STUDIO.COOP

Hello summer!

Time has come for another post! I’m sure some of you are eager to know what is exactly happening, all the facebook posts and the emails you have been getting from me. We will get there, don’t worry. There is some time in between that I want to fill.

As all of you know this year started in Ecuador and I had a blast, much better than the last time, it felt like a new experience in a way. Many of my childhood friends came back during our “winter” and we all managed to strengthen old friendships. It’s so cool to see how everyone is finding their own way to walk on, it is inspiring.

Once my parents got healthy again we started traveling. We went to Costa Rica and Medellin and it was great being with them! I really was afraid they wouldn’t recover to be the same travel junkies they have always been and I can’t be happier to have though wrong. They are rocking life as they always have!

A very special friend of mine from Germany came to visit me for a while and I had the pleasure to show her around a lot of special places where I hold sentimental value. We had an awesome time traveling together in Ecuador and created a really wonderful bond. I can’t wait to see her back again in Germany!

Times were great as was work; I got really deep into Google Apps Script, a necessary evil for us in order to get as many things possible done in the shortest time, building on top of Google apps. I had to discipline myself, as it is not easy at first to get work done when one is working alone remotely... I eventually got used to it and was already prepared for what was about to come...

my workplace in Guayaquil with all my friends motivating me in the background

Mid May came in very fast and it was time to continue my adventure, this time it is LA. I came earlier than expected and had some time to wait until Marcus LeVere (my Co-Founder) and Hanna came in. Hanna Radek came from Germany to help us out setting up Madding Crowd! (Kind of like our first short term employee). Marcus picked us up and showed us what would be our home and office for the next three months. It is a wonderful apartment in Brentwood with a beautiful view to the Santa Monica Mountains! We are all flatmates now, Marcus, Sara (Marcus’ wife), Hanna and me.

And I gotta say… LA is pretty awesome! The weather never seems to disappoint us and the amount of sun… It is fantastic. We are all riding our bicycles everywhere and meeting a lot of awesome people in the industry. The first week we got to grill with Don Parker, founder of Shotgun and a lot of really cool Pixomondo and industry people we have met on all different places. Every week that passes we get to network and know more and more really friendly folks.

We also did a short road trip up north with Hanna to San Francisco! What an epic city… I fell in love with it, at the point where I would someday really like to live up there…

Back on work matters, we are now three people working full time at Madding Crowd and it has evolved. We are now becoming a Cooperative Company! Apart from offering a fair profit-share to the people in our industry, we were always thinking about democratizing decisions at a corporate level. We don’t believe the future should remain only in our hands, the crowd will always be smarter and we want them to take their own decisions. The nature of a cooperative just made sense and people seem to understand right away what we are up to as soon as they even read the new name.

Madding Crowd has evolved to studio.coop!

Of course Madding Crowd is held deep within us and it will always remain as our beloved codename. The first ones that supported us are our Madding Crowd and we would love to grant them special privileges in the future. Thanks for believing in us guys and keeping us motivated with comments and likes on facebook. If you are interested on still being part of our dear Madding Crowd, join here!

our workplace

our awesome team

Our view from our workplace/home

I want to also invite you to take a look at our first Pitch! A short film I am developing called Love Experiments that is about our endless quest to find the love of our life. Please check out the Pitch at studio.coop, leave us comments (you have to join studio.coop to be able to comment), follow the pitch and if you can, enrol!

Also join us at the private Google+ Community of Love Experiments if you want to have an insider’s look at its development!

We will be having a “Birds of a Feather” event at Siggraph about studio.coop which we are planning to even live-stream for everyone that can’t be there. Be sure to follow us on Facebook, Google+ or LinkedIn in order to keep updated. We can’t wait to show the world what we are up to, and only you guys can help make it possible!

Challenging times are coming as the first production evolves and new pitches start to emerge, the next post will be after Siggraph, stay tuned!

Cheers from sunny California,


santy.