Just got back from Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle. In my small Convention experience, the last 3 days have topped all! We were crazy busy the whole convention, I didn’t get to participate in the many cool things going on which kinda sucked because there were so many awesome things on the schedule. I only got my hands briefly on the Warhammer demo and that’s it as far as games went.  On a show note though, it was SPECTACULAR! We had a huge demand for the DVD, especially during signing times.  Seeing a line formed for me and Zaboo down the length of the hall was so exciting! At the same time, we introduced a lot of gamers to our show, which was a huge boost for us, because PAX attendees are people who would like our show.  I gave out Bookmarks generously :)  Friday night we screened the show in front of 250 people I believe, they even had to turn people away. (I couldn’t believe that!)  Seeing The Guild episodes back to back in front of a live audience was such a thrilling experience because we’d never done it before.  Part of me couldn’t believe the crowd actually laughed in places I wanted them to when I wrote it!   It was phenomenal!  We’ll have an audio of the Q and A after the screening posted on The Guild site as soon as we get it.  All in all, the trip really helped the show and it was wonderful to meet fans in person.

A few highlights for me:

I can’t rave enough about the staff at PAX. The Enforcers, the VIP escorts, were pretty much the nicest most helpful volunteers I’d ever met. We were privileged to be working with Macca, Matt, Mari, Mojo, Klayton, Biran, Jason and especially our man Nels. You guys saved our butt so many times over, and we love you for it! Thanks especially to Gabe and Tycho, Penny Arcade creators, gurus and all around luscious human men. Tycho was especially nice and groomed me, something I’ve been waiting for since they posted this comic.   I’m not as frightened as I look.  It was an expert brushing.

Also, I was Bad Horse’d!  What an experience! During one of the signing sessions I was handed a letter and asked to stand in front of the booth. As I opened it, well…this happened:

Couldn’t have been more floored in my  life!  It was a total treat and surprise!  The Chorus was kind enough to pose for a picture with me later.   They said they were going to do it to a bunch more people at the Con, can’t wait until that video is uploaded as well!

Another treat was meeting Edgar Garcia, my co-opted webmaster of The Guild and this site :)  He helps me out so much, and getting to hang out, have him help us with the booth, it was so fun!  He also made that creepy shirt he’s wearing there.  I laughed so much when I saw it!  Sandeep was amused, but less so, HA!! :)  He gave me a shirt for myself, I haven’t worn it yet, but I promised him that I would upload a picture soon :)  Jamie Chambers, another champion volunteer of The Guild who has sold The Guild DVD and screened it at Gencon and Dragoncon, also made me a kick ass shirt, so I have so modelling to do in the near future!!!

And last but not least…well, if a musician you kind of are a fangirl of suddenly emailed you out of the blue and asked you to sing on stage with him, what would you do?   MMm, same thing I did when Joss emailed me and asked me to do “Horrible.”  Yes please!

Jonathan Coulton, brilliant singer-songwriter, hero to geeks and musicians everywhere, asked me the week before PAX to sing “Still Alive”, the song from the end of “Portal”.  Coincidentally I had just played the song at a Rock Band party the week before, so the universe was trying to tell me something.  I was pretty nervous because I’d never sung on stage live with a mic, it was quite a learning experience.  But the minute I walked out on stage, 3000 people or so cheered and instantly I knew why people become rock stars!  I had so much fun, the crowd basically sang along with me, and standing next to JoCo was a thrill beyond compare.  I can’t claim to have done justice to the song (one of my faves), and in fact performing with a monitor and a mic was totally new to me.  It’s on my list to have that skill set prepared for the next time someone cool asks me to sing ;)  Still, this was an amazing experience. Here’s video:

Couldn’t have been more spectacular!  Hmm, now I want to join a band…lol.

I have mentioned in interviews that one of the reasons I love being a web content producer is that it requires me to learn something new every day.   Before I wrote “The Guild” I had no idea what producing a scripted show entailed.  During the shooting process, I learned about pre-production, script revisions, casting, props, production coordinating and more.  After the show was shot, I  learned about a whole new set of skills; editing, video uploading specs, sound mixing, Photoshop for credits and graphics, YouTube and more.  After picture was locked I had to learn about marketing, raising awareness of my show, getting press, promoting, retaining audience, Wordpress programming, RSS etc:  It was definitely the biggest set of skills and the most important part of making the series what it is today.  And these past two months I learned a whole OTHER set of skills about DVD production.  It was a sharper learning curve than anything before, believe it or not. I suppose it’s because I’ve been exposed to TV and movie productions for years, so learning that stuff was easier since I had experienced it firsthand.  The steps in actually manufacturing a DVD were a lot more complex because I’d never been exposed to it before.  But I feel quite proud now having gone through it.  The DVD looks great.  I couldn’t wait to share it with everyone.  But nothing, my friends, has exhausted or tried my patience more than this last phase:  Shipping and Handling.

