Side Projects & Stories

TrailSupporter.com is my most civic-minded side project—a voter guide I built to advocate for more trails and better trail access in Steamboat Springs. It tracks where each city council member stands on using 2A funds to build out the Mad Rabbit trails, so residents know exactly how their representatives voted when ballots arrive.

We traveled to the Spanish Virgin Islands in April 2017, and I brought my DJI drone along for a spin. In light of Puerto Rico's recent misfortune, I wanted to show people how beautiful sailing in SVI is, so I pulled together a short video that highlights some of the amazing scenery the island has to offer, hopefully it will entice you to visit.

I also posted a story about our experience sailing there, I tried to keep it from being just another advertisement and instead focussed on providing insights that will help future charters plan a successful adventure in SVI.

My final Stallion Fund video was made easy thanks to a strategy I picked up from the movie studios, I overshot the prior year, recording two years worth of content the prior year, so all I had to do was capture new b-roll footage, and edit the new story line.

I think I have one more Stallion fund video in me; it'll be a completely different format than all those up to here.

The 3rd installment of the Stallion Fund fundraiser video. While I've become pretty proficient with the process of creating these videos, it still amazes how hard it is to remember everything, like turning on both mics.

I recorded two videos worth of interviews, making the next year's video easier. That being said, I had to think two two story lines and craft interview questions up front for both. Definitely made for a longer interview day.

For my 2nd installment of the Steele Elementary Fundraiser video, I once again partnered up with Erica Spoor and Loren Rigney. They drafted the questions and conducted the interviews. If you've haven't participated in many interviews before, seeing an experienced interviewer at work is pure magic. The art of 'subtly suggesting' to an interviewee how to rephrase their responses, without making them get even more nervous on screen.

This was the first year I created a video that was used during Steele Elementary's annual fund raiser. My only prior experience was hiring Snowy Peak media to do videos for my team at Oracle; so this was quite a learning experience, and gave me a huge appreciation for how much goes into making a great video, especially one that tells a compelling story. I had excellent help from Erica Spoor who helped draft the interview questions and conduct the interviews.

This was one of those scratch your own itch projects, the video says it all "the app turns your read-it-later-list into a listen-to-it-later-list".

I partnered with by brother Brian Kottcamp on this project. It didn't last long, not only were we outpaced by competitors, but the Pocket app itself, integrated this functionality into their product. I guess we at least got validation that there was a market for this ... just not a business. You can read a short portmortem here.