#immt731

his moment is a purge -- rid (someone) of an unwanted feeling, memory, or condition, typically giving a sense of cathartic release.

In my previous posts, I've talked about my professional development while lightly touching on the personal. Some cookies included strengthening my confidence and putting more emphasis on self care. Without turning this into a therapy session, i believe my hesitation to perform contradicts by desire to excel and I believe this stems from the lot of negativity I experienced growing up.

It's not boring, it's part of the job.

For the past few weeks, I've been sitting at my desk, research, sending emails, writing, and repeat - did I mention research? I find it difficult to stay motivated and maintain my focus. This isn't the most exciting part of being a producer, but it is a necessary evil. I usually meet up with a girlfriend after work and we chat about life and careers. She is an account coordinator for an Ad agency - similar to producing, her job is to manage projects, and manage expectations.

This week, the other interns and myself went through a performance evaluation. This was both nerve-racking and exciting. I’ve always looked forward to evaluations because they serve as a benchmark of my work to this moment. It also gives me an objective perspective of my performance.  Usually, our performance may not match our perception of our work. Through this evaluation I discovered three things about my performance. 

First, while I am ready and willing to take on any task, I lack professional confidence in my ability to execute. Now, I’ve mentioned this before, and it feels like an ongoing battle until I am able to shed my fear of failure. As a junior producer in-the-making, it is my task to manage the creative team and my own tasks. I am often caught up on the fact that I am not an expert which produces a lot of hesitation. 

Second, because of the learning curve I am not the most efficient or effective delegating my time. When learning about a new industry, the best approach would be just to throw yourself in and perform by trial and error. While this is ideal for most, as a critical over-thinker, I can focus too much on perfecting my research with the task dwindling at the back of my mind. As you can imagine, this is time consuming and not so productive for the company overall. 

Third, my task motivation fluctuates which may inherently be a fault in my self discipline. Typically, with new tasks, I sprint through the beginning phase until I burnout mid-way.  Typically, I will take a break and then sprint through and burnout again. While this type of behaviour doesn’t sound terrible, it is. It lacks consistency and it isn’t as productive as it sounds. This is also physically draining. As a producer, sometimes I’m faced with mundane tasks. Call it a hazard of the job, nevertheless, I need to manage my ability to manage tasks. 

I have to shed the habits of my student life. Late nights, early mornings, skipped meals and tons of caffeine is not healthy for the body and it's not healthy for the mind. Today's work culture is enforced by the drive for success. The conversation centers on sacrifices for the greater good. My interpretation is to put your physical needs at the bottom of the totem pole forgetting that at the centre of everything is my physical needs - Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a perfect reference. 

Now, I’ve discussed this before - I’m referring to the distance between the classroom and real life.  In my new adventures working towards becoming a junior producer, I expected a learning curve. The two project management courses required primed me for what felt like a very administrative role. It would consist of managing and maintaining project “change.”  So far, my day to day is full of emails, and research.  My activities this week were primarily research. I’ve begun looking into funding available for interactive projects in Ontario.  #FunFact: There are tons of funding opportunities for content producers in the digital domain. It was also nice because our Business Strategy course involved researching and interviewing with these funding bodies. I interviewed with the OMDC (Ontario Media Development Corporation). They seek to support content creators with products that will contribute to the cultural industry as well as, the economic development of Ontario. While I’m not quite seasoned enough to handle some of the other more higher profile tasks, I am managing our IP projects as part of my responsibilities. It forces me to take the lead and step out of my comfort zone. However, there hasn’t been a ton of related activity. Since these projects are new, it is so interesting to be able to capture the process from ideation all the way through.  I am involved with the pitch process but find that my hand is further from the creative decisions than I anticipated.  Furthermore, my prioritized roles and responsibilities are subject to the state of our business affairs. Since we are in the business development phases, I am also acquiring entrepreneurial experience by overseeing how a company takes itself to the market for new business.  While this isn’t the most creative work, it is engaging and I am fascinated by the strategies implemented. I look forward to seeing how the efforts convert to numbers.

