Innovative Individuals

Innovative Individuals: Gabriel Dance

This post is also available in Spanish

If you ever saw The New York Times’ multimedia package “Gauging Your Distraction,” or the 2008 election interactive “What One Word Describes Your Current State of Mind?,” you were marveling over the work of talented multimedia producer Gabriel Dance. For a full list of projects he has worked on at the Times, check out his del.icio.us bookmarks.

Throughout this series, II readers have been quite vocal about including numerous Times’ producers, and the name Gabriel Dance kept coming up as one of them. Therefore, we are happy to feature Gabriel as this week’s “Innovative Individual” for his exceptional work at the Times.

Q) How do you drive innovation in your work?

A) Innovation is something that really drives me, as opposed to my driving it. I like exploring new ideas and moving from one thing to the next, always pushing forward. If I’ve already done something, I’m very hesitant to revisit it. I’m much more inclined to pass it to somebody else to let them try to take it somewhere new. My sources of inspiration come from everywhere: advertising, gaming, other journalists, television, real life, on and on. I’ll see something in a magazine that all the sudden inspires an interesting interface. Or I’ll see a demo on a flash website that shows off some particular feature that will spark an idea of how I can apply the same concept to one of my projects. I’m lucky to have a diverse group of friends and contacts with a variety of interests, and that exposes me to new things all the time.

Q) What piece in your portfolio are you most proud of and why?

A) I try to approach projects from a variety of angles, and so some of my projects I’m proud of for specific reasons.  For example, probably one of my most popular projects, The Election Day Word Train, is something I’m proud of because it was an original idea that I developed in a relatively short period of time for one of the biggest events of my lifetime.  And the fact that it really resonated with people was great.  But as far as original reporting, I’d have to either say the panoramic photo I took of Hillary Clinton at the Democratic National Convention or the Snowboarding Trick Library that we recently launched.  Both of those were instances where I got and shot footage and did the original reporting.  And the Hillary Clinton shot was so stressful!  As far as working collaboratively with top-level journalists I’d be remiss not to mention the work I did with David Barstow and Amy O’Leary on The Message Machine, an incredibly important investigative story, and Held by the Taliban, David Rohde’s gripping story of his time in Taliban captivity.  And today we relauched Faces of the Dead, a graphic I developed that features the photos of soldiers who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan.  It has an interesting and unique interface that encourages people to spend time with the feature.

Q) Please provide a brief educational and professional history.

A) I grew up in Denver, Colorado and went to Colorado State University where I earned a computer science degree as well as a degree in technical journalism.  I originally thought I was going to be a developer, but as I approached junior year, I realized I needed more human interaction than I would get if I was strictly a programmer, hence the journalism degree.  From Colorado State I applied to graduate schools with the intention of being an editorial writer.  I received the Roy Park Fellowship from the University of North Carolina, and upon my arrival was introduced to the concept of ‘multimedia journalism’ by none other than Rich Beckman.  Flash came easily and so I focused on photography, interactivity, audio and video.  I worked on several projects while at Carolina including The Ancient Way, Chasing Crusoe and Atacama Stories. While I was finishing up, I applied for the multimedia internship at The New York Times.  Unfortunately they ended up not having the internship, so I continued to send in my work and eventually interviewed and received a multimedia producer position.  Four years later I’ve worked my way up to Chief Multimedia Producer.  I’m very lucky and thankful for the opportunities I’ve been given.

Q) Where do you believe multimedia fits into today’s society and how will that role change over time?

A) It seems like society is rife with multimedia now days.  Whether it’s video, photos, tweets, audio, blogging, infographics, 3D … they’re all beginning to seamlessly blend into our lives.  Though I feel that the future will still be text heavy – people enjoy reading, and it remains one of the most effective means of storytelling available – as more people gain access to the internet, and the world becomes even flatter, multimedia will seep into the seams of our lives.

Q) What is one thing on your “To-Do” list?

A) My to-do list is short: continue to push high-quality journalism in new directions. What I’m most interested in doing is keeping the bar high and doing what I can to explore new ways of storytelling. I just think it’s such an exciting time right now in the industry, with potential lurking around every bend. And the fact that we’re so intertwined with technology now is exciting too. I just am having such a good time. So that’s on my to-do list as well I suppose … keep having a good time.

---

Want to nominate a deserving colleague, friend or inspirational figure to be highlighted in this series? Confidential nominations can be emailed to innovativeinteractivity@gmail.com on an ongoing basis. Self nominations are also welcome. A person will be featured every Friday, so look for the next “innovative individual” Friday, March 26th!

Other posts that might interest you:

• Innovative Individuals: Nancy Donaldson
• Innovative Individuals: Zach Wise
• Innovative Individuals: Gerardo Samano Cordova

© 2010 Innovative Interactivity (II).
Download II's Security Policy (PDF)