The strategy team attended a Creative Mornings talk in LA at the NPR West studios (btw this was a pretty awesome place to host an event). If you haven’t heard of Creative Mornings or their talks and want more information, check them out. You won’t be disappointed.
The speaker this time was Cody Simms, the Managing Director of techstars LA. His company helps to provide start-up tech-media businesses mentorship and funding through an accelerator program to gain opportunities in the market.
The topic today was on climate and not the weather, but the current climate of creative and tech in Los Angeles. Cody is predicting a heat wave in which creative and tech are becoming more intertwined, making innovation and storytelling a priority. “Types of creatives are coming together in a new way,” Cody stated.
YouTube is cutting around 15 Million checks to content creators.1
We wanted to share a recap as it is very relevant and can possibly help, whether you’re a creative or a techie. Cody pointed out several key considerations reinforcing that through shared collaboration, creatives and tech can move things forward, tell better stories and push the envelope when it comes to content creation. High level, here are some of his top considerations and the meaning behind them from his perspective.
Mentorship – Learning from those who have done it before.
Intellectual Honesty – Knowing what you aren’t good at and understanding what is and isn’t working across the creative process.
Critique – Creative has a history of reviewing and providing feedback on their projects, tech can learn from this.
Iteration – Don’t be scared to try and try again, make your product or service better over time.
Measure – Understand what’s happening.
Empowerment – Network over hierarchy.
User Centricity – Create a conversation with users, begin the conversation even before product development to understand their needs.
Scale – Don’t underestimate the impact and idea or product can have, assume the best possible outcome (e.g. you can have 10x the audience)
Test and Experimentation – exactly what it implies, test your product or service in small groups, understand how people are engaging.
Side Projects – Big ideas don’t always stem from individuals or groups working on them full time. Don’t hesitate to have endeavors or interests outside of your normal day to day.
In relation to the above point, a recent “side project” comes to mind where Elan Lee, Matthew Inman, and Shane Small concocted a card game after the three got together. The original idea stemmed from inserting a joker card into a deck of cards. After some collaboration Exploding Kittens was born. They posted the project to Kickstarter and asked the community for $10,000 to fund it. Well, a month later they have $8,782,571 and more than 200,000 backers. No, there are no typos or exaggerations in that last sentence. I promise. The moral of the story: a simple idea can have long legs.
Innovation and creativity are not always happening in the office or at your desk, sometimes it’s in the places you least expect it. Being an agency we couldn’t agree more, sometimes “exploring the white space” and storytelling means you have to explore new avenues.
If you have a chance check out Creative Mornings in your local city and support an organization that is bringing new content in a fun way! Oh and they provided an awesome breakfast from some pretty great sponsors.
1YouTube Says Growth Is Still Strong Despite Push From Facebook, Marketland.com, February 18, 2015
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