles, and define project management standards and best practices.

Project Manager

It was like going back to college.  Campuses are fun.  TCU hasn't stopped growing since then.  My most memorable project was my last - which was running fiber cable to all dorms and buildings on campus in a redundant FDDI loop so that everyone could have this new thing called high speed Internet - that wouldn't fail even if a back-hoe cut it.  We connected to each dorm for use by each student which was pretty leading edge at the time.  In March of 1995, I wanted to change careers and see the world.  An old friend in my neighborhood, Sol Taylor, hooked me up with an executive recruiter downtown who told me "move from cost center to profit center.  Just call one of your vendors and go to work for them."  So I did.  I sold my pickup and Wrangler jeans and boots - and moved to Austin to work for SAS Institute since I had already been a customer for 10 years.

Senior Systems Engineer

I left the Network group and went to work for the HMO as a data analyst and they soon let me hire an entire staff of analysts.  It reported higher in the company and had a better ability to impact the organization.  It was a data freak's dream - endless health insurance claims to be analyzed.  I thought we were saving the world by doing things like lowering pharmacy costs.  But, I later learned we were using data to show how little we should be paying back to the providers based on the patterns of their peers - which means I was a likely unknown enemy of many local specialists.  I'm sorry! (but the data did prove you were prescribing way more expensive drugs than your peers)

Harris Methodist Health System

Senior Analyst

I was born at Harris Hospital, so it was always a thrill to end up working there - especially after my grandfather was one of the first doctors there and my uncle was on the board.  I eventually managed all of their voice and data networks for their nine hospitals in North Texas at the time.  The low moments were hopping on an elevator as the doors were closing only to find a dead man lying on a stretcher - not to mention doing equipment installations while hearing the autopsy room's electric saws running.  The high moment was working around the clock for 72 hours to develop a completely new microbiology lab reporting system in C because the old one failed and we needed a replacement or people could die (or so I was told).

Assistant Director of Telecommunications

Managed international satellite network connecting all manufacturing plants.  Performed global network capacity planning and analysis.  But the real fun was my first week on the job.  Since it was a manufacturing plant with dangerous chemicals and since we were on the third floor, we were trained to throw our desk chairs through the window and jump by hanging down from the window ledge by our hands to reduce the distance and trying to land on our feet so our legs would break and not our backs.  If an alarm were to go off, we only had seconds to live if we didn't escape.  Luckily, we never had to try it out.

National Semiconductor

Systems Programmer

I developed a system called Opersys on IBM's VM operating system using Xedit that managed backups for all of their mainframes.  During my first week, there was a massive layoff.  My boss was laid off but not me.  People found out whether or not they still had a job based on whether or not their security credentials to get in the building worked or not.  Once my boss was gone, I didn't have any direction.  I wondered if anyone even knew if I worked there.  One of the senior systems guys started letting me play with SAS and their mainframe performance which is where I started really loving data management and analytics.  

I also had a passion for math.  I loved my Discrete Math class in college.  So, to pass time at the office, I mapped the entire building into a Euclidean Walk (or was that Eulerian) figuring out every possible path from my desk to every water fountain in the building.  Needless to say, I eventually got bored and had to move on to more challenging positions in other companies.  I don't even think there was anyone around to resign to.  I had to find someone in HR and just let them know to stop paying me.  A prior manager from TCU was at National Semiconductor and hired me away.

My proudest achievement there was starting a weekly dominoes game during lunch.

Some of my friends don't believe I actually ever worked here.  While I was interviewing for the CIA in D.C., I all of the sudden had this job at Fidelity and never spoke of the CIA again.

Fidelity Investments

I taught the Introduction to Computer Science course.  I feel sorry for my students.  My most memorable moment was trying to teach them sub-routines (now most often called methods).  I used a Jerry Jeff Walker album cover that had lyrics on the back.  I showed them how it wrote out the lyrics to the chorus just once, then said "Repeat Chorus" whenever the chorus repeated instead of typing out the lyrics again.  They just stared at me with a glazed look in their eyes that said, "who is this hick?"  But I loved teaching.  What I love most about teaching is having to first learn what you are about to teach.  I really love learning.

Instructor

After graduation at TCU, they hired me full time.  I maintained mainframe and server hardware, operating systems, product installations, and capacity planning.  I tried getting my MBA while I worked there since it was free, but I just couldn't bring myself to do the accounting homework.  I also studied Russian during this time due to my involvement with the CIA (offered jobs to track terrorist movements and uncover internal violations of data misuse using artificial intelligence and pattern recognition) and reading too many Tom Clancy novels.  I realized after a while that I needed to leave college and see the world.  And for the record, as far as anyone knows, although I may have accepted one of those positions, I never actually served in any government role.

I started my own company while in college (and got my first gold American Express card - and bought a stereo that I always cranked Willie Nelson and U2 on in the dorm). Unfortunately, it didn't work out quite as good as Michael Dell's company did.  Golf courses in Ft Worth were all moving to the latest technology called "modems" that could help accept credit cards at the club houses.  So several hired me to install the modems for them.  So I set up a call center and placed ads and offered to set up modems for people.  Overall, I lost money, but it was fun.  That was before TCU had an entrepreneurship program. Ha.

