I've been meaning to update you (yes, you!) on all of my current projects, as there are many and I haven't been the best at keeping everyone in the loop here. The reason I know this is because on an almost daily basis I get emails and tweets from people of seemingly normal intelligence who don't know where I'm working, what I'm up to, or even how to find me online. I'm not going to go into why I think that's a little weird, since I'm the first result in a Google search for "Sarah Lane", "Sara Lane", "Sar Lane", "Shara Lane", and my personal favorite "Sarah Lame", to name a few. Instead, I'll just list my projects here (in order of inception because I love them all equally).
This Week in FUN
In December 2008, my friend Martin Sargent and I, both unemployed, had a lot of free time on our hands and decided to create a weekly show called "This Week in FUN" (AKA "TWiF") on the TWiT netcast network. It started out as a little experiment when our friend Leo went to France for a couple weeks and left us his facility and resources. Leo had recently given me an intensive Tricaster/mixer/etc. lesson, so I felt comfortable running the technical side of things. Since the TWiT network is so heavy on technical content, we thought a talk radio-style show about silly internet stories might be a fun diversion for TWiT's legions of fans. It was also nothing more than a fancy live stream... miss the stream, miss the show. No downloadable/subscribable anything.
Turns out, people really seemed to enjoy TWiF and we quickly realized that the live stream was great, but too limiting for many folks' schedules. Around episode 12, Leo and his team made TWiF an official TWiT netcast, meaning that along with our weekly live stream, we also started offering on-demand audio versions of the show.
We just taped our 20th episode of TWiF, and I'm really proud of the progress we've made. What started out as a bit of a joke has turned into a really fun project with a ton of really cool, dedicated fans who interact with us all over the internet. Coming soon: video downloads.
net@night
In late January, net@night co-host Amber McArthur asked me to fill in for her on the show during her impending maternity leave, which I was thrilled to do since I 1) wasn't working full-time yet and 2) already loved the show, which centered around everything internet-related (my THANG). I co-hosted four episodes with Leo and had a ton of fun. Once Amber was ready to come back, she and Leo asked me to remain on net@night as a regular contributor and I was elated to be a permanent part of the team. Now, you can watch me live every week talking about my favorite new internet toy, or listen at your leisure!
Current
In mid-February, I joined the team at Current full-time as an online producer in the news department. The Current management was awesomely accommodating of my outside projects and even allowed me to start/leave early on Fridays to give me time to keep hosting TWiF (an hour's drive away from San Francisco in Petaluma, CA). Meanwhile, in my new position at Current I was enjoying learning a whole 'nother level of web metrics I had never really focused on in all of my past TV/production work. I also was making new friends! Really cool ones!
In early May, I was offered (and accepted!) the opportunity to move into an ideal role as the sole manager of Current.com's tech channel, which had amazing potential but had been sorely neglected in the past without anyone at the helm full-time. The tech channel is an utterly perfect fit for a tech news/app/service/gadget junkie like me and I'm pumped to make it an amazing destination for tech stories, videos, tutorials, conversation, and community. If you haven't poked around on current.com/tech and gotten familiar with it yet, please do. Don't hesitate to give me your honest feedback on what you like about it and what you want to see changed or added, because I'm not interested in making Current Tech a super place for me, I'm interested in making it a super place for as many people as possible. I also have some rather lofty, ambitious goals for the channel that both frighten and excite me, but also seem like the right next steps. As soon as I can tell you about them, I will. Video is involved. :)
If you're still reading this, you must really be interested in my professional life and for that I thank you a thousand times! I'm not going to actually write out "thank you" 1000 times here, but rest assured I'm saying it in my head. Perhaps even in Spanish. Now you're really truly up to speed.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
