Forrest O'Connor '10 CEO, Concert Window composer, HCAMA founder, bluegrass, mandolin, concert producer   Music concentrator because: When I was 13, I picked up the mandolin and taught myself how to play bluegrass, but it was a formidable task because there was no widely accepted method or technique for mandolin. After doing some more research, I discovered there really wasn’t much quality literature at all on the instrument. Although I might have been putting the cart before the horse in a sense, the first decision I made after being accepted to Harvard was to write a thesis on the mandolin. So, my choice of thesis led to my choice of concentration, but in the end, there were other obvious advantages to studying music, one of which was that Kay Kaufman Shelemay was a professor in the department. I met her my freshman year because she was an advisor for another student who had graduated from my high school several years earlier. After our first meeting, I realized I had to jump on the opportunity to work one-on-one with such an accomplished and brilliant scholar. I also got to work closely with Thomas Forrest Kelly, John Stewart, and several others, and the relationships I established with them have evolved into friendships. I also chose the concentration because I write many different kinds of music (from chamber pieces to fiddle tunes), and I wanted to understand what made the music I was hearing in my head actually work in practice. Your current job responsibilities: I co-founded and run a national live concert webcasting network that has partnerships with 15 top-notch venues around the country. We’ve webcasted nearly 2,000 concerts to several hundred thousand viewers around the world, and we’re working hard to continue growing the service. I handle artist and venue communications, client acquisition, webcast technology development, business development, licensing, and accounting. The way music fits into that: I actually met my co-founder, Dan Gurney, in a class I counted toward my concentration, so perhaps my job wouldn’t exist had I not chosen to study music! But the truth is that music pervades my job. Dan and I started Concert Window because we love music and wanted to create a new revenue stream for the industry. As an undergraduate, I learned how different people value different types of music, and that has helped us figure out how to present webcasts to the public, why some webcasts work and others don’t, and all the implications of making a musical event in one place immediately accessible to anyone in the world with an Internet connection. Forrest O'Connor's website Concert Window O'Connor on youtube   BACK TO UNDERGRADUATE STUDIES