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360Conferences

Our Love Hate Relationship with Creators

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This post was started in 2018 and has been brewing ever since.

I saw this in a Facebook group I’m a part of. It’s a group of “Power Users”. I see posts like this in this group, and just about every writers/readers group daily if not more frequently.

I highly doubt the person who posted this would be happy to be paid for their labor every 6 years. I know I wouldn’t.

According to the post, this person is willing to pay one whole measly dollar a month. So $12 for software. This post is about 1Password, which I love and happily pay for and encourage everyone to use and pay for. So $12 for software that keeps your passwords, credit card numbers, and anything else you put into it, safe. Safe and synced across your laptop, iPad, and iPhone. Safe in an encrypted volume, the company takes seriously and makes clear they have no access to. Twelve bucks?

Let’s say Mr. One dollar a month grudgingly pays and uses 1Password for ten more years. Does he think $120 is enough? Could he live on what he makes in a month for ten years? I couldn’t.

Consumers are so disconnected from what they consume now. We happily, joyfully pay for a new iPhone every year, but an app better be free or maybe $1, total, lest we complain. Much of this is laid at the feet of Apple, Amazon, Wal-Mart, etc. Companies with platforms, that push the creators to the bottom to grow their platforms. They’ve trained consumers to not think twice about a new Mac, or latest Pixel phone, or a $400 kindle. But do nothing to educate consumers that the app they love was made by someone that plans to pay their mortgage, and it is worth more than a dollar. Or when a book that takes months to write, hundreds if not a thousand dollars to produce, is more than $2. “I won’t pay more than $2 to read a book on my two hundred dollar Kindle.”

And it’s everywhere. People bitch at me that a conference that’s 2 days, 2 tracks, with international speakers, lunch included, is $399. “That’s like twice what I’m willing to pay.” Yet these people make software and expect a high hourly rate or high annual salary.

The other day there was a post on the Denver Post’s Facebook page. One person commented that they’d apparently used up their free viewings online, so couldn’t read the article. Most of the comments were either “Here’s how I don’t pay the post for their work” or defending the idea of not paying by pointing out how ‘easy’ it is to not pay them. It was disheartening. These folks want the news, but not to support those that create it.

The common comparison is a cup of coffee, which is fine, it’s a legitimate comparison. For me though, it’s “How do you expect your fellow human to survive? Would you rather have nothing than pay for things? Would you prefer something free where you’re the customer and your data is in the hands of a Venture Capitalist?”

We want an amazing and bug-free app, a great well-edited book with a professional cover, a game that’s on par with the AAA studios, but you don’t want to spend more than one or two bucks for it? As someone who created things; conferences, and now books, it’s frustrating. I sympathize with my friends who make apps and games, or write or make clothes, or anything.

If this still isn’t resonating with you, look at it this way,

You go to work every day but surely would stop if your boss said, “We’ll pay you this week, but you’ll be expected to work the next six for free. Maybe on the seventh week, we’ll pay you again, but only if you show that you’ve spent that time doing twice your normal work.”

This is basically what we’re telling every single person who’s trying to make a living making things. We value their efforts so little we don’t want to pay for them, and if we do, we want to then own their creative efforts indefinitely. But hey it’s new iPhone time, gotta stay up late to place my order…

I’d love to see us move to a place where we’re happy to buy something knowing that we’re helping someone make a living. If you can’t afford it, that’s fine, save up, or don’t get it, etc. But don’t tell someone their creative efforts aren’t worth anything.

Apple’s ‘Pro’ Problem

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So the other day, Apple held its first 2022 event. It was flashy and everything you’d expect from an Apple event. And yet again it showed that they really have lost all sight of their ‘pro’ users.

Sure they released the Studio Mac, avoiding adding ‘Pro’ to the name. It looks like an excellent machine. I’ll probably buy one next year (or maybe 2024) to replace my 2018 Mac Mini. Of course, I have less than zero hope that Apple addressed the Bluetooth issues that have plagued the Mac Mini form factor for the better part of eight years now.

