Birmingham Screen Image Network and Networking

This is actually a big answer I gave to some questions regarding the Birmingham Screen Image Network that I attend once a month at Millennium Point. It took me a while to write it but hopefully it will be useful and interesting.

Here are the questions-

What makes a good network?

Why do you go?

And what do you want from a network?

And here is my Answer-

I've attended all sorts of different networking sessions for both creatives and business people, in lots of different venues. I enjoy the BSIN sessions as they are regular, the venue is good and it is easy to find out who is there, what they do and then I can decide who I want to talk to. Rather than the scatter gun approach which occasionally happens at larger sessions.

I think the venue is very important, the worst venues for myself have been bars and pubs. I find the main problem with these is they are to noisy due to loud music and are often being shared with members of the public making them unnecessarily crowded. I found that people end up getting hammered and it just seems pointless talking to some of them as they're totally incoherent.

A venue should have features that provide opportunities for conversation. A drinks station is always good. If I run out of people to talk to and cant see any open groups then I normally get a glass of water and engage the next person to come over to the drinks table. When food is provided finger food works best especially with tall tables that you have to stand at. As you can remain mobile and easily start up a conversation with a new group/table. I think it would be good to put spikes on the walls as it can be to easy for attendees to hide at the side and this would force them into the middle of the room.

Recently I've been attending sessions that have art, interactives, prototypes, puzzles and other assorted conversation props that are great for facilitating networking.

Another style of networking I've enjoyed is speed networking. You all sit in two rows facing one another and have about 60 seconds each to talk, swap cards and move on when the whistle blows. When the speed networking has finished everyone carries on with regular networking but now you know who everyone is and can carry on promising conversations.

Finally the most important thing for me is the people. I preferably want a good mix of creatives, animators, film makers, artists, sound people, writers, photographers, actors etc and preferably some business people, different entrepreneurs who are interested in the skills on offer by the creatives. Most importantly the attendees have to have a good attitude ie polite, friendly and be prepared to try to make conversation.

I go to BSIN each month for a variety of reasons. I enjoy the structure, each person introduces themselves, who they are, then news is shared and interesting debates normally arise. Although the attendances are low there is normally a couple of new faces each month. I have made some useful contacts, I get to hear of news, events and different opportunities coming up.

I think it would be good bring the Screen and Music networks into the same room for the last 20mins to further share news, info, leads etc

When paired with the free dinner and creative networks events after its a really enjoyable and useful way to spend an afternoon.

I also go to support the network and hopefully support the creative scene in Birmingham by attending. Attendances are low which is disappointing, although I wouldn't want the groups to have massive, if it could get up to 15/20 each week that would be great. The only way the group will grow is by people continuing to attend, talking and promoting the meet ups.

Memorabilia Day two

So here it is the second day report from my recent trip to the LG arena for Birmingham's Memorabilia event.

When booking the tickets I had insisted that we go for both days, though on the second morning I was feeling concerned that there would be nothing to do and we would have wasted our money. Fortunately the second day was even better than the first. 

The Hall was far less busy on Sunday which was nice as it allowed us to look at the stalls with greater ease although there was less atmosphere. We started the day by doing a lap around the arena to see if there was anything we missed the previous day. 

On both days there were lots of people dressed in Sci-fi, cult and movie costumes. The good thing about it being quieter on the Sunday was it allowed more time and room to get photos with the people in costume. I had my photo with some clone troopers and Alan had a photo with Darth Vader.

We decided to fill our day up we would check out the talks on the main stage. The speakers who appealed the most were Michael Biehn, the Starwars crew, David Hasselhoff and Craig Charles. Each speaker was allotted 20 minutes and the format was largely the same for each. The host would introduce them, ask questions and encourage the audience to ask questions. 

The Michael Biehn talk was interesting although he didn't seem to thrilled to be there. He spoke about starting a film production company and how much easier and cheaper it is to now make a film. 

The Starwars crew consisted of Boba Fett, Greedo, the rebel pilot with the black moustache from a New Hope and the Storm Trooper who said the line “these are not the droids we’re looking for”. I was reluctant to see these guys as I didn't think it would be very interesting. As it turned out they were great. Lots of funny stories, very charismatic and entertaining. 

