Feet On The Ground, Head In The Clouds

Okay, so I know that my next computer will be a MacBook Air. The new i7 models can take the amount of work I need to do & even the heavier things like Photoshop, so it's finally a viable alternative. The problem is, storage space is tight. In an effort to tidy up my almost full 500GB hard drive, I've been weeding through things & seeing which ones I can live without. Here's the process I've gone/am going through & the solutions & implementing.

Video
I tend to download entire seasons of a show at once, in addition to movies, in addition to new episodes of things we may have missed. This folder fills up quckly. I wanted to be able to still have access to my video without keeping it on my drive, but I needed to be able to access the video from my home network (Xbox & Google TV). Well, I've had a Pogoplug for years, but never really had the opporunity to use it because Time Warner's upstream sucks so much. Fortunately though, now that we have Wideband, the Pogoplug is actually useful. All 140GB of my video is now on my Pogoplug. Pogoplug also lets you stream to game consoles on your network, so my bases were covered. Streaming quality is just fine, so so far so good.

Music
Ok, this is where it gets a bit tricky. Rdio, Spotify, MOG, Grooveshark, and on and on and on. I am and always have been totally anal retentive about how my music is tagged & making sure I have weird B-Sides & imports. There's a solid 15% of my music that isn't available on these services. I don't have much music, but trimming 40GB down will have a big impact. But no, there's no way I can get rid of my music & solely rely on these services, can I? Well, I think I can get halfway there. My plan is to slowly start weeding out the music I have locally that I can be sure I'll be able to find on Rdio (my service of choice) until all I carry on my local storage is the stuff that isn't available, which then is also available on mobile & other machines via Google Music. Of course, I won't be deleting the music, just moving it to the Pogoplug, just in case. This should clear up 30GB of music in the end.

Documents
I've never had terribly lerge files. I use Photoshop & Illustrator now and then, but I don't have to worry much about the things I need to work. Dropbox more than suits my needs and a 256GB drive in a MacBook Air should be more than enough for what I need.

I'm almost done moving things around & I've gone from 20GB available to 70GB available to 140 GB available to today where I have 240 GB available, and that's out of a 500GB drive. (obviously less, after formatting) I still have more to compress & offload, too, so after all is said and done, I should fit well within the constraings of a current gen MacBook Air. Though, by the time I get one, I hope there's a 512 GB drive option!

Have you already started the transition to the cloud? Did you downgrade your local storage? What did you do to make it easier on yourself? Let me know!

I'm looking for an intern.

I'm looking for someone I can bring on as an intern. The video should cover what I'm looking for so I'll just outline everything here.

Criteria:
• College Student
• Must own a laptop
• Proficient in administrative things such as email, scheduling, transcription, etc...
• Comfortable in Photoshop/Illustrator
• Interest in video production
• Reliable and Professional
• Involved in social media, and interested in emerging media

The internship is unpaid, but I can give college credit, so a college student is preferred. This is a great opportunity to rub some elbows and learn some great stuff along the way.

If this sounds like you, please drop me a line you can either email me (click here), or you can click email me on the right column of my site.

Please include:
• Resumé
• Any links that might be helpful
• Cover Video

I'm looking forward to hearing from you and I can't wait to make this an awesome experience for you!

Best Practices For Demo Videos

In the last few months, I've had the pleasure of being a part of one startup's acceptance into the event. I work at New Work City in TriBeCa, and I've had the pleasure of working alongside one Darrell Silver. Darrell's Startup, Perpetually.com is one of the most brilliant things I've seen in a long time. But you’ll get to see the product in the finished video.

The amount of time effort and thought you put into creating a watchable yet informative demo video is a make or break factor in the selection process for an event like TC50. Here's a few of the things that I think are key for making a good demo video: 

Have a good (finished) product.
Having a good product to begin with is paramount. Just as with anything else you do in life, you must have a solid foundation. If the product or service isn't finished or fully functional, you shouldn't be doing a demo. The last thing we want to see is you fumbling over something that should work just fine. If you're not finished, get back to work. You can do a demo when the product is finished.

Learn to take direction.
I don't mean direction as in knowing where you're going (though that's important, too). I mean make sure that you're being directed and you have someone watching and listneing to you speak to watch for clarity, descriptiveness, crutches (ums, uhs, ands, etc...) and other ticks that will make your 'performance' suffer. The first thing you learn as a director is that the actor can't watch themselves. If you're doing the demo for your product, there's no way for you to watch yourself without losing perspective. Having someone watching you is the best way to safeguard against cringing when you hear yourself say "And so...right here, uh, we have this, like, button here...."

Take your takes.
Make sure that you have enough time to do as many takes as you think you’ll need and then some. If you think you’ve got it and that last one you did was it, then do one more. You never know, you might do something better in the next one than you did in the one just prior. We’ll get to what you can do with good parts in different takes in a little bit.

Screencasts! I want to see what you’re doing.
This might be one of the most important points I’ll mention. Do not, under any circumstance, point the camera at your computer. I don’t want to see it. I won’t watch it. If you’re showing me your program or website, there are plenty of affordable screencasting solutions out there. For the PC you’ve got Camtasia, which until recently was PC only. Now, they’ve got a very powerful Mac version, but for me it’s still Screenflow on the Mac. Screenflow gives you so much conrol over your screencasts. Everything from picture in picture, to canvas manipulation, to callouts, to isolating windows. Screenflow wins it in my book.

But I want to see your face, too.
Don’t think that just a screencast is enough, though. While it’s certainly the most important component in your demo, there’s something to be said for the personal touch. I don’t want to listen to a disembodied voice for 4-5 minutes. I want to know who is speaking to me and what their involvement is in the product. I want to trust you and believe that what you’re showing me is real. Always start off on your presenter and then make the transition into the screencast demonstrating the product. Screenflow even allows you to leave the iSight video in the corner as a picture in picture. Very helpful, indeed.

Editing is your friend.
If you do this right, you’ll have a few opportunities in which you’ll be able to cut out some things from the final product. Keep in mind that when you’re editing, you’ll be able to cut from take to take between the shot on the presenter and the screencast. Use that to your advantage by doing takes for each section so you can have distinct cuts and so that you don’t have to memorize everything all together. Just don’t let it get too sterile. Much of what showing your face and letting your audience get to know you can be lost if the final product has but cut to kingdom come. Try and keep it genuine and conversational, and you’ll be just fine.

If you don’t know, get someone who does.
Now, I have a background in film. So, I have a professional camera and a mic and some quite a bit of know how in Final Cut Pro. But you may not have these things. If this is the case, and you don’t feel comfortable with the tools you have available to you, it may be worth your while to hire someone to shoot and cut the video for you. You’ll have to spend some money, but hey, anything worth doing is worth doing right, eh?

So now you’ve got everything you need to know to make yourself a sweet demo video for your product. I’m embedding the video that I did for Perpetually.com here so you can take a look. I did it very quickly as we were on a deadline, so there are a few things I’d change if I had had the time. But, either way, the Perpetually boys made it into the finals and gave their presentation a few days ago on the 15th! So, congrats to Perpetually and happy demoing!