Kenny Mittleider always wanted to be popular. What he didn't know was that he would be some day, hosting the Internet podcast Knights of the Guild, the official podcast of the web series The Guild.
Mittleider, in his late thirties, is a post production supervisor in southern California and a huge self-proclaimed geek, with a major Star Wars collection and a sweet, huggable teddy-bear personality.
Enter Jenni Powell, former Lonelygirl15 crew member and transplant to the crazy world that is Los Angeles, funny, quirky, irreverent, and chasing the dream of web series industry success.
Both offered their talents to Felicia Day's web series The Guild crew back in the first run of the off-the-wall comedy about a group of addicted gamers forced to interact offline. Back then, all was funded by PayPal and run by volunteers, with Jenni as Production assistant and Kenny working behind the scenes on featurettes and in post production. Already fans, they became even more hooked while working on the show, with the access to the awesome cast, crew, and fan base that makes up the Guild community.
Thusly, a fan podcast was born.
Powell found herself Mittleider's partner in crime, and together "Kenny and Jenni" have built quite a name for themselves not only for their excellent coverage of The Guild but for their great repoire and hilarious online personas.
From the first edition, it was clear that this was not your every day fan podcast. With professional quality audio production, show-to-show continuity, and clever lead-ins to each section of their show, Knights of the Guild launched a year ago and became a staple for fans looking for the latest and greatest in goings-on with the Los Angeles-based web series.
Kenny and Jenni make it look easy. What fans don't see are the hours and hours of preproduction, organizing schedules with cast members for interviews, soliciting and handling fan feedback, dealing with crazy technical difficulties, and spreading the word near and far that goes on behind the scenes.
To both of them I wanted to say bravo and congrats for a year of hilarity, unicorns, one-liners, and insightful cast, fan and crew interviews.
If you are a fan of online gaming, comedy, or social outcasts, and you still haven't seen The Guild, please quit living under your rock and go to http://www.watchtheguild.com and then check out Kenny and Jenni's awesome Knights of the Guild podcast at: http://knightsoftheguild.podbean.com .
Hours of laughter later, you'll understand why the podcast has thousands of downloads and the web series is in the top ten comedies on ITunes.
Christopher Feyrer -- Engineer and Web Series composer -- Official Blog
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Monday, January 18, 2010
Organization and time management obsession
I've become obsessive about improving both my attention to detail and time management lately. To this end, I've been implementing several techniques and would be willing to share them as well as take some feedback from the world regarding the way you manage your time.
On time management
One of the tools I find myself using quite frequently is Reqall, a technological successor to Jott. It's geo-awareness and ability to update my calendar dynamically from my phone via voice -- as well as send reminders to others, has been a boon.
This, along with Google Calendar, has become the primary way at this time my personal life is managed; work collaborates using the ubiquitous Microsoft Outlook.
Several of my coworkers have started personal wikis where they store knowledge they need for doing things on a personal basis or for their home businesses. I'm creating a instance of TurnKey linux on my home vmware server for that purpose. Shortly, chrisfeyrer.com will be migrated to VMWare so that I can use that desktop for multiple purposes; not just hosting this site, which will allow me this flexibility.
Sites like Lifehacker also give valuable insight into how these things can be accomplished.
On attention to detail
Details, details, the devil in the details. This is the area where I could use some feedback. In the engineering profession there is little room for fudge factor when dealing with specifics. In a rapidly moving, team-based environment with multiple clients managing details is a huge priority as each client wants their metaphoric cake delivered with metaphorically awesomely perfect dimensions and frosting. It's a goal all IT workers hold dear.
With this goal in mind, managing details in a digital library has been ineffective for me. Tools like Evernote are useful in theory but seem impossible to populate with effective tags. In essence, building a library and keeping it organized becomes such an intense amount of overhead that its usefulness is undermined. It revolves around you converting everything in your life, from receipts to photos to captures on the web, to digital, and tagging it quickly and effectively. This is time I could spend actually doing the tasks and having a digital librarian in my life could be a full time job!
At any rate, I'm curious as to the techniques people reading this blog entry use to manage your time and people, specifically during the work day, and, if in a management position, how you report this time to management and expect the specifics of those under you to be reported to you. I've been reading the O'Reily book Time Management for System Administrators, and it's giving me insights into this topic as well.
However, software and lifestyle recommendations aside, it's hard to know what people are finding that actually work in practice. That's what I'm looking for, with the understanding that it's different for everyone.Thanks in advance for feedback and contributions! Hopefully this will generate a list that is useful to a lot of people.
Speaking of people who accomplished great things using the little time they were given, Happy Martin Luther King, Jr day to all.
Chris
On time management
One of the tools I find myself using quite frequently is Reqall, a technological successor to Jott. It's geo-awareness and ability to update my calendar dynamically from my phone via voice -- as well as send reminders to others, has been a boon.
This, along with Google Calendar, has become the primary way at this time my personal life is managed; work collaborates using the ubiquitous Microsoft Outlook.
Several of my coworkers have started personal wikis where they store knowledge they need for doing things on a personal basis or for their home businesses. I'm creating a instance of TurnKey linux on my home vmware server for that purpose. Shortly, chrisfeyrer.com will be migrated to VMWare so that I can use that desktop for multiple purposes; not just hosting this site, which will allow me this flexibility.
Sites like Lifehacker also give valuable insight into how these things can be accomplished.
On attention to detail
Details, details, the devil in the details. This is the area where I could use some feedback. In the engineering profession there is little room for fudge factor when dealing with specifics. In a rapidly moving, team-based environment with multiple clients managing details is a huge priority as each client wants their metaphoric cake delivered with metaphorically awesomely perfect dimensions and frosting. It's a goal all IT workers hold dear.
With this goal in mind, managing details in a digital library has been ineffective for me. Tools like Evernote are useful in theory but seem impossible to populate with effective tags. In essence, building a library and keeping it organized becomes such an intense amount of overhead that its usefulness is undermined. It revolves around you converting everything in your life, from receipts to photos to captures on the web, to digital, and tagging it quickly and effectively. This is time I could spend actually doing the tasks and having a digital librarian in my life could be a full time job!
At any rate, I'm curious as to the techniques people reading this blog entry use to manage your time and people, specifically during the work day, and, if in a management position, how you report this time to management and expect the specifics of those under you to be reported to you. I've been reading the O'Reily book Time Management for System Administrators, and it's giving me insights into this topic as well.
However, software and lifestyle recommendations aside, it's hard to know what people are finding that actually work in practice. That's what I'm looking for, with the understanding that it's different for everyone.Thanks in advance for feedback and contributions! Hopefully this will generate a list that is useful to a lot of people.
Speaking of people who accomplished great things using the little time they were given, Happy Martin Luther King, Jr day to all.
Chris
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