For the first episode of my career planning series, I utilised the SMART method of goal setting to map out the medium future of my career in the Australian music industry. In particular, I focused on my role at AUD’$ and the progress I wish to make in the next five years.

Though never directly mentioned, many scholars credit Peter Drucker’s The Practice of Management (1954) as instrumental to the development of the SMART acronym. In a study during the 1960s, Dr. Edwin Locke examined the relationship between motivation and goal setting and determined that specific and challenging goals are more motivational than vague and easy ones (Lawlor, 2012).

In Wendell Bell’s Making People Responsible (1998), he divides the our perception of the future in three categories including the possible, probable and preferable. Bell states “Futurists not only study images of the future held by various people in an effort to understand and explain their behaviour, they also investigate the process of image making itself, encourage people to rigorously explore alternative images of the future, and construct images of the future themselves. In so doing, futurists aim to help people become more competent, effective, and responsible actors, both in their personal lives and in their organisational and societal roles” (Bell, 1998).

As BCM325 encourages us to be active futurists, this is the way I approached my career plan with elements of possible, probable and preferred futures. Beginning with the possible, there’s a possibility to move to Melbourne to immerse deeper in the scene which would assist me in building a stronger network. Additionally, venturing into PR and events managing is probably the biggest possibility. Although this is something that I am interested in, I would first like to establish myself as a journalist to leverage myself into these roles. That being said, if this doesn’t come to fruition in my medium range future, it is probable that it will occur in the long term.

Next, I included probable elements of my future in the career plan such as maintaining a strong relationship with AUD’$ and being able to interview artists in a longer form that what traditional Australian music media is accustomed to. These probable elements will lay the foundational work for the possibilities in my long range future in playing a key role to the Australian Hip-hop music industry.

Lastly, the preferred outcome of this career plan future would be to exceed the goals in a short period of time and begin examining more long-term, challenging goals. In Baudrilard’s Ecstasy of Communication, he argues “the shift from the world of the object, of the mirror and the scene, to the laboratory of miniaturisation has transformed the pleasure of the gaze into an ecstasy of promiscuity. For Baudrilard, the obscenity of the all-too-visible signals the end of the secret and its representation and the beginning of the era of hyper-reality, the absolute space of simulation. This ultimate call to a disappearing reality permeates popular perceptions of the power of technology and technological images” (Baudrilard, 2012).

With this in mind, I’d work towards crafting content in the short-term that will create new opportunities for myself and build an audience in the medium ranged future. I’d then be able to start creating a long range future for myself and the Australian Hip-hop media where the bridge between artists’ talent and coverage is narrowed with more diverse and quality content. By doing so, we’ll be able to create a hyper-realistic niche of Hip-hop in Australia where fans can become more immersed in my own content as well as the artist. Keeping a balance of intimate and loosely structured interviews with high level production value and accessibility looks to be my next best move in achieving this goal in the medium ranged future.

Although setting these goals for myself gave me a more refined vision of my potential future, it also raised some important questions into its practicality. While striving towards my end goal, these types of questions are beneficial in forcing me to continually push myself and update my SMART plan. In my BCM325 pitch, I outlined a different blog sequence than what I carried out so next week will instead look at my clothing brand, Moriboys, and the role I hope to see this brand have within Hip-hop in Australia, and my own future career.

Frank Tremain.