Fri Dec 20, 2013 (milestone)

Bottlerocket - Map your passions - image 1 - student project

Dear skillshare classmates,

It's been a pleasure taking this course with you! This will be my last update before the Christmas holidays, but I wanted to leave you with a bit of the excitement I'm feeling! Yesterday around 2am, I put the finishing touches on Bottlerocket's first complete "Project Profile" for the Beautiful Lives (mapping) Project.

This project is one which I've been hard at work on for the past 5 months (groundwork since July!). As an artist and a writer, I've always yearned to reach and audience and to "do some good" in this world via my craft. I became interested in "community based" artwork as a medium for positive social change when I was an undergrad student at Duke. Since graduating in May 2012, I've been exploring what "my" art would look like under these terms. And by golly, through a LOT of trial and error, failures, false starts, coffee inflamed stress sessions and manic all nighters, I think I've finally found it.

I remember composing my artist's statement for my senior distinction piece in 2012. This is what I wrote:

"Above all, my love for art grows out of a soil that yearns for the inherent human capacity to connect with one another – to connect with other, unique, human beings."

Reflecting back, it's amazing how full circle things have come. The Beautiful Life project, sister project to my startup Bottlerocket (which is just finding its feet - we just incorporated as a Delaware C corp in December!) is precisely about this search for human connection and empathy. And the belief that the power of human empathy and connection, leading to action, equals wondrous things to our community. Our world.

Basically my goal is not only world peace, but WORLD AWESOMENESS. I don't believe this is a pipe dream, or unrealistic, or pie in the sky. I think this shared vision is possible if our world is made of passionate “engaged-at-every-level” global citizens: not only working together to make our world a better place, but inspiring and aiding each other in the process.

Beautiful Lives & Bottlerocket is on a mission to connect and enable those lives through documentation, storytelling, and mentorship (all interweaving).

Ok. That's enough of this lengthy copy (or perhaps you should consider this a letter, in which case I think you'll forgive me for my penchant into verbosity!)

Being part of this course was truly inspiring. Thank you Gary + the skillshare team for putting this course together. It was worth every penny and this is the best kind of mutually beneficial business transaction:) And to my classmates, for the comments and feedback on my project, for your stories and updates -- you are all TRULY AWESOME. Being in this community, and seeing all of the awesome things y'all are working on and funneling your passions into... well. They strengthen my resolve for my own project!

I hope to talk to you again soon. You've lovely, lovely stories. I'd love to tell them;)

All the best, and wishing everyone a fantastic holiday season,

Linda Yi

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Project Begins: Nov 04 2013

Hi there, I'm Linda. Resident Storyteller and co-founder of this little thing (which we hope to make a bigger thing!) called Bottlerocket:

Bottlerocket - Map your passions - image 2 - student project

WHO BOTTLEROCKET IS FOR:

Bottlerocket is for you. The you who wants to do what you love - and make our world better because you're doing it.

WHAT BOTTLEROCKET IS:

Bottlerocket enables and connects beautiful lives.

We’re a social, visual goal management and life mapping platform. More importantly, we’re a community of people looking to live engaged, passionate, and happy lives – and change our world to boot.

HOW DOES BOTTLEROCKET WORK?

The tool we’re working to build will allow you, our users, create Life Maps – essentially painting with a digital palette your life’s work - as it’s unfolding.

read more about us here

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Sat Nov 23, 2013

We just updated our website with new material - including some original doodle-work from me (Resident Storyteller aka Linda):

Bottlerocket - Map your passions - image 3 - student project

... which we posted across our newly (and some not-so-newly) created social media accounts!

peek at us on facebook
chirp at us on twitter
queue us up on youtube
follow our original art on instagram
reblog our featured lives on tumblr
Pin from (or at) us on pinterest

I also made my first voice-over doodlevlog from the creation of above drawing, to practice what Bottlerocket preaches: Combine what I love (drawing) with what I'm trying to do (create societal value, ahem, AWESOMENESS)

WATCH OUR VIDEO? SURE!

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Tue Nov 26, 2013

Feedback from last time asked for more concrete examples for how and what the Life mapping might look like. I've taken your feedback to heart and have been working on an example profile (still in progress!) but much more interactive than the last version.

So here it is: a Life Map!

Bottlerocket - Map your passions - image 4 - student project

(you can click on the image above or just click here to navigate to my pilot life map).

I've shared this image on our social media accounts (everything except for youtube... since there's not that much footage to be had here). I've already done a few more interviews and have many more lined up, so I hope to be creating and sharing more content of lovely people doing lovely things (and thus doing my part in promoting world awesome) very soon!

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Fri November 29, 2013

Hope everyone had a fabulous Thanksgiving. For the holidays, I put together a quick doodlevlog to share with Bottlerocket's early supporters and followers. Wanted to share it with you guys too!

