Interview 3: Mark Milstein, Photographer & Visionary

  • 28 Aug 2018 11:23 AM
Interview 3: Mark Milstein, Photographer & Visionary
1. What’s been happening at work and at home since your most recent Xpat Interview?

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 I've gotten married. Have two amazing children, and have expanded my businesses.

2. What would you have done differently there if you knew then what you know now?
Kept my apartment in the 5th district and I would have gotten into video production and post-production much earlier.
 

3. If you could change one thing about Hungary, what would it be?
Would love to see more optimism. Every day is another opportunity to do great things. Everyone should take advantage of that.

4. What advice would you give to a new expat in Budapest?
 Making yourself at home or successful in Hungary is no more difficult or intimidating than anywhere else. Make friends. Have a plan. Settle in. Enjoy.

5. Which superpower would you choose?
Time travel.

6. Who inspires your life most these days?
People who see every new challenge as an opportunity to explore and leverage.

7. What does your typical day/week look like currently?
Up every day at 0500. Shower. Dress.  Listen to the news on Google home assistant. Drink a coffee. Read the New York Times. Google News. The Washington Post. Drive to work. Listen to an audio book along the way. Get to work. Read upwards of 120 emails. Have meetings. Work through problems. Day dream. Inspire. Plan. Start heading home at around 1600. Start a second work day aligned with the East Coast of the United States. Have at least two or three back-to-back video conference calls. Eat dinner. Read more emails. Family time. Watch TV. Sleep.

8. What are some of your biggest challenges these days?
 Finding talented people bold and self assured enough to want to be part of our company's vision. We are on the cutting edge of video metadata, digital asset management and artificial intelligence training. That basically means we are a world leader in developing software solutions that create precise means of video content discovery for broadcasters and media companies,  and provide the ability for clients to leverage that data to train AI platforms to do so without human aid.

9. What’s your favourite bar, restaurant and music venue in Hungary?
Call me old fashioned, but I am still in love with the bar at the Gresham.  I'm currently exploring every single restaurant and food stall at the Monori Center in Kőbanya. Like visiting China without the 10 hour flight. A food lover's paradise. If it's music, then it's Sziget. Full stop.

10. Please share a guilty pleasure of yours…
Oh, that's simple. Ice cream. The more butterfat, the better.

11. What is (would be) your favourite karaoke song?
"We Can Work It Out"  by The Beatles

12. What are some of your biggest challenges these days?
Finding enough time to do all the things that I want to do. There is just never enough of it.

13. If your next expat assignment was on a deserted island, and you could only take three things, what would you bring?
My family. My camera. A laptop.
 

14. Unicum or Pálinka, or?
An ice cream soda?

15. What is your best personal achievement while living here?
 I am most proud of having pioneered the transformation of Hungary's news and celebrity photography industry from analog to digital with the launch of Red Dot (Hungary's first web-based photo agency) back in 2000. The whole idea for an internet-based photo agency came out of my head in 1999 during a random conversation. Who knew that it would be so prescient?

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