- Hey friends, welcome to a new vlog.
Behind me you can see some balloons
with numbers that I believe are facing the wrong way
because it was my birthday yesterday.
I am now 32 years old.
So, you know, I'm getting older, getting wiser,
all those good things.
I took a four day weekend for,
like, as a gift to myself, I guess, for my birthday.
That was nice to have some time off
although I wish it was longer.
I can always tell when a break wasn't long enough
when I'm not like excited to go back to work
and instead I'm like,
oh, I wish that I had more time, you know?
But you know, we move on
and we keep it working through it.
And I will book a longer break
for like sometime in the coming months.
Anyway, today I'm doing a thing with my team
that's like a hack day, kind of.
Because A, we're remote,
B, I'm saying letters but holding up numbers,
four fingers, whatever, we'll move on.
Second point is we're a small team as well.
So there's not going to be like
a whole lot of like cross collaboration
and stuff like that able to happen.
As well because I guess the point,
we are in different timezones too,
so that all makes it harder.
But it's kind of like an experiment,
we've not done something like this before at ConvertKit
but I just felt like my team needed it
to break free from the day to day.
Like they're all really great at what they do.
And they get like super focused
on their like scope of work, their projects.
And I think it's just good for us
to break free from that every now and then,
to see the bigger picture, to allow new ideas
to sort of like into our brains, that sort of thing.
And I hope that this hack day will give
like good space for that.
And also that it'll help us focus more
on the stuff we need to do during a six week cycle
that we work in at ConvertKit,
knowing that there's like a hack day coming
where you can explore that new idea or like, you know,
new thing that you wanna make happen.
So yeah, we'll see how it goes.
I'm excited about the possibilities of it.
And I know already there's lots of things I could do better
in having organized this thing.
Like one, perhaps not having it be
the day that I come back from a break,
but anyway, I've encouraged everyone on the team
to spend at least a couple of hours today
like working on something new, like some new ideas.
Some new thing they wanna do
that they think will help us increase our reach
and affinity with creators.
And the goal is to work on something that you can reach
a reasonable finishing point with during the day.
And that reasonable finishing point
doesn't have to mean it's completely done
and like ready to ship.
It's more like you've got to a finish point of the idea
and you can accurately demonstrate its value to someone.
Yeah, talk about what you learned about it.
I don't know, it's going to be fun, I think
and everyone's got really good ideas
that they've come up with to work on.
Me myself, I have spent my morning, it is 2:30 now,
I've spent my morning
catching up on everything that I missed while I was out
and like doing my Monday things that I do as a manager
like reviewing people's check-ins
and like updating metrics and stuff like that.
And I have meetings again starting in two hours.
So, I only have two hours
really to work on a hack day project for myself.
So I thought it'd be fun to vlog this process as I go
so that you can come along with me
and see what I'm creating,
how I get it done in this very, very short time period.
But yeah, I think it'll be fun.
What I'm planning on doing
is creating some sticker GIF things for Instagram.
This is what I want to do,
I want people to be able to type in ConvertKit
into the GIFs thing in Instagram
and some cool creative like GIF things show up.
I don't know.
We'll see how we go with it,
but that is...
That is the plan anyway.
So I'm going to dive into researching now
so I have a good idea of the process for getting that done
and then we'll do a sprint designing some things,
animating some things, and make it happen.
Let's get into a hack.
(soothing music)
Okay, so it looks like the process
is going to be fairly simple.
I need to apply for a brand Giphy account.
That's how I'm going to pronounce it.
I don't care if you say that's wrong.
But to do that I have to have five GIFs
uploaded to the channel
of the Giphy account that I just made for ConvertKit.
So let's get making some GIFs first
and it looks like then I can apply,
and this might not be a thing that like is literally,
ends up in Instagram today.
But like I was just saying, for a hack day,
don't have to be like completely finished
and shippable, the project.
At least I'll have a plan and be ready.
So I know that one of the GIFs I'll do is our,
the future belongs to creators.
We have this animation
of it turning on like a neon sign.
We also have one of it sort of like writing in.
So I might do both of those.
And then for the rest, I wanna stick with the hand written
like theme, I guess.
And I'm going to get my iPad,
which is currently propping up the camera.
So excuse me while I attempt to pick this up.
I'm going to do some drawing in Procreate for it.
Procreate is a really great way to make
handmade GIFs pretty easily.
And so I'm going to have some brainstorming time
and make that happen.
And music is of course as always,
powering me to hustle through it.
(speaker chuckling)
(upbeat music)
Because I wanted to get the brand account thing started,
I just made five GIFs from animations we already had.
We've got, well, wait on, let me see.
How can I best show you?
Let me do this.
(swooshing)
We've got this one here which is our logo.
So I figure it could be something that people can use
whenever they're talking about, I don't know,
doing work in their ConvertKit account,
on their stories, things like that.
