Last week, we posted a quick report on the10th Annual YES Artists’ Conference: Business Skills for Creative Souls from freelance writer, editor and proofreader Jacqueline Snider.
In this post, Jacqueline gives more detail on the first of the ideas and the thoughts and inspirations she came away from the conference with:
What are you searching for?
During the first panel of the conference, independent documentary filmmaker Mila Aung-Thwin from EyeSteelFilm* said that you shouldn’t just give people what they want but instead remember what it is that you’re searching for.
That came from when EyeSteelFilm had to do a presentation pitch for a large prize, a really significant amount in funding. To do this, they had to get up in front of the judges on a panel and explain why they felt that they deserved to be awarded the prize.
In order to do that, they had to really know who they were and what they wanted to do.
They spent two days going over what they were doing, why they were doing it and what they were doing it for. When it came time to present, it was clear that some of the other contestants for the prize weren’t so clear on what they wanted to do.
That’s not to say they didn’t have good, even great ideas. But they weren’t prepared. They hadn’t taken the time to set out what they were really about, where they were going and what it was they wanted to do.
Whether you’re going for funding, or pitching for a job, or even just talking with somebody about what you do – when the ‘What is it that you do?’ question is asked, you don’t say ‘Well… let me see…’
You really should know the answer to those kinds of questions. There should be that good, strong focus on who you are, what you are doing and where you are going.
And this is something that I think a lot of freelancers don’t do enough of. We all need to remember that as we go through life, work changes and life changes and because of that, it’s important that you re-evaluate your goals regularly.
* EyeSteelFilm’s award winning Last Train Home is an amazing film – you should definitely go and see it! – Dan
June 23, 2010
[...] for several reasons I needed to give my profile a spruce up – one of the reasons is explained in yesterday’s post with Jacqueline Snider: I wrote the content a while ago, when I lived somewhere else and was doing [...]