Q&A: Kale Kaposhilin’s combination of tech and heart
It’s near impossible these days to pin down Moonfarmer Co-Founder and Chief Community Officer Kale Kaposhilin. Our company is busier than ever and we’re all starry-eyed with never ending to-do lists.
As such, Kale has absolutely no time to write a blog post whatsoever.
Therefore, we found Kale back at his office one fateful afternoon, cornered him with a microphone, and demanded some answers about what’s on his mind lately.
As a result — we got a wonderful look into the world of our leader and friend.
ERIN: Hi Kale! Can you describe your role at Moonfarmer and how long you’ve been at this?
KALE: Moonfarmer in name is only about a year old. I’m the co-founder, and my title is Chief Community Officer. We started Evolving Media Network — which is the parent company of Moonfarmer — back in 2003.
We started EMN when we were in our early 20s right out of college. It was originally a multimedia production company. We were a bunch of friends who all wanted to do great work that we cared about. We had several partners who all had different disciplines in creative production arts. I was the audio engineer in the bunch.
The goal for EMN was to make work we were proud of, together as friends.
Over the years and as the company grew, we found ourselves focusing more on web development and software. Moonfarmer emerged as the intersection of the space-age creativity, engineering, and design that’s required to make the software that we make (moon), while also doing it while working in the Hudson Valley (farmer). There is a quality of life here that’s very human, and it seeps into our work.
Therefore, we turned EMN into the parent company that would hold Moonfarmer as well as our other ventures. As such, Moonfarmer is technically the second company that my business partner Dan Stone and I made. It’s the culmination of many years of realizing the care we have for creative technology, as well as the care we have for people and our greater community in the Hudson Valley.
ERIN: Awesome. Can you dive into why your title is “Chief Community Officer?” I haven’t heard that one before.
KALE: Yeah, I made that up. And it is actually a way to talk about some of my perspective on the world.
In practical terms, Dan and I often divide various administrative responsibilities of the company. He is more focused on software engineering and developing our team processes to make that software. I’m more focused on business development, partnerships and relationships, marketing, and community development.
I looked at all those things I do at Moonfarmer and I knew I wanted to call that “community” as opposed to calling that “marketing” or “business.” For me it’s always a community of relationships — whether it’s going to meet new clients or finding a challenge, or doing marketing activities that convey the work that we do and the people that we are.
So — I’m the Chief Community Officer of Moonfarmer. Even though it’s a little silly to even use the word “Chief” in a company of 15 people, it actually does have some nice alliteration to it.
ERIN: I like it. How do you specifically partner with clients and how do you activate as one of the founders of the company? And in thinking about your clients, what are some projects that you’re really excited about right now that you’d love to talk about?
KALE: I love people. I love helping people. And as technologists we have a unique set of skills that can solve problems creatively for other people, organizations, or businesses.
Therefore, my first role is to connect with people and find ways to help them. That conversation will usually turn into a communications program of some sort, a website, or a piece of software that we’ll build.
It all starts with listening to each other with a desire to understand. Empathy is very important, understanding is very important.
If we can do that we can both help people connect and serve each other — whether it’s a client, a person who wants to work with great people and join our team, or a summer intern. At the heart of it, it’s all really about finding relationships where we can have a meaningful impact on each other.
“At the heart of it, it’s all really about finding relationships where we can have a meaningful impact on each other.”
As for our workload — there are a lot of projects right now that I’m really excited about. I feel very blessed in particular because we’re working with Radio Kingston.
I have a blog post that I’ve been wanting to write titled “Why Radio Kingston is probably the single most important project in my life.” Haha. It is because of the unique characteristics that this project has, and how well it aligns with our interests and skill sets as a company.
You see, at our core as a business, we make software. This is the service that we sell. So we are building a platform for a community radio station.
Radio Kingston is a community radio station that is designed to help community members connect with each other — to understand each other through their stories.
I am also an audio engineer originally, and I was a sociology major in college. I love this subject. And, as you know, I LOVE people. And I do technical event production — a la Hudson Valley Tech Meetup, Catskills Conf, and other things. I love that work. I’ve always done it, no matter how much we’ve grown as a company. I love creating a stage and providing a microphone, literally, for people to share their voices.
Radio Kingston is an organization that wants to do the same thing. It’s a dream come true for me, personally, because it’s so much in line with what I do and like, but it also is a perfect fit for our company.
And it’s all happening in Kingston, NY. We’ve been working to build up Kingston and the people here for a decade. Making Kingston as great of a place to live as it can be is so important to me and my family…
… and it needs to be said that when I say my “family” — I also mean my friends, my organizations, and my community, as well as my amazing wife and children.
ERIN: Great. Last question here. I think it’s incredible that you have that perspective while also being the co-founder of Moonfarmer — a very successful digital studio and EMN — a community development organization impacting the Hudson Valley.
What do you want for your team going into the next couple of years here at Moonfarmer? How do you want them to grow, and what kinds of projects are you excited for around the corner?
KALE: I want us to be able to connect with the right combination of organizations that allow our team to both thrive in an economic sense — that we’re able to do enough work to continue to offer competitive salaries and enough benefits that everyone feels like it’s a great place to work — while also providing communications content that feels impactful, meaningful, and aligned with our values.
We’re always trying to be more intentional about the organizations that we partner with. Being able to work with organizations like The Good Work Institute, and the National Young Farmer’s Coalition, or philanthropists with heart like Peter Buffet— to create projects that have impact — is exactly the kind of work that we love that we do.
To make an incredible communication tool regardless of what the subject matter is great, but to have both of those things be perfectly aligned with our values is what I want to see us spending our time on as much as possible.
We all shouldn’t be focused on surviving, which many people are in this world. We all, as humans, should be able to thrive, and part of that is to do work that you feel is meaningful, that aligns with your values, and makes the world a better place from your perspective — whatever that means to you.
So my goal has been to build Moonfarmer with the idea that it would do this work that is both engaging to the artist or the engineer who wants to see something work very well, but to also know that the ideas that are being shared are meaningful and aligned with our values. We build software, but what matters most to me is what that software does in the world.
We build software, but what matters most to me is what that software does in the world.
I’ve been asking myself a lot of questions about this lately.
Who does this software impact? How? How do we know that a technology is ultimately going to be a net positive impact on our world? How do we make those types of evaluations? How do we get excited about something not just because it’s saving us time?
It seems to me all the incredible time-saving conveniences that software represents are all giving us the opportunity to just make ourselves more busy. I’m starting to question the benefits of racing towards being the busiest you can be.
What you say is not as important as how you say it. The importance of feeling and taking time is more important than it’s ever been. Something’s lost when we’re spending so much time connecting in a way that doesn’t convey human emotion — through text messages, through social media engagement. I’m really curious to see how all of this develops over my lifetime.
And we’re moving faster than we ever were with a lot more people in our reach, and yet there’s a lot of violence in the world. There’s a lot of loneliness, there’s a lot of depression, there’s a lot of human emotion that’s sort of getting lost or missed some how.
When I think about technology, I think about building systems that are better for all people. How do we know from the beginning that we’re designing something not only that holds our attention so that they get the advertising revenue or whatever is the goal of the business, but that we all are serving everyone with great technology?
That’s really at the heart of our business and passion for people. That’s what we all think about and talk about all day at Moonfarmer. It’s something that we’re working to do our best at — we have to in order to build a better tomorrow. •
