Progress Update: Cheers! —from the past

G'monday, helpful humans of the future!

This is Benji, communicating with you from a time long past (read: yesterday). By the time you receive this transmission I shall be long gone, sailed far into the sky toward and away toward my destiny...

Vidcon London.

I'm equal parts jazzed and nervous, as you'll find in the coming Patreoncast for this Thursday. For the first time in my life, I'll find myself surrounded by people within my industry, who do a lot of the same things I do. No one is going to ask what I'm going to school for or question me in a long train about why I dropped out, which will be glorious. Still, even there I expect to find myself a bit of an island, in that our community and our content differs quite a lot from much of what exists on Youtube. I should try to formulate a way to communicate it succinctly for them, huh?...

What I'm most excited about is the inexorable truth that I'm gonna learn stuff. Maybe not particularly about Youtube/my career, but I'll learn some valuable things about leadership and human... ing?

No matter how it turns out, I expect it'll be an excellent experience for me on a personal level. Expect many further transmissions, images, (perhaps) vlogs, etc., etc.. We can definitely talk about it when I get back on the 19th!

In the meantime, there's still plenty brewing with the show.

Let's talk about it, shall we?

Where are we now?

Ready. Time to seize that bright new future all of you have lain out for the show.

To that end I expect to be done with some of the outline for the Terry Pratchett videos by the time I return. There'll be plenty of time in the air; enough, at least, to get the framework for these videos hammered out. Then, when I get back, I'm hoping to dive straight into the writing process, if I'm not already there before the trip's end.

What's next?

For the first time, we're in a place to really embrace our current topic all throughout production. Expect to see see new merchandise in the shop to match the series, new temporary banners on our websites of a similar variety, and some lovely Patreon freebies I've not even bothered to mention so far.

This series has been in the pot for a long time, so I want to do it good justice.

At the same time, Felipe and I are doing a kind of time trial here. If we can knock the first video out in a reasonable timeframe, we might finally be able to start shaving weeks off the video creation process.

At any rate, I'd at least like to get to a point where I can tell all the fans when to expect the next video to be released, which is something we're trying right now. The first Terry Pratchett video is, very conservatively, planned for April 1st.

As you read this, perhaps I'll be in an English pub with my good friends James, from Suibhne and Nick Hodges, from History Buffs. Maybe I'll be with Dimi and Janet from World Anvil. And perhaps, just as you read over this line, we'll be clinking our glasses together and praising all the lovely humans who allow us to do what we do.

It's guaranteed to happen at least a few times while we're away.

So cheers to all of you. I can't wait to come home and get back to drilling away at this next video and sharing my progress with all of you.

—Benji