Hey Dani,
As I
freely confessed long ago,
I don't know the porn film business... So I don't know any implied business advice to you is worth very much. But the Internet makes it possible for people to discover and explore so many things previously inaccessible! Like most men, I've often been a porn consumer during my post-pubescent years. Thus it is a real temptation to pull back the curtain, so to speak, and examine the machinery which has made the production of porn operate, even if I don't have the pecuniary interest in the industry which you do.
Recently, I
asked you
What education did you have for your current vocation?, partly as a prologue to pointing you at some educational material. This week, I was surprised and delighted to discover how much interesting material the
AVN wesbite publishes - not just rehashed press releases, as I had cynically expected, but lots of in-depth stuff as well. I hope you have been reading their news feed for a long time, but if not, I would encourage you to start doing so.
One AVN item which caugt my eye was
Inaugural Camming Con Moves Dates to July 31-August 3 which alleges that it
is the first trade show of its kind. I have
no idea if the cost of going to this event would prove worthwhile to you, but I thought you deserved a heads up anyway, giving the professional plans you told us about. There is no little irony in having a
physical convention to address the supposed needs of an industry based on
virtual meetings, but the announced secondary goal of the event is to let fans and models meet IRL.
Apropos of e-space vs meatspace, a few months ago I had naively
lamented By the time your generation reaches middle age and starts to control things, I'm sure we'll live in a thoroughly virtualized world where physical location won't count for much in your business.. But for now, I'm not sanguine the porn kingpins socialize via LinkedIn or cast via Skype. But the AVN article
Crowdsourcing Column: Mainstream vs. Adult - How different are they, really? implies my anxieties were misplaced. It quotes Colin of TranslationsXXX so:
In mainstream almost everyone wants to do business face to face or over the telephone, while in adult email, Skype and ICQ are often preferred.
Again, let me say I am delighted with your recent initial foray into CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) via webcam software. I think such stuff can only grow in importance throughout the entertainment field as the years pass - which is the premise of that
EnterTech certificate at ASU I have mentioned more than once. And in any case, your web site upkeep has already kept your finger at least a little in the technology pie for some years now. So I hope you will also pay no little attention to the AVN
Technology and Webmaster news feed.
Please take note of the remarkable range of world-class
Free and Open-Source Software available to you for the asking. I'm NOT talking about pirated commercial software, an analog to something that plagues your industry, but something ENTIRELY DIFFERENT. For a generation now, this category of software has been designed, debugged and supported by volunteer cooperatives spanning the globe and linked via the Internet. Their motive has been a combination of unmet personal needs, ego, professional reputation building and philanthropy. They have produced remarkable tools, the equals, or sometimes, superiors of similar commercial for-profit software. Want an example? The Linux operating system, which all of Google's millions of search engine computers have always run since the day the company was founded. Google's Android, which as likely as not, runs on your smartphone or tablet, is in fact a Google derivative of Linux. It is free to all takers, as long as they don't use the name in producing products based on it.
I hope the day never comes that you still want to star in porn but cannot. But if next time (hopefully NEVER) that you "total" your car, your pretty face also becomes a permanent, irretrievable total loss, it would be good to know that you have a set of well-practiced non-trivial skills useful to a wide range of industries.