On September 17th I conducted a phone interview with Brad (forgot to get his last name) from the Bryant Museum is Tuscaloosa. I really liked interviewing Brad because I love sports and he is a digital humanist who preserves the football history for the Alabama Crimson Tide.
Brad attended Alabama and got his bachelor’s degree there, he was a history major. His preparation is his love for the Alabama Football team, he loves what he does and called it a dream job coming into work and going over Alabama Football footage and photographs. When talking about his technical training needed he said the only thing he really needed was the fact that he was good with computer science. He needs that skill because sometimes he has to dig deep and find the footage and photos needed for the job. The only job he had on the way to becoming a digital humanist was that he was in a work study program for ten years, then he got this job. The typical day for Brad was what he called a lot of fun. He said that each day varies a lot but for the main part he just looks up and finds any kind of footage that has to do with the Alabama football program a lot of times he gets requests from the newspapers to find certain things that they are looking for. Other things he does is requests from the athletic department and family members to find photo’s or videos of the players that are asked for. Brad does a lot of projects in his spare times but one of his recent accomplishments was that he and the Bryant Museum have published two books in the past year to year and a half. He was really proud of that and went on for a while of how that was a big step in his career. His advice for people who are interested in sports (like me) and want to be a possible digital humanist for a sports team is to volunteer. He said the sooner you volunteer especially when you are young the more important that is in the long run. If you do that it gets you a lot of experience and can get your foot in the door and people will start to notice you. That was his biggest advice given during the interview and made a lot of sense because you can’t just get a job like this out of nowhere, with no experience.
Brad didn’t really have much else to say besides all of the above. We talked for about a half an hour and he just talked about how he really loved what he did and it was a dream come true to do what he was doing. He was born and raised in Alabama and bleeds Crimson. He also talked about how staying close to the football program that he was so in tuned to his whole entire life and him being able to help family members of the football team and the athletic department was a true blessing to him. He felt that he was doing a great service to his team and was excited to help and be a part of the Alabama tradition.
Overall when this assignment was assigned I thought it was going to be tough and not too much fun. But Leslie helped me out by finding this guy and it sparked a big interest for me. I would love to do something like this when I get older and retire from my job. It can definitely be a side job/hobby throughout my life and I would love to volunteer somewhere where I can work in sports and do something that I love.
The link to the website and article that I used for this assignment is :
http://www.myfoxal.com/story/19005677/bryant-museum-spending-a-pretty-penny-to-preserve-football-history