So, I actually wasn’t tracking this but was curious, and when I checked the “about” tab on my channel, I realized that today is the 1 year anniversary of my channel. That’s kindof cool! So, since I’m due for a post here (I try to post once a week), I thought I’d reflect on the channel’s first year.

• We’ve learned a lot about production! Oh, there’s work to do, but we started out holding a phone by hand, zooming in and out when wanting closeups of components and features, filming the screen instead of capturing it, not having any lighting, using the phone’s microphone, editing in Windows Video Editor, and having zero b-roll.
  • There’s still A LOT of work to do in the future. Better camera, perfecting lighting adjustment, softer transitions between jump cuts and b-roll, fancier video effects, and having a proper echo-free studio, and learning about color adjustment and white balance.
  • And, oh my, the early videos were BAD. My Gotek video got picked up by the algorithm and continues to get shown alot. Eek! Not sure I want that to be the first video that people see on my channel!!
• We’ve made A LOT of new friends, both in the form of peers and subscribers
  • This is honestly the best part. The retro community is great. My subscribers and peers are great! There are cheerleaders everywhere as well. So much fun!
• We’ve learned and discovered new things and documented old things
  • For all of the million Google searches I have done in the past, I have always wanted to give back, at least a little. And now we have tutorials in the form of videos and procedures that we have given to the community.
  • We have also tried things that have not been attempted before, which has been a lot of fun.

In any event, it has been a great first year. Channel growth is slow but steady, and the “hashtag” events have been very helpful for getting videos in front of new subscribers (especially #DOScember).

My personal life keeps me very busy, but I feel there will always be time to continue to produce the content you have seen on RetroTech Chris. As we start to leave the COVID-19 pandemic, I expect that we will see a dropoff on folks making YouTube content. My plan is to continue on, so expect to see more content over the next year!