I’m just gonna shoot from the hip on this one, and whatever I write I’m just gonna leave up. You’ll find in the My Projects menu list on the right the various projects of 2nd Culture.

2nd Culture - First Year:

Overall, a success. But not quite in the ways I’d hoped. A lot of contract work with Corus has come in, and kept the lights on. But some of the 2nd Culture initiatives have been both a disappointment, and victory.

Disappointments:

• Got involved with a company, and it ended up costing us a lot of development time on 2nd Culture
• The reason for working with the company was strategic, and everything was going well until the deal “changed” quite drastically due to nepotism and short-sightedness
• We invested nearly $1000 into this new venture, before this “drastic change”
• We still have no idea how it’s going to turn out, or if I’ll see my 1000
• WGA (short film paid for by FrameBuyFrame sales), is still in post production
• we lost 8 people (I had to cull, and bring everything “back to the wood” on all our websites/network)
• The host that I use for my sites has turned out to be unreliable - so our site’s performance is unacceptable
• We’ve had 4 different web developers back out of the project due to various reasons
• I’ve had to spend an unacceptable amount of personal/project time learning web development, Joomla, and design to have our site “up”
• Because of the time spent, I’ve neglected an important element to our cause - posting content for Panda Girls

Crom - 2nd Culture’s lead writer

(COMPLETE DISAPOINTMENT)

Victories:

• FrameBuyFrame.com sold $1400 in frames in it’s first 3 months - with NO advertising
• Over the last 10 months we’ve tweaked the sites, and have an enormous amount of user data for version 2.0’s release
• We hit over 100,000 unique visitors
• The local television station wants a story
• I was asked to pitch our business model at the Calgary Demo-Camp
• Tokyopop made a offer for a publishing deal with Panda Girls
• We shot a short film entirely financed by capital earned through FrameBuyFrame.com sales
• Found an incredible writing partner for developing quality Intellectual Property for film, tv, internet, and video games (Yes, Crom - you can stay)
• Signed two Intellectual Properties for development in film and tv
• Received valuable consulting from a marketing manager from Shaw
• A venture capital company has made an offer of 200K

All in all, the year had it’s wins and losses. What I’ve learned mostly is not to chase every opportunity. That’s not to say we did, really… It’s just that there were a few that we should have just said “no”.

The losses/disappointments forced me to restructure (more time and money), and rethink my approach to 2nd Culture, FrameBuyFrame.com, and Panda Girls.

I’m embarrassed to say, these issues reflect on my leadership. 2008 is looking a little clearer due to some storms we’ve survived over the 10 months. It helps to remind you where you’re headed when you’re in the clear again.