What I really wanted to hear was how they were leveraging the iPad Pro. I wasn’t hoping for a new device, but a tease of something, anything coming in iPadOS would have been nice.

Instead, they released a new iPad Air that it spec for spec almost an iPad Pro, sans cameras.

Image of iMac pro from Wikipedia

I hadn’t thought too much of it, until this last Apple Event. Apple has a track record or releasing ‘Pro’ things, then letting them languish, being overtaken by their standard models until they quietly discontinue the.

The iMac Pro. Released in 2017, quietly End Of Life’d before the Mac Studio was released.

The iPad Pro has been refreshed over the years, but iPadOS has been virtually stagnant most of that time.

Sure we got some simplistic windowing, but it’s just that, simplistic.

As you likely know, when I’m not at my desk, I’m 100% an iPad-only user. During the Apple event, I was at the dining table of a rental in the mountains for a little retreat from the house.

A screenshot of my iPad Pro trying to multitask

The only way to watch the event, AND still work, was to float a firefox window over my workspace. Which as you can see obscured the compose window for Tweetbot, forcing me to constantly move the floating window from one side to the other just to see what I was doing.

I didn’t actually need to see what was going on, but audio can’t stream from background apps (that aren’t sports app or music apps… despite the iPad Pro having the same CPU as Macbooks and Macbook Airs [the M1]).

But they offer “side by side”

And it’s trash. You’d think, cool, I’ll have one app on one side, and the other in the other side. When you’re giving one app focus, you’d expect Alt-Tab to swap out just one pane, but not. It switches back to single app view, killing background audio. Because of course it can’t tell which pane you’d like to swap an app out of.

Image of the Mac Pro from Wikipedia

The ongoing Mac Pro Joke

Many folks in the Mac world joke that Apple releases a Mac Pro every decade or so. Whole new design, absolutely marvelous looking. Expandable and powerful…

Then they ignore it.

Then they release a wholly new Mac Pro and the cycle repeats, leaving the previous buyers with a beautiful retired product.

I’m beginning to worry that the iPad Pro is going to suffer the same fate. There’s an iPad (basic?), an iPad Air, and the iPad Pro. The last two are nearly identical unless you really fancy taking super pics with your tablet or holding it up to play AR games (if any are offered). The ‘Pro’ aspect of the iPad pro is just the name. The spec of the Air is the same, so why pay more for the ‘Pro’?

So what’s the point of a ‘Pro’ iPad?

Writing on the iPad is pretty straightforward. Everything else is an exercise in pain and suffering.

I was creating a slide presentation to end 360|iDev 2021. Keynote is a trash app on the iPad, using a browser to find images to use required saving them to files or the photo reel, tabbing back to keynote, which went into hibernation to save resources (why I don’t know) so I had re-open my presentation get to the slide, tap + then navigate to my saved image.

Try to do anything that requires more than two apps, and you’ll find one put into hibernation to save resources, usually forcing you to start over.

It feels like Apple is following Android’s ill-fated path when they released honeycomb as their ‘tablet OS’ separating it from Android proper only to offer a crappy experience and ultimately give up on the idea.

This was a long post, mostly to vent my frustration. Someone tweeted that Apple was really “The Mac Company” and that’s beginning to feel right. More to the point, they’re the “Powerful hardware, basic OS Company”.

I want to love Apple gear, I know many do, but it’s getting harder and harder to take it seriously.

Guess I wasn’t alone in noticing.

By the way, did you know you can sign up for my newsletter to stay in the loop on my writing? Plus, subscribers get free short stories and access to deck plans and character drawings. You should totally sign up, like right now!

Welcome to 2022

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The survival gear is on aisle two. Bladed weapons, aisle five. We hope you are ready for the final entry in the 2020 trilogy.

Hopefully, you’ve read my 2021 write-ups. If not, feel free, or don’t :) The tl;dr; is that I scraped by on conferences, barely. Much thanks to my awesome communities. I had my best year as an author.

So. What do I have planned for 2022?

Well, more of the same, mostly.

Writing-wise. I want to get (at least) four books out.

