Vidcon: building a diverse community of media creators
The 17 year old just said something about online analytics and SEO. The 39 year old agreed and made a witty comment about Minecraft videos. The conversation was flowing, but for a moment I felt detached — as a chess player observing the board rather than the knight moving through the action.
Rarely I’ve seen such distinct people in such a same-level conversation. Everybody is carrying a different piece of the puzzle and there’s no talking down.
It’s 2018. I’m in Amsterdam for Vidcon Europe — a convention dedicated to the Youtube community.
Context
My professional journey has been blissfully filled with conferences, expos, events in general. I was either the guy with the camera, the speaker at the panel or the producer myself — most rarely the attendee. It’s hard for me not to analyse the events I go with my fairly honed lens and try to understand how well they achieved their goals.
Vidcon is my sweetheart. It champions my decade-long passion for youtube and video making and bestows it with a promise of community building. It sounds like paradise for video nerds.
We don’t share a purpose, we share Youtube
Most of the events I’ve been going for the past few years are about the future of work, the state of collaboration and technology and where it may go. That’s all pretty cool, but Vidcon was definitely a deviant.
Vidcon is an event about online video, more specifically about Youtube. The European version is destined for independent videomakers and video related companies. It’s not a dream or a goal, but rather a skillset that creates the gravitational pull to unite this community.
In a way that sounds bad: groups formed by a shared purpose and different talents are the perfect breeding pool for highly motivated teams. Everybody knows why they’re there, so it’s just a matter of finding who’s up to work with you, to collaborate directly.
I doubt that many longlasting teams were born those days in Amsterdam. Yet, I saw one thing that most collaboration events would die for: diversity.
The openness of videocrafting (and in a smaller way, of Youtube) is the perfect glue for a totally mixed group: I heard the voices of a strong trans community, a proud community with different levels in the autism spectrum — and above all, I heard young voices! 14, 16, 18 year olds standing tall and having the same amount of voice as the 40 year olds.
In a platform where sometimes it’s the teenager who makes fortunes while the “old TV veterans” are just struggling to make 100 views, the voice of the youth cannot be silenced anymore.
All the while, many (most) of the purpose-driven events are still stuck in the “these people look like office stock photos” profile. There’s a lesson here.
The power of the excuse
Seems like I enjoyed this event very much, right?
Well, the four panels I attended were mostly excrement. There was no physical space where you could sit down without being bombarded by brands trying to sell you a bunch of crap. The tiny hall was overcrowded with people and specially sound speakers. The tickets were obscenely expensive, even when compared to similar events.
Of course that’s a personal opinion, but also shared by many of my peers. Looking back, it’s hard to even conceive that this event brought me so much joy with such a plagued production.
Yet, last week my couch hosted two British friends I made over there. Together we met another attendee to play guitar and watch videos. There’s a new discord channel and facebook group created and managed by the participants — including myself.
As flawed as the event was, the truth was: we didn’t need a good event. We just needed a good excuse to be in the same physical location.
There it was, our excuse: Vidcon! This name, this brand! The biggest online video convention, now in Europe. Founded and hosted by the legendary Hank Green, a guy who makes good money out of free educational videos on Youtube. Living the dream.
Maybe Vidcon needs to bombard us with shouting brands and greedy ticket prices to exist so far away from its american origins. Maybe we will understand that all we know is a time and date and organize ourselves as a community (*wink, wink*).
All I know is that I’m glad I went to this old cabbage tasting convention — just the opportunity to get out of the main hall and have these talented and different people all around me made all the difference. Damn the official schedule, first evening we went to (from all places) a library restaurant and second evening we went to a bar: those were the truly magical parts of Vidcon.
The rest was just a necessary excuse.
Business cards VS friends
I have stacks and stacks of business cards. They could keep me warm for half a winter if just used them as fuel. The boring ones, the innovative ones, many with little handwritten annotations so I have some sort of narrative to remember that specific human being.
They have their function, it’s a tiny piece of the colossal clockwork of our times. I kinda hate them, but I also use them.
Did Vidcon add some items to my vast business card collection? Yes. But it felt different. I remembered the people and I had a powerful platform (well, Youtube) to relate the those people’s work in a much deeper way than most my post-event researches.
I saw content, I saw talent, I saw different themes. It was not a website telling me “we do that stuff”, but the stuff manifest. I could use my curatorship to judge them, not some sort of promise.
The business cards were just email-holding vessels, I could and would find these people easily without them. I didn’t feel like I’d just made some important business contacts, I felt like I made some friends.
Now looking back, most of my good work partners were/are also friends.
Perhaps I was wrong about the long lasting team thing. Maybe starting with a good old fashioned friendship is just the proper way.
Things need time to mature.