The beautiful thing about media in the Canadian economic landscape is the incentives that exist for small businesses and entrepreneurs to emerge producing Canadian content.   Billions in funding, grants and tax credits exist for the sole purpose of relieving the financial burden creators feel when planning their projects.  However, very few actually access these opportunities because they overlook the most critical piece of their application – their budget.  Finances are often overlooked or handled once money has already been spent but with good planning and the appropriate management, the burden could in fact become a blessing.  According to representatives at the OMDC(Ontario Media Development Corporation), the part of projects that need the most work is often the budget. Without a properly structured and accurate budget, it is difficult to first, determine how much funding to grant a project, and second, to hold them accountable.  There is no shortage of passionate creatives trying to bring their ideas to life, but money keeps a project alive.  Financiers need to understand the projected flow of funds in order to approve applications.

Check out Canada Business Ontario for more information on the various grants, and contributions available for Arts and Media. 

On an operational level, creative projects are notorious for running out of money when no one is assigned to be accountable to the budget.  As a result, costs incur, and spending is unmanaged until it is time to gather the receipts and find out where all the money went. Now this is a mistake we all will probably make, especially if mathematics is not our forte. As a freelancer and an aspiring digital project manager, bookkeeping including the management of invoices, and tracking of expenses, is critical to my overall success.  

Now, I speak about the importance of bookkeeping not to discourage those who fearful of accounting. As a matter of fact, I was introduced to a few cloud-based bookkeeping software applications that actually eased my own reservations. Whether you are a freelancer, or small business, there are solutions that take the novice and equip them with the necessary tips and tools to stay on top of their books. For freelancers with a lean budget, I suggest Wave Accounting.  Simple, and easy to use, the pleasant interface provided the right tools to keep me in tune with my income and expenses. Wave is best for simple procedures like invoicing, payroll and payment processing. Plus, the basic package is free! For those with a little more experience and room in their budget, Freshbooks and Quickbooks are viable solutions with a broader range of integration with eCommerce and, a few more features including time tracking, point-of-sale, and inventory management.

Introduction

Aesthetec Studio is a Canadian interaction design and technology start up company, where they create engaging experiences through interactive installations. It is located on Danforth Avenue in downtown Toronto.

Aesthetec Studio’s main clients are museums and other institutions in Asia, the United States, and Canada, but its audience is everyone that has a sense of fun and curiosity. Its main goal is to encourage exploration of electronics and programming.

Its products include:

Light loops (interactive music and light instrument installation for TIFF Kids DigiPlaySpace).

Sing & Paint (interactive installation that puts voice into digital colour and texture paint on a digital canvas). 

SMILE (interactive lightbox that responds to music or plays patterns. This digital installation was at the 2011 Toronto Nuit Blanche). 

After all of its success with these installations, it decided to produce a consumer product called Little Robot Friends. This product is robot characters designed for teaching electronics and coding to adults and children. It took Aesthetec Studio ten years between other projects to come up with the concept, then develop and build a prototype of Little Robot Friends.

First Kickstarter Campaign To help fund Little Robot Friends, Aesthetec Studio launched its first campaign on September 11, 2013. Another reason it used Kickstarter for its crowd-funding campaign was to see if consumers would buy its product. The company wanted to raise $55,000 and it received $123,659 that was $68,659 more than its goal.

Three reasons this first Kickstarter campaign succeeded are as follows:

Its video was simply made with a low budget without any special effects. The video introduced its creators and talked about its product. 

Kickstarter had just started, was a new fundraising tool (tactic) and only had a few campaigns using it. The was less compaction for Aesthetec Studio.

It allowed the audience to make small pledge amounts and the company had a reasonable funding goal.

I learned about Little Robot friends when Katie Barnes came to my class. Showed us the robots, the story behind them and talked about the company’s Kickstarter campaigns.

Second Kickstarter Campaign With the funds raised from the first campaign, the company produced and sold some robots. It also reinvested some of those funds into developing a new prototype that was more creative and gave the users more options. It needed funding to produce and upgrade this new version of the robots.

Because the first campaign did really well in raising funds, Aesthetec Studio created a second campaign. So it launched a second kickstarter campaign with $125,000 as its goal on April 25, 2016, which was 2.5 years after its first campaign ended.

