Hey everyone, welcome to another edition of Homeroom Announcements, my Friday podcast type video where I give thoughts and updates about the Skooled Zone channel.

I have some pretty cool news for you today. I just graduated from YouTube's Creator Academy bootcamp. For those who have never heard of it, it's a series of courses YouTubers can attend at the various YouTube Spaces around the world. I live in Los Angeles, so I attended the classes at the YouTube Space LA. Although I think they've started referring to the course as the “Build Your Channel” learning path, so that'd be what you'd want to look up if you're interested.

LA's YouTube Space is a beautiful building down near Playa Del Ray, not too far from Loyola Marymount University if live in Southern California and you're familiar with the area. Here are a few shots I took while down there. Normally, public access is restricted. Only employees of YouTube, Google, or channels with over 10,000 subscribers are allowed inside. It's basically a production facility with sound stages, post-production rooms, and the works. If you've been watching some of the bigger creators on YouTube, you've probably seen footage of the place or at least heard them talk about it.

Every couple of months, though, they open it up to new YouTubers with these learning path courses. You used to need only 100 subscribers to apply. They recently bumped it up to a 500 sub minimum which, you know, is understandable given the high demand to get in. And even then, not every one who submits an application is accepted in order to keep class sizes manageable. So of the thousands and thousands that submitted for the Summer classes, only about 50-60 were selected. And my channel was one of them. I was absolutely elated when I found out.

I wanted to go ahead and complete the course before I mentioned it in an HRA so I could give you my full report. As expected, not only did I learn a tremendous amount, but it was a lot of fun. I'll talk more about that in a sec. But if you're a content creator interested in the learning path but you live too far from any of the YouTube Spaces and can't spend a month and a half visiting LA to attend the classes, there is still hope.

My class was the last class split up over a the course of a couple months. They said they're going to start consolidating the classes into a couple of days. So if you visit LA for one these learning paths, then you can take less than a week off to do it. And if it's not feasible for you to visit LA or New York or London, or any of the other YouTube spaces around the world, then you can still glean about 80% of the information from the Creator Academy videos online and from reading the Creator Playbook. I'll leave a link for that in the description below or in the icard above.

I say 80% because about 20% of the information that wasn't covered online came up organically, you know, through questions asked or it's just a new nugget of information not yet updated online. But if I were to sum it up, I think the real value of the live courses are the connections you can make. I met some really cool people from a variety of different channels, hopefully some I'll be collaborating with in the future. Interestingly enough, there weren't a lot of gamers there. Out of 50-60 attendees, I think I counted only 2 or 3, which actually kind of surprised me.

A large portion of the attendees, interestingly enough, were employees or even interns for large studio networks, you know, basically TV channels. It seems that the Hollywood studio system, even the independent studios, have adopted the old “if you can't beat 'em, join 'em” philosophy and started sending their peeps to get formally integrated into the YouTube system.

So the trend I see in the months and years to come is that traditional media is going to start blending with YouTube if that hasn't happened already. Although up until now, it's more or less popular YouTubers making the jump over to the Hollywood side. But there were very few traditional solo creators at the classes. You know, gamers, singers, crafters, pranksters, etc.

I don't know why, but that seemed like an eerie sign to me. Either the market is already too saturated with those verticles or new content creators in those categories are thinking the market is already too saturated and they're not bothering to jump in. So I can't really tell yet whether that's good news or bad news for channels like mine. Either way, I think the competition on YouTube is getting really fierce and I hope that still bodes well for latecomers like me. I guess we'll see. The thing is that I really enjoy what I'm doing with the Skooled Zone and I think that's the most important part to building a channel. Be authentic and enjoy what you do.

All around, though, it was a good time and I'm glad I signed up for the learning path. I mean, just walking around the YouTube Space was cool in of itself. On more than one occasion, I walked right by some famous YouTubers. I know I recognized Jake from Vsauce3, iJustine, and the Fine Brothers. There were a few others I recognized too but I couldn't remember their names. They weren't part of the bootcamp, of course. They were just there using the YouTube production facilities. Unfortunately I was too shy to say hello. But at least this experience was a step in the right direction for me, so that's progress.

At the end of the last night, they gave out these little plaque-like statuettes. They said we were the first graduating class to get these and they had phased out the printed certificates. So, I felt a little privileged by that, not gonna lie. I think the certificates had your channel name on them, though. These don't. But still, it's more durable and doesn't require framing or hanging. Just gonna sit on my desk like that and look pretty.

Anyway, thanks for listening to this update. As I mentioned at the end of the Dishonored series, I'm taking next week to catch up on business stuff and gearing up for the next gaming series. I'll announce what that is and other stuff in next week's Homeroom Announcements. In the meantime, have a good weekend and I'll see you in a week with a wicked new gaming series.

LPK

Love, Peace, Knowledge.