ICG Creator Chat

Joss Fong is the Senior Editorial Producer at Vox Video, and as their second employee working on Video, she has fascinating insights into how Vox works, how their content is created, and how they empower people to be amazing explainers. Joss dives into some of the fundamental factors that decide what is or isn't a Vox video, why Video can never be just decoration, how they imagine their audience, where they find their footage, and how they maintain a solid brand while their content roams from policy to opinion to science to music.

Jackson Bird is a professional speaker, YouTube creator, activist, and waffle aficionado. While making his "Will it Waffle" videos, he also discusses gender, social justice, and his own gender transition. While we chatted, Jack said something I really loved, "I know how one should play the YouTube game, but I am not always interested in playing it." Figuring out how online creation fits into our future is different for every creator, and it can be an extremely important part of a person's career, even if they have a relatively small YouTube channel.

In this episode, we're joined by Ruth Coustick-Deal, Digital Rights Campaigner at Open Media, who explains how new legislation being proposed in the European Union would require every single thing ever generated by anyone and uploaded to any platform on the internet to be checked against a database of owned content provided by major media corporations. This would make it nearly impossible for any new platform to compete with existing behemoths like Facebook and Google which have invested tens of millions of dollars in their copyright systems. Ruth talks about Net Neutrality, copyright trolling, how big organizations are paying lawyers and lobbyists more money to defend their interests, and how the average creator can speak out about these issues.

On today's Creator Chat, Hank talks with gunnarolla, sometimes referred to as "YouTube's Greatest Tragedy" because of his mix of extremely high quality, fascinating content, and relatively small audience size. They chat about when school is and is not useful, the difference between working by yourself and being part of a team, how to know your strengths, where the true value of your audience lies, and how he makes it all work with a small audience.

Lisa Filipelli has been a manager to digital media creators for about as long as there have been managers for digital media creators. During the recording of this podcast, she received over 300 emails. We talk about where Vine went wrong, whether or not other companies are learning from those mistakes, how advertisement and endorsement dollars are flowing into online media, and whether (and why) the lifespans of media stars are getting shorter and shorter.

In the last year, Jaiden's channel has grown astoundingly fast. Hilarious, relatable animated videos have become a genre all their own and Jaiden is both a pioneer and a master of that genre. Jaiden's videos do a remarkable job of sharing a full story of who she is, all without (until very recently) ever showing her face. In this chat, which we had on stage at VidCon 2017 in Anaheim, we talk about some of the difficulties of her genre, her creative process, how she developed her style, and what it is that makes this new form of content so popular.

Hannah Witton takes on some sensitive topics on her path to making great content about sex and relationships. It's not easy to make content like this broad enough to apply generally without stepping on individual perspective, but Hannah has to hit that balance. Making a living talking about sex isn't easy, as ad rates for this kind of content have always been low. But Hannah has made it work with a combination of publishing, sponsored videos, brand deals, and speaking engagements. Always ready with a new clever strategy, everyone, this is Hannah.

Brand deals are vital income for a majority of professional creators. So while you haven't ever heard of Dave Wiskus, you have probably seen the effects of his work. Dave sells and manages brand deals for a bunch of YouTube creators. How? With a tremendous amount of effort and care. We all have things we can learn from the people who are pioneering this new world, which is why Dave is here to talk shop with us today.

Burnie Burns is a legend and you will be unsurprised to hear that he and I can seamlessly talk shop more or less perpetually. Rooster Teeth, which Burnie started with a few friends before YouTube even existed, has become possibly the largest digital-native content company in the world. They make so much fantastic stuff, and have pioneered everything from paid subscriptions to community development. I can never talk to Burnie for long enough, and I'm glad to share this one with you today.

JanaVlogs creates content both in English and Arabic, which gives her a unique perspective on the world of online video. It's fascinating to hear how creator communities evolved in other countries, and how important one person can be to that process. Jana also works for the largest publisher of video on Facebook, Viral Thread, where she somewhat ruthlessly manages and curate video content and /that/ is a fascinating topic!

David Pakman has been in the news recently because his political YouTube channel recently lost nearly 100% of its advertising revenue, though it conforms with FCC rules because it is also a radio show and thus has never contained a single curse word. This tightening of monetization is extremely concerning to the Internet Creators Guild, so we wanted to talk with someone who has been directly affected. Of course, we also talk about other things, including the nuts and bolts of how his content gets made, thumbnails and titles, the responsibility of political creators, and the difference between creating for different audiences on different media.

Satchell Drakes doesn't want to quit his day job. He doesn't want to be strategic, and he doesn't want to "work for his channel." But he does want to make great stuff, and also maybe supplement his income a little bit. His content isn't super well known, but because he's always experimenting with new ways to write, shoot, and edit, he's far more influential than his view counts would have you believe. These are the reasons why I asked him to be on the board of the ICG, and why I was so excited to talk to him in this Creator Chat.

MatPat of The Game Theorists thinks more than probably any one I've ever met about how to make great content work effectively on YouTube. He knows it better than anyone, so we unsurprisingly had quite a lot to talk about. From the old days to Pewdiepie to how to get YouTube to show your videos to more people to trends in brand deals, we go all over the place. It's was a fascinating chat!

StacyPlays kinda got thrown into her life as a professional YouTuber through a series of jobs in the online video world. She's produced content for huge creators, and worked at some of the most exciting new media companies in the world. Her channel, which mostly focuses on Minecraft, utilizes a ton of excellent and thoughtful content strategy. Smart, funny, and innovative, this is StacyPlays.

Tessa Violet started out a vlogger, but has with dedication and effort, transitioned into being a singer songwriter (who, of course, still vlogs.) In this podcast we're going to talk about spending WAY more on a music video than you will ever make from it, forging through depression, never waiting for inspiration, and coming to terms with the fact that some people are just always going to hate you.