PatreCon Day 2, and DOTU update (Patreon)

Day 2 of PatreCon started off with an amazing private talk from James Higa about negotiating.  It was some of the most powerful information I've ever been given but ended up leaving a good half of the room near tears too.  Later, we had talks from Philip DeFranco and Comic Book Girl 19.

In the afternoon, my group had a really interesting workshop called "The Unspoken Language," led by Lisa Rowland, who's an improvisor, actor, and teacher.  We did some interesting (and often hilarious) exercises on the different effects of stuff like eye contact and body language in how we present ourselves and our status, and the ways that we can raise or lower our status in order to adapt to a situation and engage better with others.

After that, I had a one-on-one creator page review with Maura Church, data science manager at Patreon.  She was able to give me some great tips to make my page clearer and more appealing - so you'll probably be seeing some of these changes soon.  I also may be getting access to a couple new features I'll be able to share with you guys in the not too distant future......... ^_^

Overall, day 2 for me was really about the relationships I built with other creators at PatreCon.  One of the reasons I decided to go to this collaborative workshop as opposed to a comic convention was because right now I really needed to be in a learning environment instead of a selling environment.  I wanted to be around the type of creators who were actively looking to meet other creators as peers instead of competitors.

I was hoping I'd have a good experience with other creators at PatreCon, but it was even better than I'd hoped.  Everyone I talked to was so open and free about sharing their experiences and strategies and struggles, and it was awesome to see so many different creators doing such different things and all being so passionate about what they were doing.  You'll probably see me talking about some of them on tumblr or twitter over the next week or so.

Several of us had drinks at the JW Marriott in between the last workshop and the closing party.  In honor of Troy's grapes, I ordered a fruity martini called the "Grapes of Wrath," and we all toasted to our fans. <3

At the closing party, I finally had a chance to talk face-to-face with Jack Conte, and of course I wasn't quite able to get through telling him how Patreon changed my life, and how much his day 1 talk meant to me, without losing it a little.  He's just such a great, inspiring person, and if you meet him or hear him talk, you can see just how much he cares about creators and the power of the work he does.

My experience at PatreCon has reminded me of how much I want to continue creating the art I'm creating, and it's strengthened my will to find new ways to make it work.

I'll be heading to the airport in a couple hours.  The flight back to Chicago is going to be a tough one in terms of time zones, and I'm also getting notices from United that my flight might be delayed due to thunderstorms.  This means the next DOTU page will probably also be delayed.  I'll post it publicly on Monday 11/13, but it'll go up for patrons at least a few days before that.  We'll still get 2 pages in November!