  • Space Rogues 10: Rogue Enterprises
    • Written, going through revisions before heading to the editor
  • Space Rogues: Rogue Enterprises Book 1
    • Writing, about 1/3 done
  • Grand Human Empire Book 4
    • Not started
  • Expedition Inc. Book 2
    • Not started

I’m going to focus my efforts on balancing and my promotional efforts. I think with more GHE books, I’ll be able to spread things out a bit more and leverage that new backlist. Plus with launching a new entry point into the Space Rogues universe, I hope that brings in new readers.

I’m really excited about launching Rogue Enterprises!

I’ve got a few in-person things booked, and I think that’s it. Unless these already booked things kindle some new love, I don’t think in-person events are worth my time. I don’t care to be known as (Yet another) writer on panels, etc. Depending on the event and the audience, a table might still make sense, but yeah. The jury is out on in-person events.

Conferences.

  • 360|iDev is already on the books (Hotel contracts yo!). It’ll be in-person with a hybrid component.
  • 360|AnDev is almost certainly going to happen. We haven’t locked down the plan yet, but no reason to think it won’t take place in July per usual.
    • I haven’t synced up with Chiu-Ki yet, but 2021 went OK. I’d like to get back to in-person, maybe add a hybrid option.
  • Chicago Roboto is… Probably going to happen. My co-chair is awesome and I think we’ll rock it. I had initially hoped to put it late April, getting it back into it’s spring time frame, instead of late fall. That doesn’t seem realistic with omicron burning through the country.
    • I haven’t synced up with Victoria on this, but I have no reason to think we won’t do it.

One thing I’ve decided with conferences this year is to recognize the realities in the communities I serve. In both, conferences are valuable, but there just isn’t much brand loyalty.

I see much more loyalty in the iOS/Mac community, likely because 360|iDev has such long legs and has been such a big part of a lot of people’s lives and careers. But even so, that only goes so far. For the Android community, it’s much more pronounced.

None of that is said as a complaint, more an admission of something I didn’t want to acknowledge. Acknowledging this fact, I hope, will help me plan the conferences accordingly. I’ll evaluate pricing and what’s offered. Gone are the days (mostly) of attendees being scrappy one and two-man shops with the next awesome game or app idea.

So that’s the gist of my plans for 2022. After 2020 and 2021 I’m not thinking too big or expansive right now. Let’s hope us and our democracy survives the year and then we’ll see.

2021 In Conferences

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I figured this year I’d break up my annual reviews of my various businesses.

2021 was certainly…. better… no… the same… mmm no… Different, yes. Different from 2020 for conferences.

This year, two of my events remained entirely online, while one went hybrid.

A few ‘global’ observations.

Folks were tired of online events. I think the talking heads that keep shouting about online events are here to stay, etc. are wrong. Maybe when we’re able to socialize in the real world daily, online events won’t be looked at like, ‘meh’ but for now. No.

We (the global we) went into 2021 thinking we were nearing the end of the nightmare that was the COVID-19 pandemic. Vaccinations were available, travel (at least in the US) was opening back up again. Then came Delta and the US backslid hard. Summer turned into a mixed bag of ‘like it was’ and ‘not at all like it was’.

Conference season for the most part fell smack in the middle of the muck and people were just left not knowing what to do, how big was the risk, etc.

360|AnDev

The hardest part of 2021 was making these online/in-person/hybrid decisions early in the year. January/February of 2021 was not at all like July 2021.

We decided that since we didn’t know what summer was going to be like, we’d err on the side of keeping things online.

It was the right call. The US was beginning to fall before the Delta variant. Companies that had relaxed travel were beginning to restrict it again. Return to the office plans were all torched.

Attendance was ok, but low. The lowest ever, which sucked but wasn’t as bad given the low overhead of online only.

I’m hoping that’s just folks having (understandably) no interest in more zoom stuff in a year that was supposed to be zoom stuff free but wasn’t.

Overall, 360|AnDev was a success. I can’t thank the attendees and my co-chair, Chiu-Ki enough.

360|iDev

Early in the year, the Hyatt said (paraphrasing), “You’re having an event. How we do it, is open to interpretation, but you are having an event, in our building, in August.”

