Stundziaite - VAS Focus On: Crowd-funding

Presentation Reflection

I attended the event VAS Focus On: Crowd-funding. The presentation was about how to gather up money, from friends and strangers, in order to be able to fund your art, but mostly films. The presenters were two funny and openly lesbian women. I feel like their personalities had a bigger impact on my when compared to the information they were talking about. I personally do not use any social media besides Reddit, which is not considered by all to be social media. So this presentation which talked tons of social media was very foreign to me. I honestly did not enjoy the presentation and I did not take anything useful away from it. I felt like the presenters were trying to sell the social media’s they used to me. I would have liked to hear more on how they crowd-funded themselves and maybe more useful things besides just the basics of how to use the specific social medias they liked.

In the description for the event, which that they passed out before the presentation started, claimed that the presenters would help “get you started, [tell you] who to follow, and how you can craft your own career using social media,” but I did not feel like they clearly covered those. The topics they did present where more like how to act on social media and what social media the presenters like the most, which I felt was very silly of them to have to present. I feel like in any social situation, if it’s in real life or online, you have to behave and control what you say to a certain extent. I felt it very unnecessary for them to cover that.

I also felt like they only focused on film majors and cinematographers, while they clearly established that there were other majors in the audience. I personally don’t see a use in crowd-funding and a social media network for myself right now. I feel like by the time I would need those skills of how to manage social media, things could shift and new programs can become more popular. The World Wide Web is a scary, forever changing place that I feel will have new ideas and opportunities by the time I need them, considering I’m a freshman.