I just can't catch a break with these video thumbnails.
Anyway! The thing I'm most concerned about regarding my pitches are making them comprehensible for everyone to be able to understand, so I updated some of my content to reflect my frustrations in a more humorous, relatable way. I updated my hook and closing to make them less clunky, and generally just tried to present this in a more natural manner. My feedback from my first elevator pitch was mostly positive, I was surprised that the pitch came through to people at all.
The book I chose to read was The Wright Brothers by David McCullough.
1) You read about an entrepreneur:
What surprised you the most?
I didn't realize that Orville and Wilbur Wright were in their 40s when they had their breakthrough flight and lived at home until they were in their 30s! That's usually what we call manchildren.
What about the entrepreneur did you most admire?
Their teamwork. As someone who had a project fail due to my partner falling through, I deeply admire the bond of the brothers.
What about the entrepreneur did you least admire?
While firm believers in their own product, it led to some arrogance. After their success, one of their plane models was malfunctioning and resulted in the death of several soldiers, but the brothers blamed it on pilot incompetency. Tt took multiple deaths for them to admit it was a mistake on their part.
Did the entrepreneur encounter adversity and failure? If so, what did they do about it?
Yes. After the success at Kitty Hawk, the brothers attempted to sell their idea to the US government, but they weren't interested. Thus, the Wright brothers took their idea to France, where it was much better received and the US finally took interest after that.
2) What competencies did you notice that the entrepreneur exhibited?
The two had already run a successful newspaper, print shop, and bike shop. They'd already demonstrated competency in entrepreneurship by the time they were making flying machines.
3) Identify at least one part of the reading that was confusing to you.
I wish the McCullough had included more in the reading about the brothers' childhood. They evidently had a strong bond with their father and their sister, and I would've liked to learn more about the roots. How a family was alright with letting their children live with them well into their 30s demands an explanation!!
4) If you were able to ask two questions to the entrepreneur, what would you ask? Why?
Why did the deadly aspect of flight motivate you to to work on your own dangerous machines? Have you always been thrill seekers? Maybe I'm just lame, but you can't capitalize on your success if you're dead. How did you stay motivated when even your own country wasn't interested in your success? Did you imagine there to be a market for flying machines? I imagine paying the bills was an important priority.
5) For fun: what do you think the entrepreneur's opinion was of hard work? Do you share that opinion?
Neither of them married and they were constantly stressed, so I imagine that their opinion of hard work was simply being a good, old-fashioned workaholic. While I strive to better my work ethic and I don't mind my projects infringing on relationships, I draw the line at risking my health. You only get one body!
For my project, a website, the way I'd be making money is with premium memberships that charge a small monthly fee. The current largest website for artists, DeviantArt, also offers premium memberships, so I interviewed people who decided to purchase those.
Interview Summary
These purchases have all done online with a credit card, through DeviantArt's website. Of the different packages available, two of my interviewees went for a 3 month premium membership vs. the 1, 6, or 12 month options available (the third did one month). Their primary reasoning is that longer memberships were offered at a cheaper rate, like buying groceries in bulk.
Besides buying their own domain for a website, there really aren't any other art-sharing websites that offer premium features, and none that are social.
The interviewee that bought the one month membership was only interested in the premium feature of changing their username, but did not buy again since they didn't think it was worth it. One interviewee was a professional artist, and valued the premium coding options to make their profile page more visually attractive and inviting. The last interviewee valued the additional organizing functions they could use for their group.
Conclusion
Once again, everything is about the aesthetics! While DeviantArt is extremely outdated, I think they use it in their favor. Taking advantage that they're the only major art website, they know people will pay in order to use modern coding, so why go ahead and update the website for everyone?
ENT3003 is not necessarily difficult, but the workload can be tough to keep with on top of your other courses. I feel that the most important behavior is to simply accept and enjoy this course- it makes the workload feel far less strenuous, which it definitely CAN be after this hurricane Irma hustle. Don't fight it, the deadlines are non-negotiable anyway. ENT is easy to enjoy in my opinion, as the lectures are entertaining and you learn extremely applicable skills.
After hurricane Irma, we went from having 2 assignments due per week to 3 assignments due per week. The first two weeks were especially difficult to get used to, and I actually just skipped one of the assignments because I couldn't handle the workload. Now, on the last week of 3 assignments being due, I am handling it fine. I developed tenacity through good planning. Instead of not looking at the assignment until Friday afternoon, I now prepare for them throughout the week. I may not be directly working and typing out these assignments, but they're on my mind. So, by the time Friday rolls around, I already know what to do and it becomes fairly straightforward.
