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I recently read a theory that going for 50 coffees with people you've never met is the entrepreneurs equivalent to the theory that doing anything for 10,000 hours will make you an expert on it. While I get the idea, 50 coffees is far easier than practicing something for ten years, and while I'm far from lazy I've decided to set out on a fairly simple mission: over the next 50 weeks I'm going to invite 50 interesting Vancouverites, most of whom I have never met before, to go for coffee. I'm going to use this as an exercise in networking for myself and for V.I.A. while also using it as a platform to introduce you to some people who are doing really cool stuff in the city you live in. |
Meet Marsha Lederman. Western Arts Correspondent for The Globe and Mail, she writes articles concerning the arts from Victoria to the Prairies for you to enjoy in "Canada's National Newspaper" in print and online. She writes about music, visual and performing arts and her job is one that is envied by lovers of the arts as well as journalism school graduates nationwide because she not only gets to attend all-things-arts from A to Z but she gets paid to write about them. For a national newspaper. And she is great at what she does.
I met with Marsha at the Globe's Vancouver newsroom at Robson and Burrard and after a brief tour we headed to Caffè Artigiano on Hornby which we somehow accessed through a series of locked doors, keyfob waves, elevators and tunnels as she told me "When it rains, nobody gets wet doing coffee runs!". I'm an artist as well as a storyteller (I wouldn't dare call myself a journalist in her presence) and I wonder what it's like to report on the arts from a near-outside perspective the way Marsha does, so we spent some time talking about that. We discussed her previous work with the CBC and how she met her husband who is none other than Stephen Quinn. Yes, Marsha happens to be married to one of our previous 50 Coffees subjects but if you're thinking of crying nepotism then think again because it's all on me and my interest in connecting with journalists (dig back in the archives and look into the future for this pattern of mine to emerge more). Both Marsha and Stephen were surprised when I reached out to her through non-family channels and invited her to participate in the series. In the end our conversation led to kids and juggling family and working life and I left our coffee with a renewed interest in the Globe and picking up actual newspapers in my hands to read more often.
Check out an archive of her articles HERE and look forward to more of them in the pages of that actual paper!