They floated some non-starters like pushing the dates and splitting the event into days spread out over a few weeks. Obviously, no.

To their credit, despite my contract, the Grand Hyatt’s position was “Do the event. pay for what you use. If you don’t fill the rooms you contracted to fill, oh well.”

We in fact did not fill our hotel room contract. Far from it.

Turn out wise it actually worked ok. We held the event in-person, with an online option.

We sold almost as many in-person tickets as online. The ratio shifted the last week before the conference as the US’s Delta surge was fully underway. Companies revoked travel and entire teams had to switch out to online tickets.

While I woulda loved a few more folks in the rooms, it was probably for the best in that it never felt ‘too much’ and at least that I know of, we weren’t a super spreader event.

People appreciated being able to come in person.

Cost-wise. Hybrid events are tricky. We had to rely on hotel internet, which is expensive, and not awesome. We had to pay for a live streaming service, which wasn’t outrageous but was a budget item. We also had to hire a tech to sit and manage the live stream. Also not outrageous, but a budget item, and one that only scales linearly. If I stream 2 rooms, I need two techs, and probably twice the live streaming bandwidth.

Overall, 360|iDev was a success. I can’t thank the attendees and sponsors enough.

Chicago Roboto (Still online, from Denver)

Another one that was hard to make a call on. Victoria (My Co-chair) and I had to decide not just online or in-person, but April/May like originally planned or later in the year like we did in 2020. We opted to for one more year of fall, and one more (We hope) year online.

I was initially worried that by September, people would be dancing in the streets, and would have zero interest in online events. A few optimistic events tried for in-person stuff mid-late fall (They bailed on those plans and pushed to 2022).

Those worries were for naught. By September Delta was shutting things back down.

Attendance, like 360|AnDev was low. The lowest ever again. After AnDev it made sense. Add in the trauma of not being through the pandemic like we all hoped, and zoom fatigue, it just wasn’t in the cards. Having planned to be online we at least were able to continue on, giving those who participated a chance to see others (albeit online), vs. having to cancel events and reschedule.

Not mad. We still covered the minimal costs involved which was good.

I couldn’t have done it without Victoria, she rocked it. I can’t wait for us to crush 2022 with Chicago Roboto, actually in Chicago :)

That said…

This post was light on facts and figures. Mostly because they’re not even remotely impressive, beyond the simple fact that they got me through the year.

2021, like the year that came before it, will be a year we all look back on, shudder, and say. “We made it through.”

My Not a Hot Take on Basecamp

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A friend shared this.

You should 100% click on it and read the thread. Do it in another tab though, I’m not done here!

Matt’s thread reminded me of something. First, I don’t care for DHH, I never have. He struck me as a white tech bro that thought he could do no wrong, and that his hot takes were printed on gold foil.
But whatever, there’s plenty being written about Basecamp’s implosion, go find it. What this thread reminded me of is an interaction with someone I consider a friend now.

Years ago, 10 or so. An attendee at one of my conferences had an issue. I don’t remember it was, some confusion around something. He wasn’t entirely right, nor was I. We went back and forth over email for an hour one morning of the event. It was getting more and more heated. I’m sure had it continued he’d never come to another of my events again, likely making sure everyone knew how he’d been treated.

I didn’t want to be wrong, I technically wasn’t. I certainly didn’t want him to have the last word.

As I said, this was happening during the conference, I was at the registration desk, he was somewhere in one of the rooms. Something in my head clicked and it occurred to me that I was being dumb. My ego had stepped in and wasn’t letting any other part of me get a word in. I could feel the flush in my cheeks as I typed out angry responsese.

somehow, thankfully, I realized there was no downside to “taking the loss” on this. The customer wasn’t entirely wrong and making him feel whole on the issue cost me nothing beyond being “Wrong”. At the end of the day, who cared? My customer did, but did I? Or was I just reacting to a perceived attack? It was the latter, and it took over an hour to realize that.