Next up was David Hasselhoff, who was another talker who I wasn't that fussed about seeing. I know that the "Hoff" has a large cult following but even just the nick name puts me off. I was never particularly a fan of either Knight Rider or Baywatch, I only liked Yasmine Bleeth who while a teen consistently made my various celebrity top 10s! We went to see him as there was space and we wanted to see Craig Charles who was on after. David Hasselhoff was meant to start a 1PM though was running late, it turned out he was running about 30 minutes late. The host stalled by dishing out lots of freebies which ranged from tat to some DVD's, I didn't get anything. 

So the Hoff finally turned up at about 2 to a packed audience took the microphone off the host and began talking and didn't stop till about 2.40. The host struggled to get him to wrap up and kept trying to bring the Q&A to an end. The Hoff was fantastic very charismatic, full of energy and just really funny. He was very honest about himself, his career and seemed keen to recapture the glory days of Knight Rider. I still wouldn't pay £25 to shake his hand and to write his name on some of my property but  I would definitely like to attend a similar event with the Hoff.

The last speaker was Craig Charles of Red Dwarf and Coronation Street who was another highlight. He was consistently funny and had allsorts of fun tales about Red Dwarf and Robot Wars. He explained that Robot Wars was cancelled due to the robots becoming to big and powerful which obviously created lots of health and safety problems. It was a shame he didn't have longer to talk as it was all really interesting.  

We finished off the day by checking out the last Robot Wars which was again really entertaining. Then had a final walk around of the stalls. I purchased some comics, clothes and a mug. The next Memorabilia is some time in March and then the big London Comic Con is in May I'm planning on attending both of those after having such a good time at this event. Advice to anyone planning on going to any of these events in future, take a packed lunch as mostly on Saturday there were long queues for food and the prices were vastly over inflated!

Intro to the All New Blades Animation Blog

Hello so Ive been reading friend of Blades Animation the talented live action director Malcolm Kennedys recently started blog. Below is Malcolm's logo please click on the link to be taken to his website. (don't do it yet till you've read this blog though)

www.malcolmkennedy.co.uk

Malcolm's first entry is an introduction to who he is and what he's about. I thought "umm did I do this?", No I did not. I had a look over my old post to double check as I couldn't really remember but No definitely didn't. So what follows is finally an introduction and welcome to the Blades Animation Blog.

I am actively trying to be more proactive with Blogging, tweeting and facebooking so this entry is all part of this new marketing blitz. Im aiming to blog about once every other week, tweet about once a day and put something on facebook once a week.

When I first started this blog it was just going to be updates of what I was doing, which I guess it had been. I decided that this was in-fact boring so out the window with that and from now on its the all New Blades Animation Blog. I based its boringness on the repetitive titles of the blogs they are all just variants of the word update. My favourite blog post is the networking one, I re-read it the other day and I just thought "THIS IS BLOG GOLD!" Anyway so this made me think from now I'm going to try to put in more useful blogs that are hopefully more interesting. I've got lots of draft blogs I've been compiling for a couple of months now, most of them are just titles with a few notes. I've even got the blogger app so am totally committed to getting these posts done and online.

Right so things Im going to cover going forward are still some updates of projects and what Im up to but less of these. The next puppet I make I intend to document the full process and stick it up on here as a sort of puppet making tutorial. Im planning a day trip to london to buy some studio lights which is going up on here. At the end of September Im going to be walking Hadrian's Wall as research for a project I'm working on which will probably be a mix of smaller posts. I've got lots of creative businesses posts I want to put up, this covers, my work process, marketing advice, scheduling, pricing, how to keep costs low, book reviews, all sorts of stuff and some fun blogs like favourite films etc. If readers have requests then please message me and I can probably do requested blogs or answer questions as well, cos Im nice.

So I think that works as a indication of what this Blog is about from now on. I want to avoid doing any really long blogs and keep them nice and digestible, so I shall stop now. I will try to follow this post up with some history on how I began on my journey into animation, where I started, the routes I took and so on.

