My name is Giannii, I’m 29 years of age, and my ethnicity is 1/2 Greek and Italian. I’m originally from Los Angeles, California where I spent most of my youth being a young observer on movie sets. Frank, my father worked in the film industry as a lead man, set dresser, and weapons specialist. He worked on over thirty films including Three Kings, Princess diaries, Mulholland Falls, The Usual Suspects, and many more. The one thing I learned from my old man and from living in that plastic city was if you truly have the drive and willingness to listen and learn; You can achieve anything.

However, sometimes in life we get a little help from the people that care about us. My old man helped me achieve a childhood dream of going to Animation school in San Francisco around 2002. I attended The Art Institute of San Francisco and participated in an all-in-one film degree. This degree covered animation, digital media, sound design, and traditional art. It was the first of it’s kind and also a huge cluster cuss. There is no way one person could master even two of those subjects in three years. Needless to say I learned very little in class. I gained most of my expertise from working on projects with my instructors outside of school. After a year of uninspiring classes I left my “dream” school and started a company called BonsaiBeats.

BonsaiBeats in essence was a sound design studio and also my very first company. I created musical scores for Toshiba trade shows, seasonal jingles for a local radio stations, played music for the President of Greece, and participated in a couple Apple Store San Francisco presentations on music creation with a Mac. Even thought there were limitations with the amount of money that you could make as an independent sound engineer, it was a lot of fun. Eventually I had to stop eating ramen for three meals a day and started to work part-time with a company in New York called Undercurrent.

At the time Undercurrent was a digital think tank that helped big coporations like Pepsi better utilize it’s ad money with creative social campaigns instead of using traditional marketing. I worked with Undercurrent for just under a year and loved every minute of it. Leaving that position left me feeling hungry to do something within startup community. I had no idea what I wanted to do, I was just looking for something inspiring. In Spring of 2008 I stopped working on BonsaiBeats and started working on contract with a startup called CoComment.

CoComment was one of the first third party commenting widgets on the web. It had a unique in browser extension that would allow you to comment on any site but truthfully it was not a scalable solution. Trying to support every browser on the web in 2007 when there was no real standard was very diffuclt to do with a small team. I was tasked with helping grow the audience base and in three months I helped improved the monthly traffic from 500k uniqus to over 1.5 million unique visitors. It was a difficult position with limited resources and I learned to be scrappy pretty quick.

This was a the first time in my life that I really didn’t have any hobbies. I was consumed by my work. So needless to say, I was looking to do something fun to do. A friend of mine sent me an invite to a private beta of a video community formerly called Seesmic. I video blogged on a daily basis about my life and from my travels around the world. I felt like I never stood in one place very long except when on video I felt Iike I was finally standing still. During that time I became the top user of the site and had the opportunity to make friends from all around the world. As with any service in its infant stage, it was honest, and an experience that I’ll never forget. It was truly special to me.

Nearing the end of my contract with CoComment I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to do. For awhile there I just didn’t find anything that perked my interest. By chance, I discovered a company called Disqus on Hacker News. They were also in the third party comment space but had this noble path of helping improve the quality of discussions on the web. I thought to myself “That is a worthy obstacle to attempt to conquer”. In Winter of 2008 I joined the team as a Community Manager.

What are you doing today?

I currently work at Disqus as the Director of Partner Relations. I help publishers and bloggers cultivate their communities, unearth insightful information about audience activity, use statistics to pinpoint good conversations, and discover creative ways to encourage discussions. I’ve been doing it for more than four years and I really enjoy my work. Working at Disqus has been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life.

However, the artistic soul that lives inside of me needs a creative outlet. In my free time I’ve been working on an animation with my good friend Phil Kauffold under the name of RAWRSoft. It’s funny, a full ten plus years later I somehow made a full turn back to what I went to school for. Oh you.. life.

And if I’m not being productive with my creative hobbies then I’m most likely hanging out with my dog Einstein or playing Starcraft 2.

In summary, I’m a mixed bag of jelly beans.