Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Opportunity Cost
I stumbled upon this; could it be my ticket to waking up in time for free bagels/donuts on Mondays?

Let's see...$180...assuming $2 per bagel/donut, it would take 90 weeks to break even, or two years. That's assuming the battery doesn't need to be replaced at some point and that it actually works.

As a student of economics, one of the first things you learn is not to just look at the price of something, but to think about what you could buy instead of it

With $180, I could buy 4 Nintendo Wii games or 8 Nintendo DS games. I could buy 4-5 new sweaters. I could buy 10 nice restaurant dinners. I could give 9 members $20 gift certificates. I could keep the money in my bank account since I'm basically living off savings now (I'm going with the latter)

Anyway, this reminds me of a funny story and how i saw my favorite movie, Porco Rosso.

In a previous life I was in San Francisco with someone and she wanted to spend $10 each to go see a movie. Being the economics guy I proposed spending the money to buy Porco Rosso, owning it forever, and then watching it in the comfort of home with the joys of my cooking
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Tuesday, December 11, 2007

I didn't wake up in time for free bagels and donuts today, either. To compensate I baked brownies, which will be my breakfast tomorrow

I put our Version Vibrant trailer at the bottom of every theOtaku.com page. It distorts the design slightly, but I want to make sure everyone notices i

I have a lot of work to catch up on.
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Monday, December 10, 2007

Finally, Back to Work
NYAF is finally over...here are some highlights from today:

- The Speed Racer duo was a lot of fun. Corrine, the voice of Trixie, invited me to a charity dinner tomorrow that she is helping with

- The CPM panel was my favorite moment of the entire convention. The company has certainly had its share of problems, but seeing the founder on stage passionately defending his baby, speaking bluntly, and then announcing at the end that everyone in the room could take whatever they wanted from the CPM booth for free, as a gift, was stunning. This is really the "founder's difference."

A side note, did you know that the founder of deviantArt was kicked out of his own site?? It's been run by a corporate suit for a few years now. I was shocked when I found out, if some company took over theOtaku and kicked me out, I'd hope that a lot of members would leave in a firestorm. It's almost like if someone breaks into your house and kidnaps your child.

When you look at most big fandom sites now, very few have their original founders involved. I think that gives us a huge advantage + a soul for our relaunch

- The panel I moderated today, with three independent webcomic artists, went very well. A lot of people came. It's a sweet gig being a moderator; if you have amazing people speaking, you just ask questions, make small comments here and there, and enjoy the show.

The three were:

Mike from Dominic Deegan, a HILARIOUS and sometimes sentimental series. I bought the first volume book from him after the show and can't put it down.

Juno from Star Cross'd Destiny

Abby, author of High School Confidential and Lulu-award winner.
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Sunday, December 9, 2007

Lindsey's panel today was a huge success, 70+ people showed up and she did a fine job. She called me 'Vanna White' since all I did was hold a camera over her paper as she talked and colored.

Our third panel is tomorrow and I'm hoping that's just as popular. I will be moderating three super-star webcomic artists as they talk about how they 'went pro'. I'm optimistic

I also showed our teaser trailer to a few industry folks who all seemed to like it

Tomorrow Gia and I are interviewing the voice of the original Speed Racer, which should be fun.

I haven't been able to do any Version Vibrant work recently because this con is so draining.
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Saturday, December 8, 2007

Panel notes
Everyone who came to my panel today got a free box of pocky, mainly because not that many people came. I think there were only 7 or 8 total, but part of that is because it was scheduled at the very end of the convention on a workday

Gia read some of the comments that were coming in live at the panel, which was a cool idea

I wish I could have done my 'best presentation ever' to more people, I'll hold on to it, it'll be my default

I'm hoping Lindsey's panel tomorrow + the webcomic panel I'm moderating on Sunday will be more crowded

I was thrilled that in the "special thanks" part of the program guide, they mentioned my name. It also saved me; I went to pick up my coat at the coat check and didn't have my green ticket. This would have normally been a huge problem. However, after I showed her that I was thanked in the program guide, she let me go to the back and get my coat

I'm glad the vast majority of people loved the Version Vibrant teaser trailer. 14 people used the word 'awesome' in the comments thus far
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Friday, December 7, 2007

Epic Presentation Tomorrow
- I threw together a PowerPoint presentation for my talk tomorrow at 6 PM. It's the best PowerPoint I've ever made, it's all funny pictures, NO TEXT, and cheesy effects. The title of the presentation is "The Greatest Presentation Ever" - it's going to be informative, too.

There's pictures of Super Saiyans, Goro from Mortal Kombat, Miyamoto from Nintendo, Pirates, and other nonsense

- I'm also going to play Final Fantasy 7 Bombing Mission music before the talk starts and as people sit down

- At the end of the presentation I'll show off Version Vibrant

- Speaking of which, I was listening to the new podcast and thought it was going to end without mention of the trailer, then FINALLY Ichigo jumps in and talks about it. I wonder if that was intentional

- I was playing a song from Gorillaz and Gia thought it was from Final Fantasy VII.
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Thursday, December 6, 2007

World Premier Teaser Trailer
I emailed our world premier teaser trailer to Ichigo today, so that he and the podcasters could talk about it on Thursday's show, here was the reaction:

"Looks pretty sweet...good job on this, and pass the compliments on to the video crew."

Excellent...
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Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Looking Backward Sucks
I looked at a few of our key metrics today

I'll be honest; October and November were terribly disappointing months for us. I didn't see any positive signs. The Otakulypse was a part of it, though not the whole story

I am, of course, optimistic. There's nothing better than a new strategy/new design/new technology/and 50+ new features to reverse the tide. I am a little nervous to see fan reaction of our new trailer, it represents a great deal of effort by many people.
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Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Version Vibrant Ethics Edition
Did you hear about the GameSpot editor who was fired for giving a game a harshly negative review because the game's publisher was a huge advertiser on the site?

Yuck, as some of you know I'm a HUGE ethics advocate, and never let companies push us around

The issue gave me something to think about though; how can we set a new standard for integrity and community online for our next version. I think we need a list of rules, a constitution of sorts
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Monday, December 3, 2007

Free Bagels and Donuts
My apartment has free bagels and donuts every Monday morning so long as you get there early enough that people haven't already eaten them all.

The last 7 Mondays I've waken up too late. I'm hoping I can make it tomorrow...

UPDATE: Man, I didn't wake up in time, again.
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