The company received $7,521 in the first two weeks of the campaign. Due to the low response of pledges, the campaign was cancelled on May 5, 2016.

Three reasons this second Kickstarter campaign failed are as follows:

Its video was too professional looking and it was missing a personal touch. The video quality was so good, it looked like the company did not need funding.

Kickstarter was now well known and established. So, there was more competition.

The company set a much higher funding goal and higher pledge amounts (most started at $60 or more), which made it less appealing to contribute.

My Thoughts I really liked the robots. I was sad when Katie had to go and take the robots with her. 

I think the second Kickstarter campaign would have been more successful if they would have followed the expression: “If it isn’t broke don’t fix it.” They should have kept the same goal amount and pledge amounts as the first campaign. They should have also kept the same simple concept of the first campaign’s video. It showed the personal touch and interaction among the staff displaying their love and passion for their little creations.

What also might have made the second campaign more successful is if they had added customer testimonials about the product and videos showing customer interaction with the robots.

I love working on different digital media projects especially, Graphic Design. I landed a freelance project recently and was very happy about it, until I realised I had to send my client an Invoice for my services. Being new to the city and the country, I did not know any rules or a way to send an Invoice. The confusion and dilemma of wanting to work but not wanting to let your client know that you are still new to the market and do not know a proper way to send out Invoices was stressful. But, I got lucky as that was the time when I started having Entrepreneurship classes in my program. My professor introduced me to Wave Accounting. I’m not going to say it changed my life and I can’t live without it now, but being a design student, I never even knew this kind of services were available for all kinds of businesses. So here is what I have learnt so far:

Wave accounting is free accounting software for small businesses, especially good for freelancers or in a more formal way of saying – the sole proprietors or consultants.  When my professor gave us a lesson on it, I was surprised to find that it is a Canadian company and that it was just a few blocks away from my school. This information made me more intrigued to see the software. The signing up process is easy and fast. The best thing? It lets me customize and add my company name, address, logo and even lets me choose an Invoice layout. The company information automatically appears in all the Invoices, Bills and Reports. The interface of this software is very easy to use. There is a dashboard where we can see a condensed version of our finances and other accounting tasks. It was so easy to make an Invoice.

I got to choose the layout and customize my invoice, which other softwares do not offer.     

The next step is add the details like customer name and address, date and the services you are charging along with the amount. It is very essential to add address of the client, the proper date of the invoice along with the payment due date and a short description of what the service was; this helps maintain the records in a much cleaner way and helps you sort out the tax filing mush faster.  

Then you send the invoice or we can even download and send manually. We can even link our bank account and give an option to pay by credit card to the client, which saves a lot of time for both the service provider and the client.

The best thing about wave is that I can keep track of my income and expenses. We can also add income tax and keep track of it as well. I can know how much money is payable to me in the coming months and also to keep track of the bills due.

It was love at first sight in Nicaragua. They came for adventure, stayed to build a community. Together they are giving simple people basic resources: knowledge and water. 

El Coco Loco resort has been helping a small community in Nicaragua to develop. The group of foreigners formed by Ben, Earl, Jamie and their families has brought with the help of locals’ effort and money from abroad a high school to the area, a program to build wells and now a marketplace. Much needed things that people didn’t have access or dreamt to have.  

The business model seems simple. El Coco Loco resort, located in a community called EL Manzano #1, a beach surrounded by wild nature, offers peace of mind, good food, yoga and surf lessons to attract tourists. The profit is invested to maintain the not for profit organization Waves of Hope. The ONG also gathers donations from guests and partners, like Centennial College. But they had a tough beginning. Ben, Earl and Jamie are friends from the University of Otawa. A while after graduating, they did a backpacking trip around Central America and fell in love with the region and were impressed by the challenges people face there. They came back with the idea of opening a hostel in the region and also do community service. One year of planning, plus one year of saving money, trying to get loans – it is hard to find a bank willing to lend money to be invested outside of the country. They found a piece of land, for a reasonable price and negotiated the payment in installments. And so one more year of constructions until the grand opening, in 2008.