I also did this version
in case that's a better like color
for the background of the story.
Then we also have this here, the future belongs to creators.
I'm writing in on black.
Quite cute.
And then there's this one here which is a neon version.
I don't know, you probably can't see it
in this light very well
but it'll look cool on a colored background.
It's, yeah, the neon sign turning on.
And then there's this one here which is the same thing,
the future belongs to creators, but in white instead.
Yeah, I needed five to get the account underway.
And so that's good that I had five options there
of things to animate.
So now that is going.
Apparently it says,
"Congrats, your application has been submitted."
So we'll see what comes with that
and what might have to happen next to verify it or whatever.
And now it is writing in Procreate time.
I've already had one idea of,
like I'm trying to make it things
that people would want to use as a GIF.
You know?
So I'm thinking that people usually use GIFs for reactions
or like, I don't know, adding to things.
So I'm trying to think of like,
okay, what would creators be doing?
And like where they would want to use these GIFs.
So I'm thinking that maybe if they posted
after they've sent an email out,
a gif saying, "Check your inbox," could be cute.
I'm also going to do one that says, side hustling.
I think that could be cool.
We've got to do a create every day
because that is a motto that we're very fond at ConvertKit.
So that has to be in there somewhere.
I don't know, I'm going to sit and ponder
and think of some other things and start some drawing.
(upbeat music)
Are you ready to see my first GIF that I've made myself?
Let me bring it up on screen.
Check it out.
Isn't it cute?
So the idea is that this is one, like I said,
I think before that people can use
when they post about sending out a new email,
it's got a little hot for disappears up.
Making GIFs is surprisingly easy on Procreate.
So essentially what you do is you have a different layer
for each frame of the GIF.
So what I would do is like draw it once,
duplicate the layer, and then change things slightly.
So like to start with I change the opening of the envelope
and then every two frames I also rewrote the text
so that it ends up doing that you know,
thing, how it looks like it's moving a little bit.
And then all you have to do
is come down here to animated GIF.
Uh, and if my screen will focus
and you can see here that you can adjust
like how fast you want it to go.
Wow, see that's like way too intense for me
so I kept it at the six that it starts off as.
Add a transparent background
and yah, its super easy to get the GIF exported.
I'm gonna move on with some other ideas now
that it feels like this is working.
(upbeat music)
Okay, so I managed to make two more, I believe,
in the time that I allowed myself to work on this.
Here's one of them saying, "Subscribe to my newsletter,"
so they can, you know, use it for their swipe up graphic.
Yeah, when they're linking to the newsletter.
And this one here,
this is going to be hard to see, I think.
Let me try and do.
Here we go.
It says, "Side hustling,"
that people can use like alongside, you know,
an image of them working.
So, I only got three new custom GIFs
created in my time that was available.
But there was also the five, you know,
that I used with our existing animations.
So, you know, that's the fun of a hack day, right?
Is that it's a time box project.
So that's what I got done.
I will follow up a little outside of the time box
to check in on this.
Uh, I just checked my emails
and we were approved for a brand account.
Great.
So that means I should be able to get this
like wrapped up today
if I put in just a little bit more time
after all my meetings.
We'll see if we can make that happen
and I'll come back to you then.
So it's much later now,
but here are all the GIFs on the ConvertKit Giphy page
that I've uploaded today.
This neon one isn't looking great
when it gets like compressed into their GIF form.
But I dunno, it's going to be fine for now.
We'll see how it goes.
But I wanted to just show you a little more detail
on how I have been doing these frame animations.
Let's open this one.
I'm going to take you through frame by frame
how this side hustling animation goes
cause I think it's a,
as you can see from the final GIF, if it focuses,
see how the sparks it all looks like it's emerging
and then disappearing?
So we start here with some little dots, right?
In the next frame, the side hustling gets bigger
and the lines get longer.
The next frame side hustling is bigger again
and the lines are out there like full width.
On the next one, maybe I should overlay
so that you can see the difference there.
The next one they're getting shorter
but in the opposite direction.
So it's sort of like the line starts here
and then ends up here.
That's how you get that like spark effect.
I hope that makes sense.
The next one, they're even smaller again.
And then in the next one they're gone completely.
So that's how you get sort of looking at it going, poop.
(speaker chuckling) (clinging)
Is my hand gesture for it.
Yeah, I want to test it out now.
I've tagged them all.
I've gone in here and added,
as you can see, these tags to each thing
like with what I think people would be searching to find it.
I don't know if I showed you this one,
this one that says, "Subscribe to my newsletter."
I think I did. - [Emoji] Yes, yes.
- [Lady] Anyway, I put a bunch of tags on,
like just trying to go for like,
what would you be searching
where a GIF like this would be useful, you know?
