Reunited: Putting the Band Back Together

There are certain conversations and meetings in life you will always remember. The day you met your spouse, the days your children were born. The day your favorite team won a big game or a championship. Or maybe the day you asked a former employee to come back and work for your start-up.

I forget a lot. But I remember vividly both the first time I met Shane Harrison and the day I called him and told him I was thinking about starting my own company and asked, “would you be interested in being involved?”

Let’s start with the latter. As outlined in my first blog post, I hatched the idea for 4th Floor Creative late on a Thursday night. The next day my head spun with ideas, including, who do I want on my team? Shane was an obvious choice. I called him late Friday afternoon. Outlined my entire crazy plan, then asked “so if this all happens and I have a spot for a video guy, are you interested in hearing more?”

The answer was “yes.”

Shane and I go way back. Back to December 16, 2009, actually. One might ask, “How do you remember the date?” Well, it was a busy day. The University of Cincinnati hired Butch Jones as their new football coach that day. I streamed the press conference live. Then had to run back to the Lindner Center to shoot the Bearcats Sugar Bowl Preview show for FOX Sports Ohio. Since Brian Kelly was gone, we did the show with interim head coach Jeff Quinn.

We had the usual FSO crew except one of the field producers, Kent Weaver, brought along a FSO intern who had been helping out at Reds games, UC student Shane Harrison. We met that night, chatted a little bit (discussed a potential internship with my office), I thought he was a bit of a hipster and we went our own ways after the shoot.

Unlike many students who asked me about an internship, Shane followed up. And showed up. And kicked ass. He was my only paid intern in my nine years at UC. I tried hiring him after graduation. No dice. Wasn’t in the budget. So he went and worked for the BIG EAST Conference for a year.

After his year in Providence, it was in the cards (and the budget.) I hired him at UC and we spent two years building Bearcats TV together and kicking ass across the video world. Then, last summer, Shane left for the ACC Digital Network. July 13th, he returns. Returns to his hometown and joins the 4th Floor Creative team as the Chief, Video Creative.

In the infamous words of the 1993 hit, Whoomp! (There it is); “Tag Team back again Check its records let's begin, Party on party people let me hear some noise.”

#ShaneHarrison #video #tom #FSO