Progress Update: Disembarking

Well, here I am at last, sitting in the London City Airport waiting to return to my life. It feels like so much has happened over the last week, and I know I'm gonna have a heck of a time articulating all of it.

I can't tell you everything here and now, but I want to soon. I want to find the words for everything I experienced. I want to share as much of it with you as I can.

Soon.

For now, let's talk a bit about the advent of my return and the future of the Foundry...

Where are we now?

Pretty much at the beginning, but with a better path forward than ever before.

I wasn't able to do much of anything while I was away. I have excuses for that, though. What I wouldn't be able to excuse is sitting idly in a seat on a plane while I have episodes waiting for me. So by the time get home, I expect to have the Pratchett episodes outlined in their entirety. 

Then, after a quick breath and a moment to find my Sea-to-Shining-Sea Legs, I'm going to do something very new and produce two scripts back-to-back.

This'll begin a trial period for a new pipeline that Felipe and I have been discussing, wherein I handle the bulk of the research/writing at the front in one big package, and then he produces the assets as I put the rest of the videos together in the background. All told, I think this'll free up a heck of a lot of time for us, but we really have yet to see.

What's next?

I learned far more than I ever could have anticipated from vidcon, the vast majority of it from a new and incredibly well-researched/spoken creator friend I met here. On the front end, the things I learned might not look like much, but they should greatly impact the show's health over time.

For instance, now I actually have some true know-how about reading and responding to the show's analytics. Some of the mysticism has been cleared away and I can start to draw genuine correlations between content and outcomes. I'll also be able to find what truly makes shows perform better or worse within the algorithm, which might not even be a matter of keywords—it might be more a matter of keywords combinations.

I've learned that tags are almost useless.

And soon I'll be putting all this information to good use, and the show will enter a glorious golden age of productivity and growth and pure unstoppable diesel-powered momentum and...

I don't know man. I think it'll be solid.

Anything Else?

This is (obviously) the tip of the iceberg.

So much has changed since the last of these I posted. So many doors have opened and in such strange places.

But I need a moment to breath, and process, and articulate the new space. I promise to share everything with all of you very soon.

In the meantime, thanks for your patience in the quiet during Vidcon. I've got some pictures and thoughts to share with all of you, but it'll be nothing like next year, when my face is less fresh and my initiation complete. When I'm not too busy processing all the things happening around me.

—Benji