Dalston club, makeshift sketchbook

i have become a fool

I’ve never been sure how long-distance relationships work, but I imagine it’s something like this.

Ideas for the Creator Track at Vidcon

The Creator Track was new this year, and, understandably, it felt a little bit unsure about what its purpose was.  The moderators for some Creator panels thought we were there purely because we were fans of someone on the panel, and although there was a lot of talk of community building and collaboration, there didn’t seem to be much facilitation of that at the convention itself.

I am a compulsive organiser and facilitator (having worked at creative networking events, and geeky conventions before), and so during VidCon I talked to a tonne of creators and wrote down all the ideas I had for ways to make sure they got the most out of VidCon.  So here are some of them…

Workshops

Workshops are my first love.  I have dozens of ways to run and facilitate them depending on topic, group size, access needs, space available etc.  But what they are about, at their core, is sharing ideas and experiences.

Workshops (particularly around the marginalised groups which VidCon is working towards giving a platform at the event with community panels) could be a cornerstone in community building at VidCon.  They give people a space in which everyone’s voices are valued equally, regardless of view count, subscriber base, or other measures of “YouTube success”.  They also give a focus to conversations with other VidCon attendees beyond “hello, we happen to be sitting next to each other in this panel”, particularly for people who are nervous to begin those cold-conversation with people they don’t know.  

Although there were a few workshops listed on the VidCon schedule, a lot of them ended up being panels rather than workshops with little or not interactivity beyond a Q&A at the end.  The main exception to this that I saw was the “Women on YouTube Workshop”, where the women who were ostensibly “on the panel” split the room between them and prompted the small groups with questions so they could share their ideas and experiences with each other.  This proved that workshops at VidCon can work, and work amazingly well. In the weeks since VidCon, it has inspired a Facebook group, Video Tag, and #femtube where people pledge to watch only female creators on the first Monday of each month, with participants reaching far beyond just those at the workshop itself.

Industry Speed Dating

These could be something that either ran like the Mentorship Scheme, where people applied and were shortlisted by participating Industry members, or a more open session.  Essentially a space and time for “focused networking”, where creators who have a specific idea, film, series etc can find collaborators amongst industry professionals, or where industry members can receive feedback from YouTubers about their area, organisation or ideas.

In effect this was already happening on the floor at VidCon, just in a random fashion, as Industry members would wait outside panels and approach whoever came out to ask about their channels.  Sometimes this was to do with collaborating directly, other times it was to gather opinions and feedback. This lead to some interesting conversations, and more than a few business cards exchanged, but having a more organised set up for this could only be more rewarding for creators and industry alike (I met one woman, for example, from an independent publishers, who was talking to as many people as possible, but was having a hard time finding booktubers amongst the masses). I also rarely saw this happen the other way around, with creators feeling able to approach industry members to ask about working with them. After all, it’s much easier to approach someone if you know they are open to hearing about your work on both sides.

Collab Wall

Typically this is a wall space (sometimes paper stuck to the wall, authorities post-it notes) where people who want to participate at any point during the event write their name/channel, email, and a call to collaboration.  For example, they may be looking for a composer for a webseries, or an actor for a comedy skit.  These stay up for the duration of the event, where at any time people can browse and see if there are any they are interested in helping out with.

I have run a few events involving creative people, in both arts and activism, and this has always ended up being a fantastic collaboration and communication tool. The wall will often become a sort of social hub, where you can immediately see from what someone is writing what they are creating, and can ask the people around you what they’re looking for. I can particularly see this being useful in one of the creator lounges which ended up as a useful chill out space, but with very little active purpose.

Tutorials/Classes/Demos

Although the classic line “just google it” could be used to answer any question on cameras, mics, lights, sound etc, it sometimes isn’t enough.  Buying equipment is an investment, and even then it can be hard to know how to use it properly on your own. Practical live demos or classes would be a great way of showing ways for creators to make their content shine, and seem like a perfect opportunity for sponsors to show what their film-making products can do, or members of production teams on YouTube-based series to demonstrate their craft.  These could run in a number of ways: as drop-in demos in lounges, scheduled classes with signups, or as part of larger panels.  Other classes I’ve seen at similar events are things like script-writing and podcast presenting.

In every panel I attended at VidCon, the Q&As always ended up with questions about lighting, lenses, money, equipment, artwork and other practical issues. The quick fire nature of the panels meant they couldn’t be given in depth answers, and sometimes the panelists weren’t sure about technical aspects of YouTube themselves.  Giving the more direct advice for producing content that attendees seems to be hungry for would have been a great way of helping people develop as creators.

So yeah, these are just some ideas for ways to focus the brilliant idea that was a Creator Track into something as useful as possible for all involved :)

Feel free to share this with anyone who might like to see it, if you want to reach me to share your thoughts I’m @aithinne over on Twitter!

BMO stares death in the face

An assortment of photos from yesterday at LFCC! The first two were taken by willwebbful and the last one by @katsu-x5 ! tbh this con was just “right which rhys ship are we doing now” like the gun pics were inspired by chapter nine of my fav rhack fic “never looked better” Rhys: giuseppimezzoalto Jack: johnnyfuckinggat Fiona: moist-von-lipwig Vaughn: shaun-riley

Met these awesome people at LFCC this year, thanks johnnyfuckinggat for hooking this up!

Good morning from #LFCC! Already spotted some awesome cosplays from the queue 👍🏻 #thehobbit #fili #kili #thorin #cosplay

#i literally crack up everytime #at least ten of the notes are from me

parents: okay we’re heading out see you later

me: bye

*parents leave the house*

me: time,,, to sin.

Put this in the MOMA

Girl with a super cool dog.

Rooney Mara & her dog.

Please note that we are aware that the dog looks like an Affenpincher; it is either Affenpicher or Griffon. For the intent & purpose of this blog, and because we really like her and her style she’s in the fraternity of Griffon.

I have been trying to get solid info either way so if any one of you out there know; please send us a note and let us know.