Shipping Patreon GN Cubes & Updates on GN's Staff

Hey everyone,

We've been really drowning lately in work. I have been trying to figure out how to scale the business in a way that stays true to what we do, but just improves it. It's not easy. Before getting into that discussion, a note: I just sent over all the Patreon $20 tier orders (dating back a few months) to our merch team. They will ship your stuff on Monday and Tuesday this week. Thanks for your patience, and my apologies on the delay.

That starts my first topic, though: There's a lot I have to stay on top of on a day-to-day basis, but my number one priority is always making sure that my team has a job. I have to first figure out what it is each person can work on, then have to try and make sure they have everything they need to do that job. That might mean testing data, scripting, and a video from me (so that they can just show up to edit) or it might mean a test plan and written outline for what needs to be evaluated. A lot of stuff falls to the wayside as a result, like bookkeeping and staying on top of Patreon.

We will be bringing Keegan on full-time in late December to early January. Part of his job will be to manage Patreon reward tiers so that we can get things shipped quickly, rather than bottlenecking the entire operation on me. He'll also be editing and filming all of our behind-the-scenes and public bonus videos for the side channel, with editing of overflow content for the main channel. My goal is to get him in my right-hand position for managing and building the side channel and Patreon site, so that we can properly keep everyone up-to-date and so that I have someone grabbing me to film BTS or public bonus videos regularly. I get too buried in day-to-day operations otherwise, so it'll help a lot and I'm looking forward to it.

Keegan is probably my longest-standing contributor to GN, but he's never been a formal employee. Keegan was the first to travel to events with me and started as a reporter, basically doing games reporting and esports match write-ups. He pivoted hard to video when we realized that I needed someone to man a camera, and I later taught him to edit. I think Keegan started contracting for me in 2012, just after I did my first big convention (PAX West) and realized I needed help. He did the first few events for free, without pay, and did it just to travel. I later started paying him as GN brought some money in, although we didn't turn a profit for a very long time after that.

Anyway, Keegan has been in school for the last several years and really wanted to get his degree before working for us formally. This has complicated things a lot, since I obviously needed to hire staff in the interim, but I also wanted to make sure he's got a job guarantee. Keegan has done a lot for us over the years and is a real workhorse at conventions -- I don't think anyone in this industry can beat his pace for editing content at a tradeshow. Andrew came on board when Keegan passed on a job offer c. 2015, then Patrick, then Josh to pick up overflow editing. Keegan will be in fully once his classes end this semester, meaning I'll have some logistical complexity in figuring out how to create and distribute enough work for everyone, but also a lot of production capabilities that we wouldn't have had before. This will let us spend more time on special videos, like the PBO deep-dive, TDP deep-dive, and other things like that. Andrew can spend more time doing contributions on the graphics scripting and 3D animation/modeling, Josh can focus on day-to-day edits, and Keegan can pick up a lot of the other video work.

I can't really express how busy things have been. I know that everyone is busy in general, but it is different when you're trying to look out for your team and make sure everyone has meaningful work for their job. As an example, my house is still chaos post-move. One of the rooms that we moved out of hasn't been touched since the move. I only just re-arranged the former main testing room recently, cleaning and organizing it into more of home workspace for me.

Long story short, I'm hoping that Keegan coming on will really help us with overall pipeline / workflow management. We've added more QC steps to the end of a video, which means fewer errors make it through. Some still do, but those are mostly my fault (like mislabeling a chart axis). Most the video editing mistakes are caught in QC by the team now.

This month is looking rough, but exciting for content:

- 10980XE review

- 2x Threadripper CPU reviews

- Athlon review

- Some other embargoed projects

- All the usual year-end recaps of our content

- Disappointment build

I'm not sure if it is physically possible to complete everything I have on my list for November, but am working hard to organize so that we have efficient production pipelines.

I'm hoping that December will give us a few weeks of relative silence so that I can get future testing procedures in order before January, and then the chaos starts again with CES, a trip to Asia, middle events between, and then Computex. It never slows down.