Don’t let the post title fool you, VidCon was truly a blast. I did get to go with friends @writetoreach @freeandflawed and @phampants so I wasn’t necessarily lonely, I did get to meet some YouTube and interweb celebrities, and some of the presentations were straight up hilarious.
As one might expect from me by now, I went for the sake of work. While Phampants convinced me to attend because the conference itself would be fun, I came with a notepad and some pens planning to walk out of it with some material for quantitative and qualitative analysis.
The “learnings,” or tidbits of statistical and/or qualitative information that inform and influence decisions when deployed in the realm of strategic consultation and execution as they’re known in corporate jargon, were largely overshadowed by the wholly disparate intention of the conference. That is a long way to say: taking notes might not have been the point. By and large, this conference was supposed to celebrate the YouTube community — a community made up mostly of people under 21, but still, a community.
Community is something to which I’m no stranger. Having a blog has connected me to lots of people, and while I am always saying that I still need to work on reconnecting with everyone even after all this time, the readers and writers who keep up with me no matter how drowned in work I get really remind me that they’re friends who care, not just screen names. It’s a good reminder that there are, after all, real people on the other side of the screen.
Back to the ‘Con: The YouTube community — it’s different than others. Of course, this might be somewhat expected as the medium itself is fundamentally different from that of blogging, but it’s so tightly knit that when I met some people and revealed to them that I came for work purposes and explained what it was exactly I do for a living, I noticed their eyes wander in boredom. It’s not because they’re assholes, or at least I hope not, but it’s because was very obviously an outsider.
Until this conference, I really didn’t know much about the likes of Is Charlie So Cool Like? and Volgvetica and the shining beacon of the music industry’s future, DFTBA records (and really the list goes on).
Had I been creating content and engaging with the existing YouTube community before VidCon, I might have.
Why hadn’t I participated before? First, a good place to start is the situation with trolls. Before I shaped a persona on the interweb, I didn’t have very much confidence in myself to withstand being trolled. But now that I’ve been blogging for a while, and getting some ample evidence that the internet is as equally frightening as it is fulfilling, I realize I don’t give a flying fuck about being judged by strangers, so I’m probably in a pretty good place to learn to participate in user generated video.
Maybe it’s time for me to join this community, too. Phampants has been singing the praises for a long time, he’d even help me get started; I am a huge fan of the social part before the media part; and I would love to learn how to do something new.
Of course, engagement (or at least an attempt) is a minimal requirement. While I can’t guarantee much, especially if my blog-to-engagement ratio is any indication, I can at least make a valiant effort.
But at the end of all of this, towards the end of the conference, one moment stands out. I was hanging out by the hotel lobby ashtray with a bunch of smokers who were mid-level content creators with established, albeit small, audiences. They were here at the conference not to learn or to promote, but simply to connect with viewers and other video creators they have known and loved from afar for a while. They aren’t viral video superstars. They just love that being their respective selves on camera has led them to meet really worthwhile people who would eventually become friends.
One of the guys reacted strongly to one of my comments, that I do research and development because I’m interested in how people use social networks, and seeing such a tightly-knit community makes me to want to become part of it but I don’t know how to begin. He put his hand on my shoulder, and while swaying somewhat drunkenly, he impressively articulated: “Bro, if you’re here at VidCon, even as an observer, you already bought a ticket so you helped fund it, and while you were here, you paid attention. You’re already a part of the community.”
I guess this means I should start making videos.