Don’t get me wrong, part of this was my fault.   We put the pre-order button on the website several weeks before the DVD was actually finished, partially to help us gague how many we needed to manufacture our first run.   We offered free shipping as incentive.  Not that much of a problem, except we underestimated how popular our DVD would be internationally:  A full 1/3 of the orders were from outside the US.  This wouldn’t have been a problem EITHER in a theoretical universe.  We had calculated the average shipping and, besides shipping to Malaysia and South Africa, we didn’t have to eat that much more shipping than we anticipated.

No, all of this could have been handled fine, had we not decided to ship everything out at once on August 1rst, and use PayPal as our service.  O M G.

If PayPal were a man, I would punch him.  I would cold-cock him into tomorrow, even if I had to break my hand.  I think this is a perfect example of a monopoly gone wrong.  The useability of the site is a nightmare:  The documentation, laughable.  Combine this with a Brother Q500 label printer that is bundled with software that was created on Fortran, and you have the perfect storm for driving a girl over the edge to a day job, abandoning web video forever.

Paypal, you suck.  Yes, I had too many orders piled up to do at once, I understand that might have been my problem, but your Multi Shipping option is a nightmare.  What, you say?  When you import orders 100 at a time there’s no indication of the number of DVDs they ordered, and hence, no way to tell if their packages need more postage?  That’s retarded.  Hmm?  You mean, there’s no documentation anywhere about what kind of labels the label printer needs to print properly?  It couldn’t be that no one in the city of Los Angeles or surrounding areas would carry such a label size, that would be ridiculous!  I mean, it seems natural that you’d use a readily available technology instead of having to order it overnight on the internet!  Hmm.  OMG, are you serious?!  You mean, despite not indicating it ANYWHERE, you CANNOT IMPORT ORDERS PAST 14 DAYS INTO THE MULTISHIPPING SOFTWARE?!?!  I HAVE TO HAND ENTER 300 USA DVD LABELS MYSELF!??!

Breathe.  Yes, my friends, the nightmare was partially my doing, but oh, it was a nightmare.  I still can’t move my right hand properly.  The repetitive motion of clicking through 300 individual DVDs and printing their labels one by one, waiting for Paypal to load, 2 out of 10 times having it or the printer lock up and having to relog in…I shut off my brain in a way that I never knew possible in order to accomplish that phase of the task in an 8 hour stint at my computer.  I ate a lot of junk food and ice cream to get me through the day.

Oh, and I forgot.  The international DVDs?  Well, here’s a little tidbit:  Paypal doesn’t allow you to either automate in batches OR print First Class shipping for anything other than the US.  Their only option is an expensive $20.00+ Priority Option, because they insist on delivery confirmation.  Thus leading me to my secondary nightmare:  Exporting all the international orders (know what a .csv file is?  I do now!) and print them out on a DIFFERENT kind of label, THEN HAND PRINTING ADDRESSES ON EVERY SINGLE CUSTOMS FORM.

I have since learned that stamps.com can do that for you, the customs forms and international labels.  Thank you Twitterers for letting me know that.  Thank you Wil Wheaton for giving me a lot of great advice to alleviate these things next time I do this.  I wish I had asked sooner.   My producer Kim Evey has Carpal Tunnel now, I think.  She has lovely handwriting, if you are in Canada or Australia you will see it.  If it’s chicken scratch, that’s my claw working.  We were desperate to get the orders done because we had promised August 1rst shipment, and it was August 5th already (due to waiting on labels and learning software), so we cobbled together this totally crazy system where I had to learn how to use the 1980 software that came with the Labelmaker Printer in order to import a database and print only the international addresses.  Mmm, I’d say 4-6 hours total on that.  I’m actually laughing now, because it’s so absurd and instinctual:  Never let hundreds of orders pile up and do them in 3 days time, especially if you don’t know how to do it already.

Oh, and the post office:  Surly Postal Worker, I understand you get hassled all day, I empathize.  But when my producer comes in with 75 neatly filled out international DVD packages, all nicely arranged in boxes, maybe you should do your job and enter the information in the computer?  Maybe DONT FORCE HER TO BUY $4.30 STAMPS AND PUT THEM ON HERSELF!  And maybe don’t, upon seeing me enter with a wobbly dolly cart that spilled over two times in the parking lot (thank you sweaty construction man for helping me re-pile them), don’t look at me, lock the big dropoff door and then yell: “8 boxes yesterday, 9 boxes today!?  Girl, I’m gonna SMACK YOU!”  That’s kind of the last thing I want to hear.

Learning curve:  Vertical.  Satisfaction: too tired to rate, haha.  I’m so happy they’re out and in people’s hands, but believe me, I’ve learned my lesson:  Some things are meant to be hired out.

Next week?  Accounting and Quickbooks.  Thank God I got a math degree.

Thank you for all your help in spreading the “Horrible” word! My Google Alert is flooded with Dr. Horrible blog posts. The power of Whedon is mighty! Keep up the good work, and wherever you can spread it to Scifi sites, and other non-Whedon places. I’ve been doing a lot of cold emailing, can’t hurt, right?

I forgot to link it on Friday (due to too much Tequila for my birthday, ugh) but I did a podcast interview with Joss’d: The Podcast that was hella fun and has been posted! So if you’re interesting in hearing me prattle a lot, check it out! (And a nice review of The Guild after the interview).

