Hi there. My name is Graham Ryan, and while I wouldn't exactly call myself well-versed in digital storytelling, I definitely have experience in the ballpark. I was a reporter for the multimedia desk at The Appalachian for 2 years where I spearheaded the Boone Sports Balls podcast, currently assist with social media management for the motorsports company GridRival, and have run my own comedy-oriented Formula 1 journalism page, Average F1 Consumer, for the past 3 years.

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Singlehandedly building and evolving the Average F1 Consumer brand for the past few years has taught me a lot about digital storytelling in the video format. I've learned some of my own personal do's and don'ts, such as developing a unique and recognizable style and not allowing yourself to get dragged into what you think the algorithm will like best, but there's still so much that I don't know. 

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I'm excited for my time in this class and hope to learn as much as I can on how to improve my digital storytelling abilities not just for my own personal endeavors, but for my work as well. I'll be taking over as the manager of GridRival's social media and marketing very soon, and my approach for that is to maximize the enjoyment of the audience with the content that one puts out instead of blatantly advertising a product.

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What I hope to learn most from this class is how to maximize engagement through intriguing graphics balanced with well-thought out text content for posts on Instagram, since I feel like graphic design is my biggest weakness. I typically thrive on a very simplistic and barebones approach when it comes to visuals with my content, and while I think that's refreshing sometimes it can ultimately be a weakness.