During the next break, I tracked him down and apologized. I addressed the issue, we agreed on a resolution. Like that it was done. He was happy his issue was addressed. I was happy that a customer was happy. We’re friends now, he comes to my conferences still all these years later. I know if I need something he’ll do what he can to help, same as I would for him.

I don’t know all of what’s going on at Basecamp, but do know this could all be solved if DHH and Jason took a minute to take their heads out of their asses. To listen to their employees openly without commenting. Without digging in. They’ve built a team of outrageously talented and passionate people. By now they’ve lost a lot of them, and that will continue.

My heart breaks for the Basecamp folks now looking for new opportunities. I’ve talked to enough of them over the years to know they loved what they did and who they did it with (and for).

2020 In Review

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You know, I thought losing TGIF on ABC was a blow. Only getting one season of Firefly seemed like a mortal blow. Enduring the hot mess that is Star Trek: Discovery and Picard has felt like walking pneumonia.

All practice for 2020 (and it’s looking like at least most of 2021). Talk about a shit show. There isn’t much in 2020 that I’m planning to remember, but it did have some bright spots.

This is fairly long so here’s a handy little table of contents

Conferences

Rocking the Home Office for 360|AnDev 2020

On the Conferences front. 2020 was horrible but not as bad as it could have been. Around March I was thinking about what closing up shop would look like, and how I could financially manage that. However, I was lucky enough to be able to pivot all three conferences to online-only. The Grand Hyatt (please book a room there if you come to Denver, they’re awesome) was understanding and didn’t enforce their contract. I know they couldn’t have really, without a lawsuit, but it’s nice that it didn’t even come to that. It was “Of course, we get it. We hope to see you in 2021.” My other venues were even more ok with it as they closed so problem solved on that front, LOL.

All three Conferences were a success. 360|iDev even had the same turnout as last year, while the other two had 40% drop-offs in numbers. Of course, cutting tickets by 50-70% meant that even with a good turnout, income was slashed. The saving grace was that expenses were next to nothing. If there is a silver lining it’s that. While I didn’t get to pay down much debt, I didn’t add to it and didn’t have to dip in again. I focused on keeping the accounts flush vs. paying down debts too aggressively. So far, it’s worked.

A bad part is that a lot of people just tuned out for the year, which is understandable (Some neglected to tell me until pretty close to the event, but oh well, I’m flexible). Others were “Zoomed out” by summer, also understandable. I’m beyond thankful for those who still came out; attendees, speakers, and sponsors. It meant a lot and kept me in business. It was also fun as hell. For each event, I had an awesome group of volunteers helping tackle emcee duties. We had music between sessions, folks were able to still branch off and chat separately either on slack or via our tool that allowed for impromptu breakouts.

It wasn’t all awesome of course. I had to apply for a PPP loan which was helped for sure, especially as things were shutting down and we just didn’t know what the next month, let alone four.. er… eight, would look like. I’m looking forward to applying for forgiveness on that, someday. I also had to apply for the non forgivable EIDL loan, so that sucks, I was hoping to make a dent in the debt we’ve accumulated in the previous years, but instead added to it. But we (so far) have survived. I’ve been able to continue paying myself throughout all of 2020, which at the end of the day is a big win in 2020.

Looking forward, I honestly don’t know what 2021 will look like. I’m hopeful that by July we can start gathering safely in-person. That really all depends on vaccine production/distribution, and people accepting that a vaccine isn’t full of Bill Gates’ nanotrackers or 5G or whatever. Realistically I’m mentally working on one more year of online-events and how to make them even more engaging and fun for folks.

On an entirely personal note. As much as I missed seeing people who have become good friends at the conferences. I loved getting up, working out, and then walking into my office to rock the event. Much less stress (though not without hiccups) than the in-person versions.

Writing (,The Business of)

Luckily the pandemic hasn’t been a huge gut punch to my writing. Well, to my actual writing. To the business of writing….

So as to not bury the lede, you can see above that income from writing rose. Not a lot but upward trending graphs are almost always better than downward. Of course, profit was way down this year. The goal I set for this year was to hit (or break) $36,000 in writing income. Got close, but fell just shy.

