On Thursday Mozilla Popcorn ran it’s first Storycamp Livecast with Damain Kulash from the wildly successful band OK Go! For an entire hour Damian talked about his band’s web videos, their success, inspiration, where ideas take hold. Damian talked about the web as a canvas and overcoming adversity, sticking to your guns and how failure is part of the process. He talked about coming up with ideas and iterating on them. He talked about creativity, fear, and what the secret of going viral is.
While it was fascinating for those of us that have seen the famous treadmill video, I feel like there was a little (and I mean very small) cultural gap between us OK Go fans and the youth participating in Storycamp. (Some of the feedback we received said as much, am I really so old?)
Part of the problem is that Damian’s fame likely dictates his schedule, meaning that although he took the hour to speak to all of us, he likely didn’t have time to read into what Storycamp is about. But that’s ok, he was totally on the ball. Damian said a few things that would inspire anyone:
And he’s proven with his testimony on Net Neutrality to be a friend of the Open Web.
We definitely got some great feedback from all of the instructors running Storycamp in their organizations, and a huge win in week one (and mirrored ever so spectacularly by the weekend launch of the Mozilla Summer Code Party) was our learn by making philosophy. Check out Jacob Caggiano blogpost, and the Robots template, a project that uses Popcorn to create a procedural story. Everyone is diggin’ the Robots template, so go try it out!
Part of what’s awesome about releasing early and releasing often is that the feedback you receive will take your work in directions you didn’t think possible or necessary. I’ve already got initial ideas on how we can improve Storycamp’s content and resources, what new stuff we should create, and how we can better support those brave people that take our Alpha work and run with it.
I can’t wait to see what this week’s speaker, Cory Doctorow, has for us, but even more than that, I can’t wait to hear the feedback from the instructors and participants on the ground. We can’t wait to hear what you dislike, what you love, what you wish were different about everything we’re doing. Tell us everything, and share your webmaking experiences!
Related articles
- The weekend the world learned the web (openmatt.org)
- And we have #StoryCamp liftoff! (zythepsary.com)
