Post-Tween

This isn't really fair, since I'm getting together with the guys next week to have a semi-official post-mortem on the event, but I have so many thoughts that I want to organize/share them.

Firstly, the night before, I dreamed all night about all the ways it could go badly. And there was a guy on Twitter being a jerk about the whole thing, and because I was using the BeTween account I couldn't be as direct as I personally wanted to be. So every time I woke up I thought about that conversation and how negative he was...

But it really went beautifully. I think we had 40-some attendees total, which was the perfect number- enough for the conversations to be diverse and fruitful, but not so many that we couldn't handle them. And it went just long enough- longer than that and people would have gotten tired and grouchy, or we would have run out of content. Shorter than that, and it maybe wouldn't have been worth giving up Saturday for.

I decided to hold back Kohel and Kathy so they could participate in a session before leading one, and I think that was just the right call- it gave them a chance to get the tone of the event and set them up to lead their own sessions successfully. And people really wanted to talk with them and ask questions. Kohel ended up continuing his conversation with a smaller splinter group, which was just fine with me.

We had to really break up the conversations every hour in order to move on, and that, along with people complaining that the sessions should be longer, and that they should be recorded in case you missed something, assures me that they were fruitful and that people wanted to be doing what we were doing. I WANT people to think that maybe they missed something; I WANT them to have a tough time choosing which session to attend. That means we had high-quality content, and encourages people to want to do another one (if there is another one).

And I do think these are really fruitful conversations for animators to be having. The tech community does this kind of thing all the time, because their work is solitary and isolating. They form user groups and get-togethers and monthly stuff so that they can connect and share with each other, so that they can get insight and support, and the whole community benefits from it. I'm not sure why the animation community tends to think that the only people with insights to share are Experts who can Pass Down their Wisdom. It's often fruitful to ask your peers how they handle things, or if they know how to do something. And if we're going to build a more cohesive community here, we need to be talking to each other more. If we're going to start to develop an industry, a set of practices, a legislative agenda, it needs to come from communicating with each other on this level, not just talking about movies and artists.

However, as we did, I do think there's a real role for non-animators at events like this. We need attorneys and CPAs and insurance people, marketing and branding people, IT people and software people... we need to not only connect within our community, but outside of it, to build resources and knowledge that help us all work better. I think that any future BeTween should definitely include that aspect of it, although it's not a requirement of the format.

Finally, I'm personally so pleased that I feel like I gave our community this tool- that now there's a bunch of people who know how to do this and could lead one of their own. It's simple and inexpensive, and it's powerful. Maybe I won't have to lead the next one, or other people will decide to have their own on other topics. I'm beaming.

So yeah. I'm so pleased and yes, proud of myself, for making this thing happen and for having it go well. It's been a long process, pushing it forward, and I'm glad I never gave up on it (and thanks to those people who said to not give up on it). That's part of the learning experience for me; that if I don't feel supported in a good idea, to just keep with it until people get it and see where I'm coming from. I tend to think that if nobody buys in, it must not have been a good idea after all- I doubt myself. But I shouldn't be so eager to doubt myself. And I hope that these things I've worked on and brought to Portland animators; Drinking and Drawing, BeTween, and (to some extent) the local WIA chapter, have a life beyond me, and continue to serve everyone long after I've moved on to other things. Go me!