What's next? (Patreon)

Hello good humans,

August sure flew by but was also really long! I’m also finishing this month very excited for the future and for working on some long-term goals.

I know from previous polls that a lot of you are here for fun math video content and not really the other things, and that’s perfectly ok! I’m not going to ask any of you to fund stuff you’re not really interested in, I just need to take stock of what my options are, as I plot my plans. Because I love making videos sometimes, but I’ve got other ambitions I find much more invigorating, particularly involving the future of learning, and human ability to understand complex things, and the relationship between technology and the human experience! For me, videos that distill or communicate a mathematical thought process is one small piece of a bigger vision about how we learn and communicate our thoughts and feelings to grow as humans.

But they’re certainly a very tangible result and one a lot of people enjoy, with a more immediate impact than some of the fuzzier longer term work on this topic, and I understand that’s what a lot of you are here for, so it’s what I’ve been focusing on while setting up this crowdfunding endeavor. So I’m putting a poll at the end of this post, and please answer honestly what you’d stick around for!

First though, let’s re-cap the month:

At the beginning of the month my plan was to continue trying to see if I could make shorter/less involved videos at a faster pace than my usual videos, seeing as frequent uploads is the only way to win the YouTube game, and also I know a lot of you do like this kind of content (I like it too!). But it turns out I just can’t work at that pace even for less ambitious videos; anything scripted is simply going to take more time, especially when you account for all the parts of successful video publishing and youtubery besides actual video making.

In fact, apparently nowadays the algorithm wants multiple 10 to 12 minute videos a week, and that just isn’t possible for one human making scripted content even if they were a much faster writer and producer than I am (I am a real slow human). Investing in the whims of a platform I have no control over isn’t exactly the best long-term life plan so seeing as it isn’t my life ambition to become a real-time vlogger/reviewer/unboxer/etc I think it’s time to give up on the idea of caring about YouTube’s platform.

Of course that doesn’t mean I can’t make videos and put them there, it just means not counting on it to reach people who don’t know how to find me elsewhere. Good thing y’all are here with me!

What to do about it? If video-making were my long term life ambition rather than something I like to do in addition to my longer term goals, then it would make sense to hire a production team and social media person and all the help that would make it possible to go the traditional youtube route. But that’s not work that would further my long term goals. Sometimes I want to express my love of mathematics or interest in a question or thinking on a topic in video form, and all I want from youtube is that my subscribers can find it.

The other problem is that while merch helps fund my work, it won’t sell unless I promote it with a video, which means making more videos so that I have a video that’s appropriate to put the ad in. The merch+video funding feedback loop works when I’m making frequent videos but not so well otherwise, so without making frequent videos it can’t be a significant part of my income, just a fun side project for when I think a thing would be especially cool (like the new triangle-person pins!).

Anyway so early this month I took a break from the video crunch and made Number Friends, which I think I’ll just make a few tweaks to and then release publicly soon. With enough time and the right team it could be developed and sold into what might be a commercial success and a good game, but my ambition is not to be a game developer either, so maybe working on this wasn’t the best plan… it was just a bit of a break, and I do like the result.

Also this month I did some art-bits for Project Butterfly, which I’m still excited about! I’m also still excited for the Emmy Noether video. These are the kind of videos I really want to be making (although not exclusively). What I don’t know is how I’ll fund these longer projects, as at the moment I don’t know if I could fund them even if I did work on projects like them with 100% of my time.

Oh, and I guess I wrote an article about scutoids, and some poems about good drivers!

To be clear, I really like the work we’ve done here in the past year and am very thankful to you all for enabling me to create a pile of videos I am proud of! I guess for now it’s just a heads up that if your intention was to fund video projects only, I probably won’t be spending all my time on those forever. I’m looking at some other strategies, and just wanted to bring you along with me through this thinking process, even though I haven’t made any decisions yet.

So last week I took a trip back into the Bay Area, where I hadn’t been in almost a year. I’d stayed away partly because I needed the space, and partly because I’ve mostly been heads down in video production mode for the past year and it’s hard to take the time away from the studio. But for a fresh perspective I thought it was a good time to visit some friends and catch up on the world of research after a year of being away!

And I really, really miss research. There’s a lot of problems with silicon valley and the tech industry that I don’t miss one tiny single iota, but I do miss the larger vision, and so I’m starting to try to look into what I could do that’s less directly tech-focused and industry-relevant than what I did before (which was focused around AR/VR) and more into a wider view of technology and learning, including things like online video, explorable explanations, and also older technologies, and maybe not-yet-existing technologies. I want to take advantage of my experience in education, of working at Khan Academy, of giving talks and workshops at schools around the world, and having a wide network of contacts in both public and higher education, museums, libraries, and also all the new tech-related education things.

I’m not sure where this will go yet, it’s just something I’m ready to start researching again after this badly-needed year-long break that you all have provided me with!

I’m not assuming patreon will be able to fund it all and I’m hoping to be able to get larger institutional funding as I clarify my goals and vision. For now I’m planning to still spend at least half my time video-making; we’ll figure out the details when I have more information!

First though, I am in direly terrible need of a vacation and also a bit of professional development and life-reorganization, so I’m probably going to be spending a good chunk of September on those things. I'm extremely excited and inspired to move to the next phase of things, at the same time as being extremely tired and burnt out, so I've got to fiercely protect this young new energy until it's strong enough to sustain itself.

With almost a year’s experience here, it’s probably time to reorganize some of the Patreon stuff, including levels and rewards and schedules in any case, so let me know your thoughts on that too. 

Maybe, if people really are mostly in it for the videos, I should just change to pay-per-video instead of per-month, so if I decide to do/take other work some month you won't have to choose between leaving and funding something you're not interested in. It's less efficient to the Patreon ecosystem but I'll consider it if it makes sense!

It sure has been a ride, thanks for being on it with me however long you stick around. And even if you were only here to fund videos, I promise your previous funding will still contribute towards future videos as I plan to continue to work on in-progress video projects as well as some future ones down the line that would not be possible without the prep-work, equipment, and software that y’all have already funded. I am particularly excited to get some more music stuff out there.

Now, what would you be excited to stick around for? (check all that apply, but only if each single thing alone would be genuinely exciting to you even without the others)

Vi