In looking over the numbers a few things struck me. 2019 wasn’t very advertising heavy. I don’t know how I did so well without ads honestly, but there it is. Conversely 2020 was a lot of learning about advertising which has a high cost associated with it. I expect my 2021 ad spend to be significantly less. My intent this coming year is to dial in/back my ad spend and focus on releases and building my newsletter subscribers.

In addition to ads 2020 had a lot of new/different expenses, some likely to be one-offs, a membership to 2022 Worldcon for example. Others are new and recurring expenses; editors, audiobook narrators, convention booths, cover art, etc. The more books I get out in a year, the more those costs rack up.

Speaking of Cons

I went into 2020 with the plan of it being my ‘year to be more out in public’ I applied for author alleys and expo halls where I could. Got into several, and of course, everything was canceled. Or rather, most things were canceled. Some went online-only like MileHiCon, which was nice. I was on a panel, and had a waste of money ‘vendor booth’ Others like Starfest, really never canceled, just kind of didn’t happen, then announced 2021 dates. I had/have a booth there.

A bright spot was that I was accepted for a vendor booth at Denver Pop Culture Con for 2021. YAY!! Then they preemptively canceled. I get why, and it was the right decision I’m sure, but still sucks. Their future is uncertain so who knows if there will be a 2022 or not. Starfest (now scheduled around the same time) is likely to follow suit, who knows if they’ll send an email or not. Who knows if they’ll refund my author alley, acknowledge it, etc. shrug.

Cons are something I was really looking forward to exploring more. Dialing in my booth presence and pitch, and meeting other authors, etc. That’s likely on hold until 2022. As much as it was nice that MileHiCon went online, I won’t be paying for “booths” at online events, but will try for panel spots still.

Books

I did have my best launch ever, with “A Guy Walks Into a Bar” so that was nice! I’m hoping to beat that with “Here There Be Monsters” (Have you placed your pre-order?)! I’m hopeful that each new book gets bigger and bigger launches, because, well that’s a good thing, folks are still interested and more are joining them.

I’ve also had some luck with the merch store I set up. I want to push that more both for the merch which isn’t all that profitable but is awesome, and books which I get 100% of the proceeds vs. 50-70% royalty.

It’s my hope that over time direct book sales pick up, as well as other goodies. The more I can divest from Amazon without hurting income, the better. It’s more technical and not for everyone, but it’s nice to sell someone a book directly from here and see them come back for more. The online stores keep authors separate from our readers.

Being “wide”

I’ve written about being “wide” a few times. This year my wide efforts expanded to include audiobooks. I’m really stoked about taking my audiobooks wide, though the downside is coming up with the money to pay for narration in advance, so that’s a new budgeting entry. I’m happy that at least based on sales prior to leaving ACX I’d recouped what I’d have paid directly for Space Rogues 1, and made about half what I’d need for Space Rogues 2. Audio may slow to one release a year, we’ll see.

This year I also moved from being an Amazon Kindle reader to using a Kobo Clara. As such, much of my advertising energy was focused on driving business not just from Amazon, but specifically to Kobo, then Barnes & Noble. That means Facebook ads which are awesome at sucking up your money and delivering nothing. I’ve gotten better over the course of the year with my targeting, but a costly experiment for sure. With Apple’s changes (Very much happy about that) I’m guessing my FB ad spend will diminish further. We’ll see.

Overall I’ve had good luck diversifying myself from Amazon. It’ll be interesting to see how sticky that will be as I try to reduce my expenses a bit in the ad space.

2020’s breakdown is definitely pleasing. I don’t have a hard and fast goal for Amazon’s percentage, but below 50% would be I think the best. What’s especially pleasing is that while I’ve reduced my dependence on Amazon, my income has gone up. Proof you can do it without selling your soul to Jeff Bezos.

Writing (, The Craft Of)

So yeah, the business of writing, at least the in-person/glad-handing part has sucked. The business of actually writing, however, well that’s actually going well. Really well.

I got two Space Rogues books out, plus launched a new series. So a three-book year, which is good. I’m hoping to get to a four release a year schedule; one in each series, plus a wildcard. That’s aggressive, but the plan is for writing to replace conferences as my main source of income. To get to that end, I have to produce and keep the back catalog working for me.