I’m buried in so many tasks I am hoping to clear it up over the next week, thank goodness for the 4th! There are emails that I’ve given the evil eye for over a month that I WILL tackle or archive, I resolve it to be so! Good thing #1 is that I finished the rough rough draft of The Guild season 2. So excited to start massaging it into funny-ness! There’s a lot of work ahead, but getting the skeleton down is invaluable. I’m going to do another pass and then late next week send it to a few select people for notes for another round of rewrites. Ugh, that’s the nail biting part, waiting for notes! I’m happy with the story though, and since my producing partner Kim Evey has taken the reins of the DVD production, things are a bit smoother than they have been for me.

I was thinking about it the other day, and it’s amazing how many hats a web content producer has to wear! All the standard filmmaking talents are required, and after that, all the knowledge of a web 2.0 startup has to kick in! That’s on top of PR and merchandising and social networking…etc etc etc! Every day is a learning process. And honestly…that’s what I love about it. Although I complain a lot. Oh well, I never said I wasn’t a malcontent.

I have 42 minutes before I have to leave the house, the only 42 minutes I’ve had to relax all day, and I decided what better usage of time than to write a blog entry! Yay! It’s a little messy and stream of conscious, but I have so much I want to write about and so little time and I’m a bad girl for not posting all week so…whatever.

I know I owe quite a few book reviews, I have them piled next to the computer in anticipation of a big post. In fact, they’re tipping quite precariously. Earlier this week however, I decided to absolve myself of all the guilt I’ve been feeling lately: Of not blogging enough, of not cleaning out my inbox, not exercising, not brushing the dog, not vacuuming (so said dog hair rolls like a huge tumbleweed down my hallway)…blah blah blah. Because I realized that guilt is not a great motivator for me. It makes me sad faced and is not a creative kick starter.

What IS a creative kick starter is segmenting my day sensibly and prioritizing. I was SO GOOD at that earlier last year with to-do lists, and goal sheets and it’s turned back into the haphazard schedule that disallows any focus. I’ve rebooted this morning with old school pen and paper and it’s definitely going to serve me better. Also, I’ve been trying the “thumb screwing” technique for getting a draft of The Guild Season 2 done, and I have to say, it’s not really working! I ended up getting total self-doubt, rewriting the first 25 pages 2 times, only to realize I should have stuck with my first instincts. That was a grody realization, but a good lesson to learn. Had I allowed myself a few more video game breaks, or allotted an hour in the mornings to going to the gym, gone to a few parties that I skipped out on, I probably would have generated more ideas and kept my enthusiasm fresh. Bottom line, I need to not confuse motivation with grim ultimatums. I started today with that attitude and got some great clues as to how I should proceed writing-wise. And I’m going to let me instincts be my guide, because…that’s all I have!

It’s just extremely hard to focus on one thing when there’s no consistency to my day, the curse of the freelancer. Murphy’s Law requires a commercial audition to arise right when I have writing or Yoga class penciled in, or a conference call with a New Media company, or a friend who needs to be picked up a the airport. For the next month or so (until I get this damned script done, lol) I’ve decided to turn down most interviews and meetings unless I feel they are really necessary. In Hollywood, a lot of people’s SOLE JOBS are to “have meetings”, which I had to go to about 100 meetings to learn. Blech. Fun Fact though: When you have a meeting as a writer/producer, they validate parking! As an actor…they have signs saying “No Actor Parking.” LOL!

We’re starting next week working full-steam on the DVD for The Guild. Educating myself about that end of the business, as well as helping translators help translating the show into like 6 different languages, and researching the different web video players out there has been quite a bit of homework these past few weeks. We’ll be going to ComiCon from July 25-27th and we’ve also been busy arranging accommodations passes etc. I’ll be announcing plans soon about that. Thanks so much for the people who answered my Twitter request for Schwag places! Unfortunately our budget will probably not accommodate buying stuff since we just realized that 25,000 people attend ComiCon and we were thinking of getting like, 200 keychains, haha! The scale is enormous and I’m very excited to go, but our little show sans funding won’t be giving out much of anything except our lovely smiles. We will have our DVD with us though, and perhaps a cast picture. Hopefully “Dr. Horrible” will have some presence there too, I will post as details are updated.

Oh, on June 21 I’m participating in an all-day seminar called “Spinning The Web- Writing for the Internet” at the WGA (Ironic since I’m not even WGA, haha). I’m participating on one of the panels called “Let’s Put On A Show” with the guy from Chad Vader, and the guys from PINK, and others so if you’re into making web content, it looks like a pretty nice lineup of guests, and the other panels look good too! Check the bottom of the website for details of location and cost etc.
Lastly, I leave you with a picture of Flog reader Andrew’s Tortillas. Remember he left in a comment that he made them homemade and I was like, “Hey, show me how?!” Well, the probability of my EVER getting around to making them is next to zero, so he was kind and send me a Flickr picture that I now share with you! Yum! Thanks Andrew!!! This is the most random blog post ever. Going to improv!