We were extremely thrilled to be a part of Idea Camp – Washington, DC last weekend. Anytime there’s an opportunity to share a roster with the likes of charity:water, The ONE Campaign, International Justice Mission, Global Need, InvisiblePeople.tv and a slew of other incredible organizations – we’re there! The event was

The full event and main sessions are being processed for the web and will be posting as part of their Vimeo profile. Big THANKS to Daniel “DK” & Sadie Kim (the crown she made me was a big hit, plus they may have the cutest kid ever!), Dawn Carter, and Sam Song for their work behind the scenes to pull it all together. Also MASSIVE thanks to Charles Lee for his oversight to the entire project and he banks in relationship capital in ways we haven’t dreamed of yet.

As for the workshop, I was fortunate to be the facilitator of a session called “Augmenting Your Story with Video” – here’s what we talked about:

There was a great mix of people who were interested in film, organizations that were testing the waters with film/video and then there was the guys from Chronicle Project. Everyone who was in the room already understood that film/video was essential to their voice being heard in today’s world. Fortunately for me there were a truck load of videos shown at the main session including Deidox | Lindsay and charity:water’s latest campaign for September Birthday’s.

The best part was that we talked about this short at great length. It had launched just a few days before ICDC and I was so impressed by it that I found out who made it (Upstream Visual from Austin, TX) and sent them an email congratulating them on such great work. It captured a great balance of story (info), great visuals (shots) and left me wanting to take action (connection).

Other thoughts/issues/solutions that came out of the session:

• Be able to tell me your goal/what you do in a sentence. (Stop Modern Day Slavery, Give Clean Water to the World) If you can’t tell someone don’t expect your promo to fix that.
• Everyone has a friend who has a camera – that doesn’t make them storytellers. You get what you pay for.
• Do research on the company you’re hiring – check their previous projects. The work that they’ve done is likely to be the work that they’d continue to do. Make sure you like the look and the feel of it.
• Animation = crazy cash. It’s gorgeous but it’s time intensive.
• HD is a must

What have you seen lately that you’ve liked? What do you think of charity:water’s latest campaign video?