Archive for the ‘script frenzy’ Category

community-powered everything

Monday, November 24th, 2008

I write this from an empty bar named “The Muddy Charles” on the MIT campus. Serving pitchers of Bud and Sam has been my Monday afternoon routine for months now. Today is the first time I’ve had the bar all to myself.

It usually bustles with the likes of the 3 Peters: PB, PC, and P… something. There’s another guy who downs a pitcher while doing the Boston Globe crossword puzzle. Some do construction jobs on campus, others are MIT staff, and there is at least one emeritus professor, an old lovable man named Bernie who teaches astrophysics.

I like it here. It’s one of just a few hubs in the MIT community. Hubs are important to have, no matter what community you belong to, and if you’re somewhat of a binge networker like me, you try to infiltrate the leadership. It’s why I couldn’t just patronize this cozy little campus pub; I had to be a bartender! And as expected, the networking is great. Coincidentally, this picture of me in Variety magazine was taken at the Muddy. The fireplace in the background keeps us warm when it’s 30 degrees out.

Anyway, let me bring this back to Scripped. I set up a profile for Scripped in the VenCorps community, a new “community-powered capital” platform set up by a big-time venture capital company. Since they’re still in alpha, I can’t provide any links, but suffice to say we managed to get in pretty well with these folks too. Just today it was announced that Scripped took 3rd place in a “showdown” against 9 other other startups who made it into the finals. We’re very happy with that.

The irony of this is, of course, that Scripped is still a closed platform. We are aware of that and can’t wait to watch the networking that you’ll do when we blow the lid off this thing. Rest assured we’ll make sure it’s safe to do so and all the legalese is done properly. It’s mostly script and idea protection that is drawing the process out, but we’ll get there.

In the meantime, keep on writing…

Ryan

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Posted in Scripped, business model, entrepreneurship, launch, ryan, script frenzy | 7 Comments »

scripped frenzy - epilogue and confession

Thursday, May 1st, 2008

To my loyal readers: I am sorry. I let you down. I, like many before me, did not complete the Frenzy. I had a vision, I had an idea, and I let the idea sit, then fester, and then dissolve. And now it is May.

I blame it on my schooling. MIT and Harvard, while probably not any harder than other programs once you’re in, still do a good job of lathering it on from time to time. We also had a huge month for Scripped. Lots of documents to be written, people to contact, and planes to catch. Sunil and Zak would not have been pleased if I didn’t put 100% into our latest round of document edits. Fortunately, we have some big news to show for it (just stay tuned… :0)

But I digress. The point of the Frenzy, I’m well aware, is to let all matters of the other 11 months outside of April go the wayside. I understand that, but like so many things, it is easier said than done! Instead, I will make it my own personal mission to do a great screenplay this summer, when the 3 of us Scripped founders go full-time at the same time for the first time ever. I’ll have 3 months to do it. That should work better.

To those of you who finished, I salute you! Congratulations for completing your first (or thereabouts) screenplay, and thank you for using Scripped. We are honored to serve, and please believe we sacrificed our own participation to make sure that your experience was the best it could be.

Minus that little glitch on April 1, I believe we have delivered. As you go forward in your writing careers, you can count on us to continue to provide the best screenwriting experience on the Net.

And it will keep getting better! More to come…

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Posted in Scripped, ryan, script frenzy | 8 Comments »

scripped frenzy - prologue #2

Monday, March 31st, 2008

Sorry for the delay, folks. Turns out you can’t blog from China! I don’t know how they do it, but the Party knows which are blogging websites and which are not, and from inside the country my browser cannot find Wordpress. God bless America.

Fortunately, China has other things going for it, like cheap food, cheap taxis, some great universities, and very cheap beer. In fact, I even had two cans of Tsingtao on the plane ride back to the homeland so I could sleep better. And believe me, sleep I did. China is also in the middle of an incredible infrastructure boom. This is no 3rd world country; it has all the fixings of a major metropolis. There’s a maglev in Shanghai and 8-lane streets throughout Beijing. The internet is slow and censored but it is certainly available, and often is free at cafes. The people, from my limited perspective, are friendly and happy. But then again, I mostly saw and interacted with the business class. That’s less than 1% of China.

But, according to the project I worked on as part of MIT’s China Lab, there are plenty of writers in China! A website, run by ChineseAll, gets 50 million uniques each month and has content driven by real Chinese authors. It’s almost like a Scripped for novels, which is why I was so enthusiastic about working on this project. This is a model that works, and in China they’re already ahead of us, 50 million users strong. This was the best spring break ever.

Unfortunately, it meant I didn’t get my outline done, but I have a bit more inspiration and real-life experience than I left with, and that should count for something. I also read half of William Goldman’s book, Adventure’s in the Screen Trade, which I thought was marvelous. Then the time change caught up with me and I fell asleep. Still, I feel invigorated and excited to do this Script Frenzy.

I’ll  do my outline today in entrepreneurship class. The writing starts tomorrow!

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Posted in competitions, ryan, script frenzy | 8 Comments »

scripped frenzy - prologue #1

Wednesday, March 5th, 2008

Well, here we go. Scripped is on its way, and it certainly keeps us busy. I also notice from our analytics that people are actually reading this blog. I guess that means we need to be careful about what goes up here. Bummer.

There is a lot I wish I could write. We’re being compared to certain other companies you might also know about. But competition is good. It means there is a market for free online screenwriting applications. Surprise! People like free stuff! It becomes a competition, I suppose, for the best writing community and/or embedded writing tool. That’s the main difference between us and the other guys. But I don’t want to (or simply can’t) dwell on that here. Instead, I’ll write about a another kind of competition: Script Frenzy.

I was on a bus between Boston and New York City last year with an old friend from Berkeley, telling him about the nascent form of Scripped. He thought it was cool and wondered how we would get users. “Hey,” he said. “Why don’t you run a competition for scripts, just like NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month?”

“Hmm,” I replied. “That’s interesting.” And I put my headphones back on.

But the idea stuck, and I visited the NaNoWriMo website and discovered the Office of Letters and Light. Then, to my surprise and near-dismay, I found it, the actual embodiment of the idea from the bus: Script Frenzy. Shoot, I thought, they took our idea. Then I remembered something I learned back in elementary school: If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. So I joined their email list.

The first Script Frenzy happened in June 2007. It was awesome. I didn’t participate, but I still thought it was awesome. I liked receiving their emails as I sat in a garage in Los Angeles, scheming up Scripped. When they asked for donations, I said hello, and tacked another $50 onto my student debt. To my delight, they wrote back.

Thus began a very friendly relationship with the founders and organizers of both the novel writing and screenplay contests. With the Office of Letters and Light located just across the San Francisco bay from where I grew up, it was easy to meet in person. I was taken immediately by their passion and dedication and hoped Scripped might be able to contribute in some way. Since we offer Scripped Writer for free and do not charge for PDF export, it seemed natural that they might suggest our website to their new writers.

We are also thrilled to promote Script Frenzy to everyone in the Scripped community. In fact, I’m so excited, I will also blog about my first Frenzy experience. Write a full script in the month of April? No problem!

All in a day’s work.

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Posted in entrepreneurship, script frenzy | 2 Comments »