by Kim Choe | Jun 17, 2015 | CUNY 2015, Media, New York, New Zealand
On Sunday I was welcomed back to Auckland by angry grey skies, a howling wind, and “winter” temperatures that would have seemed positively tropical just three months ago. It’s great to be home. No more living out of a suitcase, cooking in a kitchen the size of a closet, or enduring the twice-daily ritual of forcing myself into uncomfortable proximity with total strangers on the subway. My neighbourhood here is impossibly tranquil, save for my dog’s occasional protestations at innocent passers-by. I miss New York terribly though. Its intensity and hustle are hugely motivating. It wills you to keep moving, keep achieving, keep discovering. I’m afraid of losing that momentum, but the change of pace offers the perfect opportunity to reflect on what I learned there. If you have an idea, build it. Two months ago (although it seems like yesterday) I wrote about the process of launching Kitchen Chapters. It had felt like a never-ending battle to get all the different elements in line before putting it out to the world, but forcing myself to do so before it was perfect turned out to be the best thing for it. Once the site was live, the deadlines for story production fell into place and I began to streamline my workflow. I even managed to find time to send out a weekly newsletter, which was well received and did wonders for directing people to the site. Having a living product gave me so much more confidence in my idea. I was showing the site to as many people as I could, getting valuable feedback and a self-populating stream of...
by Kim Choe | Apr 13, 2015 | CUNY 2015, Media, New York
“Better 60% done than 100% ready.” My classmate Sneha can frequently be heard uttering this (or the rather more piratical alternative, “F**k it, ship it”) on a Monday evening over coffee and what may just be New York’s best cookies. A small group of my Tow-Knight classmates and I have a regular catch-up at this time where we brainstorm, problem-solve, and keep each other on-track to meet our project goals. There’s also a fair amount of irrelevant discussion about politics and puppies but hey, what would life be without those. This gentle peer pressure was instrumental in helping me launch Kitchen Chapters last week. At this point it’s not much more than a very shiny-looking blog, but the main thing is that because it’s live, I can stop talking in hypotheticals and start getting meaningful feedback, building an audience, and working on the business strategy in earnest. The process went something like this, although it is important to note that most of these steps were happening simultaneously: Begin producing content. Organising, researching and conducting interviews, then writing and editing. Set up a basic site. I chose a free WordPress theme that loosely fit my desired aesthetic without needing extensive customization, which is an unnecessary cost at this stage. Start building an audience. I began to increase activity on my Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest accounts: posting interesting links, participating in live chats. I discovered how time-consuming it is to manage multiple accounts, each of which has a different purpose. Adding to the challenge is the fact that my audience is split between New York and New Zealand, giving me an...
by Kim Choe | Mar 26, 2015 | Media
At the Daily News Innovation Lab, representatives from The New York Times, Mashable, Yahoo! and The Intercept shared a number of useful insights into how each of their four distinct organizations negotiates the murky-yet-essential waters of social media and algorithms.
by Kim Choe | Mar 7, 2015 | CUNY 2015, Media, New York
Does time move faster in New York City? It certainly feels that way. February vanished in a blur of classes, guest speakers and site visits, and in just two weeks we’ll be halfway through the Tow-Knight program at CUNY. I only wish the weather would catch up… For me, February was about seeking out my potential users and finding out more about their behaviours: what media they consume, where they go to look for it, why they like some things and not others. In short, developing empathy that would help me identify opportunities in the market and problems I could solve. Jeff Jarvis is a great proponent of treating anyone and everyone as a user ripe for surveying. In this city of more than 8 million people, I wasn’t short of potential interview candidates. The problem, of course, is that New Yorkers are perpetually in a hurry. When they do find rare moments of peace, they certainly don’t feel like talking to a stranger with a funny accent who wants to ask probing questions about their reading habits. I abandoned that strategy after dismal failures on the A train and then at Penn Station. Ok, so perhaps places of transit weren’t the wisest choice. But Mother Nature made sure there was nary a soul in any public place of leisure. Success came with the friendly Kiwis I met at an event, and when I distributed an online survey through my personal networks. I have a clearer idea of how I can create something meaningful, and am now in the process of creating what is referred to in the startup...
by Kim Choe | Feb 24, 2015 | New York
Last week had started so promisingly: on Tuesday I wandered past the Richard Rogers Theatre on my way home and popped my name into the If/Then lottery. Ninety minutes later, I was in the second row watching Idina Menzel belting her lungs out. It was exhilarating, dream-come-true, only-in-New-York kind of stuff. But I arrived home to find things were less Broadway, more Frozen. My bathroom had no water and the apartment had lost central heating. I used my roommate’s shower and huddled a little deeper under the duvet that night, hoping things would be fixed the next day. Unfortunately, the heating and plumbing issues were being caused by a frozen pipe, courtesy of New York’s unseasonably cold weather. A temporary fix had been applied to the shower, which required leaving it running at all times to stop it freezing again, but we were told nothing more could be done until the pipes unfroze. One glance at the long-range forecast told me that wouldn’t be any time soon. I was beginning to understand how Anna felt when Elsa told her she couldn’t defrost Arendelle. I set about trying to figure out how to run two small fan heaters in my room at once without tripping the extremely sensitive fuse. But no sooner had I managed that, than there was an ominous whoosh of running water from the corner of my bedroom. The previously frozen pipe had now given up completely and was rapidly leaking out of the wall heater. And so it transpired that I spent Thursday night being spooned by my classmate’s cat, and Friday evening dragging my belongings...
by Kim Choe | Feb 11, 2015 | CUNY 2015, Media
Following on from my newfound fascination with podcasts (the number I have on rotation has doubled since my last post), I’m excited to present one of our very own! Produced by my classmate Kristen Clark, it will allow you to follow the 2015 cohort’s semester at the Tow-Knight Center. Spot the Kiwi accent in the first episode: And in the second episode, our professor Jeff Jarvis explains why he thinks Gutenberg (yes, he of 15th Century printing press fame) is to blame for the mess that mass media is currently in. You can subscribe to the podcast here. We’d love to hear your feedback – get in...
