Boitnott is now the chief operating officer and director of global operations for PreSonus, a manufacturer of professional audio equipment and software used to create, record, mix and master music and other audio
Jim Boitnott ’98 has combined his love and passion for music with his desire to seek new ways of integrating technology and artistic endeavors. Now chief operating officer and director of Global Operations for PreSonus, Boitnott is living his dream.
A guitar major at Elon, who also studied composition, Boitnott aided the Music Department in putting together a small technology lab. He also worked for Elon running sound for campus events. His full-time job at a music store in Greensboro allowed him to network and stay in touch with the overall music scene and he started to work with indie filmmakers in the area and started composing film scores.
After graduating Elon, Boitnott attended graduate school at Radford University, where he also taught private studio lessons and ensemble classes for the guitar area. At that time, he delved more into composing and working with filmmakers with music, sound effects and sound editing. After Radford, he came back to Elon where he taught guitar and Elon’s first Film Scoring class. At that time he was writing music for about five films each year, and produced compositions for guitar, voice, and various ensembles, including digital ensembles.
His interest moved to developing notation software after working with Sibelius, Finale and Overture notation. He was asked to develop the first version of Notion software. He worked for months at Abbey Road Studios and recorded a sample library with the London Symphony Orchestra.
He became President/CEO and with Notion version 3, his team totally reworked the entire software and company from the ground up. Notion saw quick growth and new momentum leading them to develop the Notion iPad app. Notion for iPad became one of the top-grossing music apps in the Apple App Store, and stayed on the top charts for music apps for years.
A few years later Apple launched a global advertising campaign featuring the composer/conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen. In the commercial, he was composing music on an iPad — in his house, in the back seat of car, at a piano, in front of an orchestra — and Notion was the featured app.
PreSonus Audio Electronics acquired Notion and Boitnott moved to Louisiana as PreSonus executive vice president of product services and worked with the team to design MyPreSonus, the infrastructure that helps tie all of their products and customers together. He would soon take over more responsibilities including IT and then marketing. PreSonus designs products such as: digital and analogue mixing consoles, rack mixers, loudspeakers, studio monitors, audio interfaces, control surfaces, and of course Notion, and one of the worlds fasting growing DAW’s, Studio One.
Boitnott is now chief operating officer, and he directs global operations for PreSonus.