Now that I stare at my laptop, all thoughts have escaped me. It’s been a LONG time since I’ve put myself out there in the public domain. For the past decade I’ve worked (not so) silently behind the scenes, absorbing corporate and startup politics, starting businesses, expiring businesses, making other people rich(er) and discovering that I love learning how other people perceive and process the world. It’s this perception (and I won’t bore you with a diatribe into relativity vs objectivity) that’s driving my latest project: a collective of freelancers and small, startup agencies across several industries.
The good news is that other people seem to think like me: to allow ourselves to be specialists, we must open ourselves up to people, concepts and ideas that we don’t normally come into contact with in a day. Furthermore, by learning how we can partner with each other in ways other than the simple referrals, we can take on projects that we may otherwise not be ready to handle (due to our size: often 1-3 people).
The size, diversity and budgets of projects that flow through agencies are very appealing for creatives. Unfortunately, so is fierce independence. The ability to leave town on a whim, or stay home with the kids and pets, inability to wake up before 10am: the list goes on.
So our challenge is moving this collective forward in such a manner that it’s not an agency in disguise, so we can manifest that dream of spending time with our friends (why else would we put in so many work hours in a week?) and retaining our freedoms.
In the last two weeks alone, I’ve met with developers, designers, project manager, makeup artist, modeling agency, photographers, search engine specialist and a digital film editor. One suggested we kick off our collective by writing and producing a short movie, maybe a cool ad for our new joint non-venture adventure.
Collective + Collaboration = Freedom
Now that I stare at my laptop, all thoughts have escaped me. It’s been a LONG time since I’ve put myself out there in the public domain. For the past decade I’ve worked (not so) silently behind the scenes, absorbing corporate and startup politics, starting businesses, expiring businesses, making other people rich(er) and discovering that I love learning how other people perceive and process the world. It’s this perception (and I won’t bore you with a diatribe into relativity vs objectivity) that’s driving my latest project: a collective of freelancers and small, startup agencies across several industries.
The good news is that other people seem to think like me: to allow ourselves to be specialists, we must open ourselves up to people, concepts and ideas that we don’t normally come into contact with in a day. Furthermore, by learning how we can partner with each other in ways other than the simple referrals, we can take on projects that we may otherwise not be ready to handle (due to our size: often 1-3 people).
The size, diversity and budgets of projects that flow through agencies are very appealing for creatives. Unfortunately, so is fierce independence. The ability to leave town on a whim, or stay home with the kids and pets, inability to wake up before 10am: the list goes on.
So our challenge is moving this collective forward in such a manner that it’s not an agency in disguise, so we can manifest that dream of spending time with our friends (why else would we put in so many work hours in a week?) and retaining our freedoms.
In the last two weeks alone, I’ve met with developers, designers, project manager, makeup artist, modeling agency, photographers, search engine specialist and a digital film editor. One suggested we kick off our collective by writing and producing a short movie, maybe a cool ad for our new joint non-venture adventure.