It has been a pretty busy, very fruitful summer, leading in to what’s shaping up to be an exciting autumn for me. Here’s what I’ve been up to and what’s coming up next!

Web Series

B.J. Fletcher: Private Eye

Last July, Regan Latimer, the genius behind creating and making B.J. Fletcher: Private Eye, signed a development deal with Toronto based production company, Matter Of Fact Media. The announcement was covered by Tubefilter.tv and you can read the announcement on our blog.

Regan is currently working on the pilot script to be included in a package that will be shopped to broadcasters. Whilst we’re keeping our fingers crossed that it will be picked up, we’re continuing to produce content for the website and engaging in other promotional activities. Recently, Regan and the cast did a series of interviews for SistersTalk Radio and I giggled my way through them.

So far, I’ve loved working on Fletcher and, wherever the show goes during this exciting period, I’m looking forward to continuing to contribute to its success.

People often ask how I can manage to work on Fletcher when I live in London and the show is made in Toronto. This shot of a typical meeting was taken whilst we were drafting the media release announcing the development deal.

Such concentration...

2 Girls Kissing – The Web Series

You didn’t think one web series was enough, did you!?

We’re still in early days with 2GK. Like many good things, it was conceived in some moments of silliness during an ichat with (who else?) Regan Latimer. We knew we were on to a good thing when, the next morning, we were talking online whilst at our respective day jobs and we both confessed that we’d had a number of ideas for the show.

We’re still working on the concept and operationally how we’re going to produce it and make it, but I’m really looking forward to sinking my teeth into something creatively again. So watch this space…

Confessions of Indie Web Series Creators

My first article for Tubefilter News was posted last August. It’s an article that I really enjoyed putting together because it gave me the chance to connect with other web series producers that I had previously ‘met’ on Twitter. The resulting article is called Confessions of Indie Web Series Creators: Things They Wish They Knew (I’m sure you’ve already read the complete contributions to the article on my blog!).

Events

London Pride 2009

This one is a little hard to believe, but until this year the closest I’d gotten to a Pride event was shopping on Oxford Street last year and trying to find a way to cross the road whilst the parade went by.

This year, I volunteered with Amnesty International and spent the afternoon walking alongside the float, putting stickers on anyone that moved (and some who didn’t) and passing out flyers. It was pretty hot and we were exhausted by the end of it, but it was a not-too-shabby way to properly enjoy my first Pride.

With fellow Amnesty volunteer, Maite Morren

Eurout’s 1st Birthday

eurOut offers its readers the latest news about European lesbian and bisexual women in entertainment and politics in the English language. Now the biggest blog of its kind in Europe, eurOut celebrated its first birthday last weekend with its supporters and fans, and I was privileged to be able to join them in their birthday celebrations in the beautiful city of Hamburg.

Having tweeted with them pretty much on a daily basis this year, it was great (and slightly weird) to finally meet online their founder and Editor in Chief, Sandra, Entertainment Editor, Natazzz (right, leading our walking tour of Hamburg), Political Editor, Maxime68, eurGeek herself, Tedoe, and new eurOut vlogger, Zasquia.

Much chocolate was exchanged, much steak was eaten, much drinking was done responsibly (!) and many new friends were made. More pictures can be found on eurOut's website.

One of the highlights of the weekend was a concert by the amazing chicks of Greymatter, a British five-piece flown over especially to play for us.  They were absolutely incredible and I'm looking forward to catching them live in the UK.

Enjoying post-concert drinks with some of the chicks from Greymatter

I admire the talent behind eurOut immensely. It is yet another example of what can be achieved with no budget and no resources but a talented group of motivated, exciting individuals. I’m looking forward to next year!

Back to school!

Every good media professional endeavours to keep their skillset current and sharp, so, aware of the start of the upcoming school year, I started to look at training courses that I wanted to do based on requests that I get in my various projects. Completely unplanned (and definitely unintended), my schedule this autumn returns to that of my university days as I take on two modules at City University, where I first learnt HTML back in the day (image credit - City University).

I will be taking a module in Flash & ActionScript as part of the training and development that goes with my role as Online Marketing Specialist at PayPoint.net. Whilst I have a working knowledge of Flash, it’s always a blessing to be able to learn something old school, so look out on the website after Christmas for the fruits of my labour!

The second module is in PHP. I have to admit that, as my strength and passion lies more in design, I never thought that this is something I’d ever take. However, Six Revisions put out an article earlier this year arguing that designers should learn to code and, whilst I didn’t agree with all of it, I think knowing more about how your designs will be interpreted and coded can only make you a better designer.

Back in the day, I worked in the voluntary sector and, to this day, I still get a lot of requests asking for advice on ‘techie things’ from voluntary sector organisations with which I’m still in touch, or that got my email address from someone… Anyhow, I’ve recently been involved in much discussion and projects recently in the way that open source tools can help non-profit organisations. Add all that to my burgeoning interest in Wordpress and the fact that I aim to do a day of pro bono work every month, and it makes sense that I learn the nuts and bolts of how to properly set up dynamic, database driven websites using open source content management systems.

I was going to leave this module until January, but I’d like to get started on developing the 2GK website as soon as possible, and I’d like a clean schedule in January – who knows what the New Year will bring! I’m actually looking forward to being back in the classroom again. And come the New Year, my CV and portfolio will be in such amazing shape.

So, busy summer - sooooo looking forward to the rest of the year.  Have a great autumn!