The Gray Area of Remote Work
Full Stack Creator - 015
Welcome to the 15th edition of Full Stack Creator. My patience is finally paying off, after all these years. I have some interesting and wonderful news I want to share with you all. So grab a warm beverage and find a comfy seat because there is a lot to talk about.
I have been awarded a grant from Adobe! It is part of their Adobe Creative Residency Community Fund. They fund select creators and their projects, allowing creators to make with less restrictions. Applying to the Creative Residency has been a wild ride, but it paid off.
I originally applied to Adobe’s, more traditional, Creative Residency at the end of 2019. This is a program in which they provide select creators a year's salary, along with the support and relations of Adobe, to bring their projects to life. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, almost all of the Creative Residency was canceled. This was a major bummer when I found out, but they followed up this bad news with the idea of a $1M Community Fund. This would allow more creators access to Adobe’s funding to create their art, albeit at a smaller scale and a shorter timeline. I immediately applied for this fund, hoping to get a grant in September. This timeline came and went, with no response from Adobe, and the idea of getting in at all was entirely diminished. I then embarked on a last-ditch effort and tweeted to Adobe. They responded with a direct email to the team. I emailed them and got a response telling me to apply once more, as they had technical issues with their application software. A few weeks ago, late in the evening, I received an email letting me know that I received the grant.
I am set to start production in February, lasting one month. The proposed project is called “The Gray Area of Remote Work”. The name might change a little, but the premise will stay the same.
The elevator pitch
Remote work is wonderful. It can be flexible, more affordable to live and allow for better work-life balance. It can also be very isolated, hard to build relationships, grow as a worker and at times quite sedentary. I plan to spend 4 weeks documenting all the wonderful, lonely and empowering moments of remote work. Since COVID people have been forced into remote work, if they wanted it or not. The adjustment has been smooth for some and not for others. The end result will be 4 mini-docs, unraveling the world of remote work: through CEOs, founders, HR leaders and employees. I will talk to people and companies that were always remote, transitioned to it permanently, some that went back to in-office due to business needs and others that could not adjust for other reasons. I intend to show the process of making each mini-doc. This will include behind the scenes footage, editing tutorials, tips and tricks, lessons learned and getting the community to help me build the trailers and social teasers.
I believe that this topic is so important right now, considering most of us have experienced it since the pandemic. In the coming years, virus or not, remote work is going to keep growing, while receiving tons of praise and scrutiny. I believe that there needs to be a healthy conversation around all the good and bad, as early as possible. I know that if this content is digestible and approachable for most people, they would be more willing to learn about it. This is why I chose the medium of four mini-docs, rather than a longer piece. I am shooting for each of these to be about 10 minutes long while packing in a lot of thoughtful and impactful knowledge.
The next few months are going to be all planning. I need to narrow down the interviewees, finalize and rent the gear, plan the schedule, and build the full storyline. This process will likely take the whole two months prior to production since there are a lot of moving parts, never mind, the ever-looming pandemic. I intend to do most of these interviews in person, whenever possible, but if the talent is too far or the pandemic hinders me any further, I have a few backup plans.
I hope to include the community in all ways possible. I plan on including you in the conversation and even the story. I would like to start that today, with a simple question.
What would you like to learn/know about remote work?
Please answer using the form: https://forms.gle/8C6pcWWQFeJAb7Af8
If you have any feedback or would like to contribute in any way, feel free to email me, I would love any and all input!
In other news, I am super excited about the future of the Mac, specifically due to Apple's latest release of M1! I am not going to talk about it too much, but the future looks promising! The Verge, along with other publications and reviewers have been giving the new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac Mini crazy good reviews.
Review from The Verge:
https://www.theverge.com/21569603/apple-macbook-air-m1-review-price-specs-features-arm-silicon
This fulfills so many of my wishes for light, portable, and powerful computers. This will allow me to create from anywhere, with a small machine, and potentially not burn myself while doing so. They say that these machines run much cooler than Intel machines, and that is a big deal for me.
I hope to have the next edition scheduled on time, as I have a few things going on over the next few weeks. More great news, that I plan on informing you of soon!