So you don't become a sad kermit, here are my three tips:
1. Watch the lectures and take notes. Go to the live lectures if you can. Learn!
2. Take the assignments seriously. You're going to put a lot of work into your desired project, so if you hate it this will be like pulling teeth.
Segment: The online roleplaying community of artists
For my segment, I've chosen online artists in the 18-30 range, mostly college-educated females who roleplay online. After running some casual polls on Twitter, I gathered that 69% have been in the community for over 4 years, 40% perceived the community as growing larger, and 68% desired a place where they could post art, chat, and roleplay, like the website I'm trying to create.
My Findings
Those who voted 'yes' on my poll asking if they were interested in my product ended up being the ones I interviewed, since I knew they would have an unmet need. What I found is people are primarily dissatisfied with the outdated features of the website they currently use to post art on, Deviantart, and they are reminded of this when the website fails them with technical issues. Because the website is over 15 years old and many are longtime users, they know at this point there's not much to really google- there is no hope. So, they take to complaining to friends and followers on social media. After a few years, DeviantArt added a function that allowed users to post drafted artwork onto a cloud server. It uses newer HTML coding, but when the user chooses to upload their draft, it gets converted to the old, ugly HTML the main site uses, leading to hair-pullingly ugly formatting.
Conclusions
Because my segment is young and millennial, they're interested in ethical, modern, visually appealing platforms, and what they've been given to work with is certainly not that. If I choose to move forward with my website, I'm 99% sure I'll need to consult with a graphic designer and programmer ( I actually already know a few in this community already!) to help not make this website an ugly baby. If I do end up charging for premium memberships, I believe allowing attractive customization options for one's profile will definitely sell.
I've always been the visionary/day dreaming type, and I love to share my thoughts with other people. I think aloud. I'm strong in the arts, and I aspire to combine my career with them someday. This is what I hope to do with my website, targeted at young digital artists. My demographic is 18-25, majority female women. The career range is varied, though a good portion are in the arts. They all draw as a hobby, though, and are usually involved in fandom culture.
Because this is a website, members can join for free. I may make a premium option, though, allowing more features and customization to those who pay a reasonable monthly fee. I believe selling advertising spaces would be pretty easy, since any nerdy/artsy company would find a fantastic audience within my demographic.
I feel really lucky that I've found this niche audience. It's been neglected by most major art websites, so by catering specifically to them and ONLY to them I already have set myself apart.
The website I'm working on is for an audience that I've been apart of since I was 15. This community has literally helped shape who I've become, so I feel strongly about this. Since giving back to the community is definitely one of my motivations, the making money aspect of this is a bit weak compared to the other elements. Setting this website apart from other alternatives and having its appeal outweigh switching costs will also be my greatest struggle.
after multiple exams and quizzes this week, i was unable to find the willpower to drag myself outside to film this. sry dr. pryor
My phone ran out of storage so you guys are lucky enough to witness awkward closeups, stumbling over my own words, and the world's most punchable video thumbnail.
transcript if u dont wanna see my face:
We spend precious time on hobbies because like loreal, we know they're worth it. Artists, of all people, are well-aware of how valuable their time is. So why do they continue wasting it?
As technology progresses, digital art has emerged as a cost-efficient medium for visual artists. Similar to the art galleries you see downtown, websites dedicated to sharing art have popped up online.
We're going to get nerdy. In their spare time, artists come together online and work on original concepts of fictional worlds, stories, and characters, which is called roleplaying. Basically, it's as if Game of Thrones was a collaborative effort. A a LOT of time and effort goes into this- but here's the issue. These art-sharing websites wasn't really made for this.
The ability to group artwork with a common theme does exist- but they were made for sharing fanart and not original concepts. The websites are also often outdated, barely work on mobile, and make users pay to use modern coding for their profile pages. Due to this, roleplayers end up switching between 2-3 different websites, resulting in wasted time that could be spent creating.
My solution is to make a website for the roleplay community that is modern and effectively serves as one, singular place to properly share info, concept art, and possess solid social features as well, such as chatroom and direct messaging functions.
Would you be interested in checking out our kickstarter?