Thanks for reading, please like the facebook page to stay up to date on whats going on.

Rich

Networking

Today I attended the Business growth show hosted at Drayton Manor hotel in Tamworth Birmingham. Please read on for my experience and maybe tips on networking. 

I had been tempted to attend one of these networking events for a while though had been putting it off as networking isn't the most fun. All my previous networking has been pretty much animation industry specific. Previous networking i've done has been at a variety of festivals and animation events in mostly Wales and a little in Birmingham. The festivals have been the most fun to network at. Annecy especially as just getting into the events is hard enough though definitely worth pursuing as there's lots of famous industry people and free food and drinks. The Networking at Annecy wasn't necessarily successful as it didn't lead to much in the way of work but was fun floundering in the Grand Hotel having climbed over the fence to attend. So I wasn't sure how a pile of business people would react to an animation business at an event like this. 

As it happens it all went really well. I arrived a little before nine and received a warm welcome from  Becky and Jo who allowed me to sign up for the speed networking and the two seminars. The event took place in a large hall divided into two, half for stands for various businesses and the other half reserved for speed networking. 

The speed networking began around nine. I was a little reluctant about doing this as I wasn't sure if this was the right audience for Blades Animation. I'd come prepared with a stack of showreels and some businesses cards. I didn't decided to attend the event until the day before (monday) so was a little rusty on my elevator pitch. Being the professional I am I knocked up a new one on the bus ride over. Fortunately I've done lots of pitching before so it was more of a personal refresher. I went with Frank Boyds structure for elevator pitching.  As follows:

Introduce yourself

What your project is

Who it is for

Why it is important

What you want.

This was obviously supported with the famous Richard Blades charm :). This structure was adapted on the fly depending on who I was talking to and how they were reacting etc. If anyone is wondering what I was wearing I decided against going with a suit as its not the industry I work in and thought it would be misleading if I went with a shirt and tie. It was important to me that I don't miss represent myself as some one that works in an office. I went with comfy shoes, trousers, white t-shirt under a blue v-neck jumper and a smart atticus jacket cos Im a punk :).

The actual speed networking was excellent and a genuinely great way to get chatting to people I would recommend it to anyone. The first couple of people I blundered through a little until my pitch was all set in my head. Fortunately all the people I spoke to were really interesting from a wide variety of backgrounds and businesses. By the time the speed networking had finished it was annoyingly obvious that I hadn’t brought enough business cards. I'd enough for the rest of the day but not enough for any more speed networking which was a shame. 

Next up I checked out the different stands and followed on some of the conversations started during the networking. Part of my reluctance for coming to events of this kind is this type of networking that relies on cold approaches. Again everyone was really friendly and was unlike some previous events i've been to where people stand in closed groups. There were loads of open groups of people who were chatty and eager to meet others. If I ran out of people to talk to I headed for the water point as its really easy to strike up a conversation while people are getting drinks. My main opener was to simply say "hey hello" and "ask if they were having a good time". During these periods I handed out most of my remaining business cards. As mentioned before I spoke to a huge variety of business people from a magician, website designers, event planners, copywriters the list really goes on. 

A lunch buffet was provided which was a nice bonus, consisting of pizzas, sandwiches and sausage rolls. Either side of lunch was a seminar held in a separate room. The Morning session was with Shiv Ahluwalia entitled Sales Communication for Hungry Entrepreneurs who was excellent. A great mix of audience involvement, humour and sales education delivered in a relaxed manner.

The Afternoon was hosted by Jo Simpson and entitled Better Decision Making For The Business Owners. I had covered similar subjects to this Seminar in the Nesta work shop I attended as part of the Transform@lab. It was about identify business values to help inform the businesses decision making which I believe is really important and another valuable seminar and message. 

Unfortunately I didn't stay for the whole day as I ran out of business cards and I was feeling particularly worn out. (I ran the Eden Marathon on Sunday and am still recovering) I headed off about an hour before the events end. On the whole a great day out that I believe yielded some potential leads and loads of useful contacts. I look forward to the next Business Growth Show!

Richard