This month, I mainly worked on creating YouTube content. I also virtually attended the Hollywood Climate Summit and started posting on Medium. Not much writing again this month.
Hollywood Climate Summit
I virtually attended the Hollywood Climate Summit. The pitchfest, which I was most looking forward to, was postponed due to the Writers Guild of America strike. I was curious to see how my script I submitted at the end of April did and find out about the winning projects, however, during the conference I made contacts with other participants. The programming was interesting and provocative. I’m considering making video or blog responses.
Medium: https://medium.com/@nextnetproject
I joined Medium and made two blog posts, one related to the Internet Society and one related to the Hollywood Climate Summit Pitchfest. I want to continue making posts, however, my priority for now is the YouTube channel.
YouTube Shorts
In June, I published 6 shorts. One short, Digging Deep for Climate Solutions, did relatively well for my channel with over 800 views. YouTube tells me over 90% of the audience were male which seemed high.
I tried to replicate this short with Solution in the Subway, but it wasn’t as successful. The picture quality for one shot wasn’t very high (and YouTube selected this part for the thumbnail).
I’ve spent a bit of time watching YouTube videos for creators. The advice seems to be that the first videos won’t be good anyway so keep pumping videos out and learn as you go. Much like finding errors after printing, I see flaws after publishing. For now, I’m treating this as a learning experience and want to continue making posts and working on improving.
My goal was two shorts a week. I came close to that goal. When I tried posting a longer video, that took more time. But it was important to aim for longer videos. The short videos are fun and feasible, but very hard to develop complex ideas in under a minute. For this, I will need to learn the skills of making longer videos.
YouTube Videos
Creating YouTube shorts was a good entry into making videos. These were mini projects I could finish within a short timeframe even with my limited experience. Moving to longer videos is the next big step.
I published A Wish List for Humanity Upon a Logo. This introduces the project and explains the customized phi logo. After publishing, I didn’t get many clicks, so I changed the title and thumbnail. With those changes, the video did better.
The graphics for this video took a while to create (and I was mostly re-using elements created previously). The graphics turned out okay, but I need to work on the initial 30 seconds of the video to improve viewer retention.
Conclusion
In June, I kept posting on YouTube and I kept learning about the process. I also tried posting on Medium and making connections at the Hollywood Climate Summit.
The goal for July is posting longer YouTube videos. I think I need to post 10 longer videos not worrying too much about being perfect, just publish to learn what works and what doesn’t.