2021 will be a good year for releases;

  • “Here There Be Monsters” (Space Rogues)
  • “Any Job Will Do” (Grand Human Empire)
  • “Side Hustle Tango” (Grand Human Empire)
  • and (I hope) “Airport of Mystery” (Expedition Inc.)
  • Plus a To Be Titled Book 9 in the Space Rogues series.

I’m excited about the launch of the Grand Human Empire series. Not only will I be trying out a launch with a second book already completed and in the pipe, but with a new series, I can start building a more diverse back catalog. I’ve found with Space Rogues that many readers can’t handle the present tense. It breaks their brains somehow, no idea why or how. Their loss. The Grand Human Empire is more traditionally written in the past tense.

It’s Not Always Rosy

I launched ‘Island of Secrets‘ under a pen name and in a new genre. It’s been a struggle to get traction. I’m hoping that a second book will help there, but also plan to invest more of my marketing attention there. I was a bit let down when I released it because I distributed ARCs and got some great potential reviews, but when it came time to actually post them, almost no one did. Out of 17 odd people who signed up to read and review, only 3 delivered. One, who wrote an awesome review in the review portal, never published elsewhere, making it mostly useless. :( Such is life.

Community Stuff

I’m still an active (Though retiring in 2021) member of the Board of Directors for the Colorado Authors League. I’ve been on the board since 2018, initially to manage the Festival of Books. That got squashed, then the Pandemic hit. As much as I like being on the board, I ended up being “The Web Guy” for our new platform (which is powerful but mostly a POS), so I’m leaving that in ’21. I’ll continue my membership because I think it’s good to have some professional memberships.

Speaking of, I also joined the SFWA in March. I don’t find much value outside the name however. I’m hoping that changes, but it seems the group is mostly focused on their traditionally published members and members who are submitting short works to zines. Neither of which are of the slightest interest to me. But like CAL, I think there’s some value in being a member just to have that network.

I’m still on the Organizing Committee for Denver Startup Week, and intend to stick around. This year obviously, we went 100% online. Which was interesting given our normal size and scope. What is already the largest free entrepreneurial event in the world, became the largest online entrepreneurial event in the world. We hosted dozens of panels and talks on zoom, Monday through Friday. Live streaming those to Youtube. It was a bold lift and with only a few hiccups on Monday went off perfectly! We did an amazing thing.

I’m still wrangling the awesome cats that are the Ignite Denver Committee. I miss that group a lot. We held our last in-person Ignite Denver in March, the night before our venue, the Bug Theatre (Please support them if you can) close to events. The group went in our own directions, focusing on ourselves, two of us got married, etc. So we didn’t even put effort into trying an online Ignite Denver. This past summer Kat, Jared, and I hosted a live review show to benefit the Bug and raised $300 for them, it was a blast!

Family

On the family front, Nicole and I are doing fine. I already did my jobs from home, so no major impact there. Nicole was already doing 1-2 days a week at home when she could, and has had remote jobs before, so had an office already set up. So when her job pulled the trigger she was up and running on day one. The dogs already being homeschooled helped too. I feel for my friends with kids.

It feels like 20 years ago, but we went to Africa at the beginning of this year. Nicole climbed Kilimanjaro, I got to celebrate my birthday in Zanzibar with some great friends. I honestly can’t believe that was this year, it feels so long ago.

More recently, we bought a new car, a Rav4 Hybrid. I like it. It was bittersweet to say goodbye to the Audi. We’ve had it for almost 15 years, loving every minute. I still miss the power of the turbo and the manual transmission, but in buying the Rav4 I realize my time a being even a little bit a “Car guy” seems to have passed. It’s just a thing to get me places. The more comfortable the better but I don’t need power, I don’t need that throaty roar. So that’s a thing.

Otherwise we’re hanging in there, trying to support local restaurants and businesses. Seeing the 3-4 people in our bubble of trust once in a while. With Winter here I suspect even our scant trips to local breweries will be greatly reduced, which bums me out.

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