And I guess what we can see here is,
uh, I should make a link in bio one,
but yeah, that should happen.
But yeah, what we can see here
is what I guess it'll be up against.
So I dunno.
We'll see what happens, but my phone is flat
so I'm just waiting for it to charge
so that I can test, search in Instagram
and seeing if they appear.
Okay, phone is working.
Let's go on Instagram and see what happens
if we type ConvertKit, does it show up?
(drum roll)
(trumpet blowing)
(lady gasping)
There they are.
This is so exciting.
Focus, focus.
You need to see this.
Come on.
Okay, so if you want to use these GIFs
that I made today, for yourself,
all you gotta do is go on Instagram and type ConvertKit
and you'll find them all.
Yeah, the future belongs to creators neon one
is not looking great, but that's okay.
(buzzing)
This so exciting, the side hustling one
I think is my favorite.
Cool, isn't it fun when an idea works out.
It's great that Giphy approved the account so fast,
I don't know.
That was a good...
I think that was a good hack day project.
And I think that in Giphy we can also see
results on how many people have used our stickers.
So yeah, that'd be interesting to see as well.
And if it turns out that people use them and like them
then it's like a sign that I can put time into making more.
But yeah, I feel like this was good
for like a, that two hour gap that I had
to actually work on a thing.
I feel like I accomplished something.
And I'm really looking forward to seeing
what the rest of my team does for hack day.
But I hope you enjoyed coming along with me for my journey
of our hack day and what I got done.
I think that I will come back to you on Thursday
after we've done our team presentations
and tell you a little bit about
what the rest of the team did for their hack day projects.
So, see you then.
Okay, it's time to catch you up on how our hack day went.
So we, like I think you said,
we took over our regular brand team Thursday meeting
and made that like hack day presentations.
Everyone had 10 minutes to present and for like,
I don't know, people to ask questions.
And then we spent the last 10 minutes of the meeting
talking about how hack day went in general.
And I was so impressed with my team.
It was really fun to see what they chose to think about,
what they chose to spend their time on, you know?
We had projects ranging from like
a plan to get involved and share content from black creators
during black history month next year.
Our storyteller Issa wrote a whole story
based on one of our creative sessions.
And you might see that pop up
on the creator sessions Instagram
as some little like,
yeah, feed posts with story snippets.
But that was fun.
Someone else on the team basically
spent the day doing some music research,
talking to a ballet dancer about a business she's starting
and ways that ConvertKit could help her.
And then Caitlyn spent some time
designing some new like merch ideas
for (indistinct) basically.
It was really fun
and I'm glad we did it.
The feedback I got from the team about it
was that they really liked like the no pressure of it.
So I feel like it did a good job in explaining that like,
it doesn't matter if the ideas don't get put into action
or if it fails or whatever.
Like, I feel like that went well.
There was some people on the team who were like,
well, you know, we've generated these ideas
and now it'd be sad not to put them into action.
And so I have a bit of work to do there
on just reminding the team
that we're always going to have more ideas
than we do time and resources.
And so these things are great for exploring
but it doesn't necessarily mean that we can then
go and like bring every single thing to full like, fruition.
So I don't know, that might be a thing
to make sure I address better next time.
The other main like critique about it was the,
that they wished that there was more time to prepare.
Fair enough.
I'll make sure I do that better next time.
And also getting some more collaboration going.
It's really hard because of our time zones, like I said,
and I think next time I really want to try and extend
and get more teams involved.
So yeah, that is a little like summary
of how our hack day went.
I think it was definitely worth it.
It achieved what I wanted it to,
which was not to necessarily get like
all these new ideas to implement,
but to give the team a break from the regular day-to-day
and to like zoom out, think bigger picture,
think of some new things for a little bit as well.
So that was good
and I'm happy with how it went.
And let me actually just check.
So the GIFs you saw me making,
check it out.
We have had 36,000 GIF views
on the ones I made.
And this one is by far the most popular.
So that's fun to know that people are using that.
I wish that you could click through
and see like where it's being used,
on what stories or whatever, but hey,
that's still cool to know that people have found it
and are using it.
This subscribe to newsletter one is going well as well.
Cool.
Very, very cool.
I'm excited to expand on the set.
People liked the idea when I presented it to them
in the meeting.
And yeah, make more over time.
But for now we're considering it a win.
(lady chuckling)
Thanks for following along with me
on this hack day experiment, I suppose.
And I'll let you know how it goes in future months.
I think we're going to commit
to doing these once every cool-down.
So for us that'll be like every eight weeks, I guess,
one of these will happen.
So stay tuned for the next part, I guess.
And I'll bring you along for that
and let you know if I've managed to get other teams involved
and all that sort of stuff, but yeah.
Thanks for hanging out and have a good week
and I'll see you on the next vlog.
Bye.
(upbeat music)