Klein Communications Services

Owner / President / Modem Installer

I started out tearing printouts off of the huge printers and filing them in professor's mailboxes.  But over my years at TCU, I became responsible for installation and maintenance of campus data network infrastructure and computer center operations support. I worked part-time 30 to 40 hours per week during college.  I used some of the first Macs ever made, discovered this new concept called a "hyperlink", developed software on Commodore 64 and Atari, made our VAX 11-780, Xerox Sigma-9, and IBM Series-1 systems sing, and labeled the crap out of everything.  I loved labeling things.  I loved reading hex dumps to IBM support.  I loved assembly language.  Walls of systems manuals was our status symbol before electronic documentation ever existed.  Staying up all night in the lab to play Moria on old VT-100 terminals was second only to staying up all night at honky-tonks in Ft. Worth's Stock Yards on the north side of town.  Debugging the mainframe with Ken Shulte (RIP) meant getting out his long wood stick and killing cockroaches behind the giant (yet tiny) disk drives.  Things were a bit easier back then.  Busting student hackers who stole tests from professors online kinda sucked since they all likely went on to make millions for NASA and Microsoft even though they were expelled for some of the first trojan horse viruses ever written.

My senior year in high school, I drove the big white van with the green thumb all over Ft. Worth fertilizing lawns until I was fired one day.  I backed into an expensive Cadillac and the company didn't have any insurance.  I think I was ready to move on anyway.

Lawn Doctor

Fertilizer Boy

Homer's was across the street from Hulen Mall back before Home Depot existed.  It was my junior year in high school and my favorite departments were lumber and paint.  I would love helping people with their projects, like building a new dog house, but my boss at the time (a TCU MBA student) kept making me straighten the lumber bins instead.  I wanted more customer interaction.

Homer's Hardware Store

Lumber Bin Straightener

During my sophomore and junior years in high school, I worked at a steak restaurant called The Hayloft.  I worked my way up from bus boy all the way to Head Chef.  There wasn't much chef to it.  We just threw steaks on the grill and covered them in butter.  I was pretty good at making 100 chicken friend steaks at a time with cream gravy.  The real Head Chef there, Charlie, taught me everything I know about cooking a good steak.  Since it was located on the Trinity River, rats used to come in pretty easily.  At night after closing, we would put left over chicken on the floor and shoot them with rat shot.  Every now and again, one would crawl up on a chair and make a customer scream.  The other bus boys taught me how to buy cheap wine at 7-11 and add powdered cool-aid to it to make it into expensive wine.  We also spent a lot of nights playing poker with our paychecks.  Country music was usually cranked pretty loud after the doors closed and I still remember most of the words - Alabama and the Gatlin Brothers seemed to be the most popular.

The Hayloft Restaurant

Head Chef / Chef / Salad Chef / Dishwasher / Bus Boy

During my sophomore year in high school, I cooked hamburgers, washed dishes, and served ice cream at Dairy Queen.  I wasn't 16 yet so I had to get Senator Moncrief to sign a paper giving me permission to work while being under age.  At the same time, I got a special driver's permit so I could drive my dad's red Ford F-150 back and forth to work.  Somehow the JV football games were on the way most of the time.  Draining and cleaning the ice cream machines and re-using the mixture the next day is enough to make you never eat them again.  I can't remember why I left.  I think it was the orange polyester tunic we had to wear.  Our boss, Mrs. Mann, was awesome.

Dairy Queen

Cook / Dishwasher / Ice Cream Server

I started getting my hair cut at Westcliff Barbershop sometime around 5 years old.  My grandmother would take me.  So many years later, during my freshman year in high school, while still getting my hair cut there every month, I decided it would be an awesome career to be a shoe shine boy.  Alton Finney, a former Navy officer, ran the place and the other barber was Dale Marsh.  Alton gave me $1 per shine and supplied all of my equipment - and I got free hair cuts and they bought me lunch on Saturdays.  But there was one exception.  I had to ask every person who walked in the door if I could shine or clean their shoes.  That was Alton's way of making sure I wouldn't hide from school mates.  One of my best customer's was Vernon Baird from Mrs. Baird's bread.  He would drop of a whole bag of shoes for me to shine each week.  Another was the local funeral parlor director.  He got there every Wednesday around 3pm and I had to run from school to get there in time.  He always tipped $5 which was about 25% of my weekly income.

Westcliff Barbershop

Shoe Shine Boy

My middle school buddy and I started our own lawn mowing service.  We got rich.  How incredible was it that someone would just hand us $40 for pushing a mower around for a few hours?  Our parents would drop us off and pick us up at each lawn.  I opened a checking account and learned how to keep it balanced.  Unfortunately, I didn't learn how to save any of it.  Other friends who mowed lawns went on to become millionaire entrepreneurs, but I bailed out because I was allergic to grass and would scratch my neck until it bled.  Bummer.  I wish neighborhood kids still mowed lawns today.  I guess its easier now and more profitable to start their own Internet companies.

Eric Klein

Eric Klein