Wow I’m very happy this month; I might just love my job too much.

At the beginning of every year I take a day and plan my future. About 10 years ago I realised I was just going with the flow and letting life take me along, this maybe a good thing for some but I began to understand that for me it meant I was letting my dreams pass me by. So I decided to take the wheel. Ever since I have revised my plan every year to make sure I’m keeping up. Starting with a 10 year plan and working backwards, i.e. if I’m to be this in 10 years what to I have to be doing in 5, 4, 2 and this year?

Back in Jan 2015 I remembered something I’ve wanted to do since I started running my business full time in 2011. I want to work as a photographer in NYC! So I wrote it on my plan put it on the wall beside my desk and thought ‘now let’s see what the universe makes of that!’

I am happy to say that dream has come true this month. I’ve flown to NYC to photograph the 3% Conference. I heard about this conference at WACL’s Gather conference in May 2015 and so asked to shoot their satellite conference in London in June. They said yes! They loved my work so I asked to shoot their main New York Fall conference, as my Mother says ‘if you don’t ask you won’t get’. So here I am in NYC driving my own destiny.

The 3% Conference was the brain child of Kat Gordon when she realised that only 3% of Creative Directors in the advertising industry are female. The 3% mission is to fix this i.e. go out of business as soon as possible! http://www.3percentconf.com

Not everyone at the conference was female as you may expect but they were all on the same agenda – inclusion, support, equality, education and collaboration. Everyone networked with a true belief that we could help each other. The speakers were both inspirational and entertaining. There was definitely no ‘willy wagging’. By the end of my job I made lots of quality contacts and some very cool new friends, oh and of course great photos.

So I got my job in NYC, what next, I decided to stay for 2 weeks and make another job happen while there and it did.

I had a few jobs in London while I was in New York and had my photographers cover these. One of those jobs was for The Drum magazine and their Do It Day. They also had a sister Do It Day conference in New York, I had told clients about my trip and so The Drum got in touch and asked me to shoot the New York Do it Day too. Yippee 2 ticks on the year plan but to be honest the most fun thing was that The Drum were Skyping live between the conference and I could see BronacMcNeill.com guys shooting on both sides of the pond at once. I had to smile – it was like Live Aid but obviously on a much smaller scale, I did a little fist pump!