Mega Post: Big Plans for 2023! (Patreon)

Hey everyone,

I wanted to write an exclusive Patreon update now that we're clear of the major launches for the past few months. This will give you some behind-the-scenes on what we're working on!

Reporting & Journalism Pieces ("Features")

My personal ambition this year is to really kick-up the reporting and field reports into high gear. I personally loved working on the Artesian Builds investigation and the EVGA exit from GPUs. They've been creatively freeing and really interesting to research. I feel like there's an absence of this kind of 'traditional' reporting from the PC space, and I can see why -- it's hard, it often requires travel to really do justice (and we pay for 100% of our own travel costs -- we don't accept company flights or hotels -- and that's thanks to you all on Patreon! Thank you!), and it also requires sometimes weeks of just trying to wrap your head around how to structure the story.

It's not as linear as a review, so it's harder to do. But has been very rewarding. I'd consider the NVIDIA 12VHPWR investigation to by a hybrid of reporting & technical testing and really enjoyed that content as well.

Our recent Hyte piece gives you a very light look at how we want to start profiling people at companies -- same for our Lian Li news. For years, we've known that most of these companies really only have a few people driving the key product decisions (in something like a case, though CPUs/GPUs are different). You saw in our discussion with Malcolm from NVIDIA that one guy is responsible for a lot of the R&D on fans or coolers. We'd like to start talking to those people on camera, not just off camera, and profiling their work and contributions. We finally have made our way past PR and into the ranks of engineers, and that's been hard to do, but it means we can now get people who really know their stuff on camera to talk about it. It's been a huge hit with the audience and the engineers have appreciated the airtime. It means that these engineers have more bargaining power as they move companies, too -- it's often the case that someone will leave a position at one company but move to another we work with, and them being able to say "I can handle media interviews" means we can slowly get the companies used to putting engineers (and not marketing) on camera.

We'd like to follow some of the engineers between companies and show you all what they work on and what tools they use. We did that with Hyte & Lian Li, and we plan to do more of that in May / June when we go to Taiwan for Computex. I also have some plans for GN Extras interview clips (stuff that doesn't make the main video and would be less interesting to a wide audience, but cool for a smaller and focused audience).

That's one of my big goals this year. With Jeremy helping significantly on writing the reviews data and Vitalii working on editing, I have more time to get on planes and go do field reports. They're unique and fun!

Editing & Storytelling Improvements & Goals

Related to this, we're also making improvements to our storytelling. It's taken me years to get over myself and realize that video, as a visual medium, works differently than written articles (which is where I started my career). I'm learning that we can tell stories in a more interesting, efficient way with good video while conveying the same point as writing-heavy videos. For these creative videos, like the field reports and factory tours, we can do less talking and more showing. We weren't able to do that as well before because Andrew and I hadn't really sat down to analyze videos from outside our industry, but we've spent a lot of time doing that lately and have already been deploying higher effort in video clips/edits to cut down on the word count and length, but also keep the story engaging.

You saw this in our Kingpin lab tour, where we did a cool 2-minute intro/profile for Vince to set the stage. 

Testing & Reviews

On the testing and reviews side, not much is changing. We're improving our processes, so new SOPs mostly that allow me to offload some testing from me to Mike, and allow Patrick to offload some of his testing to me or Mike. We're also working on integrating transient response testing into the majority of our GPU reviews. You've seen it in flagship reviews -- the 4090 and 7900 XTX -- but until this week, we haven't had the staff capacity to add it to every GPU review. Stone has been teaching Mike how to do transient response testing, which means we now have two team members capable of contributing to these benchmarks (in case one is slammed with other stuff).

That's been exciting, but we've also added new equipment (like the thermal camera) that got immediate and effective use on the cable testing. I'm excited to deploy that more in other reviews, like for flimsy or poor quality power cables you might find on Amazon.

GN Extras

You might have noticed that we're also expanding our public-facing GN Extras content (finally). I've really wanted to do this for a while. It gives some behind-the-scenes videos in between projects. It allows you to see more members of the team, our thought process, where each person shines, and how we solve problems that we don't talk about publicly (anything from facilities challenges at the office to technical challenges in the lab).

I have content scheduled for Extras into the next 4 weeks already and featuring a few team members, so we're excited about that. Some of that is public-facing, some of it is Patreon-only.

The point though is that we get to share more of our processes and how we do things. I really like the Extras videos -- they feel like GN videos from 7 years ago (when it was just me and Andrew at the house). We don't need to worry about all the 'business' metrics of hitting retention targets, view targets, etc., and can just do whatever the hell we want. You may have to check it manually more often since it's less likely that YT will directly serve the content, but it'll be worth it if you like our stuff!

Things We've Learned

We've recently staffed-up on the editing side and, now that we're past the training period and have gotten Vitalii up-to-speed on editing and filming at GN, we're really cranking through stuff. Andrew, who's been working with me for about a decade now, has really appreciated having another creative editor on the team. Some behind-the-scenes stuff: We basically have two types of editing we do. Internally, we refer to them as "technical" editing and "creative" editing. Technical editing would be the skillset used for highlighting charts, getting graphics on-screen accurately portraying product specifications, and working on dense reviews. Creative editing is more used for the reporting feature pieces (Artesian Builds) or content that is stylistically unbound (like the Disappointment Build).

Over the years, we've learned that these two types of edits require a different mindset or headspace. Because most of our stuff can be moved around within a rough time window (the "it's done when it's done" approach), aside from major reviews on a tight deadline, we allow some flexibility daily for the editors to tell me what they feel like working on. Most the time, we can be flexible -- we can't if there's a review looming tomorrow, but if someone comes in and says "I need something linear to stay focused today" or "I have some really cool shot ideas for this video," we can decide to work on content most appropriate for the energy. Creativity can't just be toggled, so if someone is feeling really creative, we can shuffle the technical work to someone else (normally me or Mike) while Andrew or Vitalii work on executing creative ideas.

Anyway, the point is that we've been so buried in technical editing for so long that our creative ideas always get sidelined just to burn through the reviews as fast as possible. Now that we've done cross-training internally and have most people capable of editing in a pinch, we can rotate the workload better. It's also been super cool because now everyone, even if their job isn't "editing," has a better understanding of what the editors do. That's helped a lot because it allows better content prep, commenting, and asset generation by the writers. We've been trying to do more 'cross-training' exercises. It's been a big hit -- it helps everyone learn constantly and keeps the work fresh.

Thank you for your support, everyone! Your Patreon contributions, especially while we were unable to post here for a while due to staff limitations, are what allow us to pay for all our own travel and operate independently, buy new equipment, buy prebuilts, and increase employee benefits. Thank you!

- Steve