Bottlerocket - Map your passions - image 5 - student project

You can click on the image above to see details of the doodle and behind the scenes footage (or just click here^^)

Here's a direct link to the Youtube Video

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Fri-Sat Dec 05-6, 2013

This week my brain has been rendered wet-noodle by about 60 hours spent in front of the computer screen. So much so I feel as if I've fallen off the bandwagon in keeping of my "jabs" for Bottlerocket. But today, I just finished putting some last touches on the Project Profile componant of the Bottlerocket Beautiful Life (passion) Mapping project:

Bottlerocket - Map your passions - image 6 - student project

(image above links to the Project Profile)

I originally shared this image on Bottlerocket's facebook, but held off on sharing it on the other platforms (especially instagram) because of the shape. (jab)

This afternoon (Friday), I redesigned a square image for a jab for Bottlerocket's instagram and tumblr (since these are the more artsy platforms and a square images are required on the former, and looks better imho on the latter). I also pinned the new design to our pinterest board. Here's my redesigned pic below:

Bottlerocket - Map your passions - image 7 - student project

I posted it on Bottlerocket's facebook (and shared it with a few groups I'm in) with the following description:

If helping Bottlerocket Beautiful Lives project grow (aka celebrating the peak awesomeness this-species-known-as-human-kind can reach) sounds like something you'd like to do, then by golly we'd LOVE to have you! Welcome to the fam, Bottlerocketeer

The most direct way you can support us is to show us some love on your various social networks! We have *great* stories in store for you! But stories have effect only when they have an audience. The bigger the Bottlerocket community, the more we can do! We’re at our very beginning so every like, every , every follow counts!

To make it easy, click here below to find our current accounts:
http://bit.ly/1bO89zI

Read more about the Beautiful Life project here:
http://bit.ly/1kfmfcq

I think this counts as my first *right hook*. I made this graphic and posted it in a way to try and direct more traffic to our main social media sites. Hopefully it goes well!

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Tue Dec 10, 2013

I received positive feedback from the last image I created, so I decided to experiment with a new "mini Life Map" series for Bottlerocket called Life Snaps. What is a Life Snap? All in good time, but first, some show and tell! This is the #lifesnap I created today:

Bottlerocket - Map your passions - image 8 - student project

If Bottlerocket Life Maps are a “deep look” into the beautiful lives around us… LifeSnaps are snapshots into these lives. For these, I'm going to try and take/create compelling and intriguing images - and pair them with a copy which is interesting and quirky.

Here's the copy for the Lifesnap above:

Glimpsed on I-95, enroute to Columbia, SC. Santa doesn't have insurance this year... but still spreading the love far and wide. Made our day. Plus he saluted us as we snapped his photo - and then vroooommed past with antlers a-fluttering. #jolly #christmas #fun #bottlerocket #lifemaps #lifesnaps

I've posted this image across all of our accounts. I'm hoping that they will all loop in and out of each other, so users who stumble across them can participate in the larger narrative and interact with each other, if they want.

Posted locations:

Bottle-rocket.co - each of these images link to the facebook gallery, since my website doesn't support commenting at the moment.

Fb album - where I hope people can browse through and comment about these stories (and share!)

twitter, tumblr, instagram - I haven't figured out how to link these accounts directly back to the website or facebook, but I think this might not be completely necessary. I'm having lots of fun with twitter because I'm starting to use it not just as a publishing platform, but a conversation platform. For example, one of my recent followers is a big reader, so I asked her for some book recommendations. She tweeted back and me, and I featured her rec's in a book recommendation tweet:

Bottlerocket - Map your passions - image 9 - student project

For tumblr, instagram, I think these two will be the most visual of Bottlerocket's platforms, and will play host to the original artwork and design that comes out of the movement.

And, last but not least, Pinterest !

I discovered/started using Pinterest's new "location pins" at last and was pleasantly surprised. Now I can map the locations of all Life Maps (or LifeSnaps ) via my board!

Bottlerocket - Map your passions - image 10 - student project

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Wed Dec 11, 2013

Posted our third LifeSnaps today:) This one is an excerpt from an interview I did 2 days ago:

Bottlerocket - Map your passions - image 11 - student project

This image went out across all our platforms, but I wanted to concentrate on instagram this time. We got three "hearts" after I posted it. I got curious and checked out the accounts of the people who gave us love, and found that one girl had some great photography chops. I ended up chatting with her a bit about photography and gained a new follower! I know these are small wins, but this makes me feel like this story-telling project is growing organically, and making real connections withe our community. Feeling happy^^

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Thu Dec 12, 2013

Fourth LifeSnap up:)

Bottlerocket - Map your passions - image 12 - student project

“I guess if I could say something to myself back then, I’d tell me that ‘as long as you can find the direction of the sun… it’s fine being lost for a while. In the end, we’ll find our way towards the light.” – interviewee talks of the early days of her NGO, Hua Dan

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JANUARY 2014 "This Year I..." Social Media art project draft!

Bottlerocket - Map your passions - image 13 - student project

Brain is meeelllltttinnnggg today from so much screen time. But SO EXCITED to launch Bottlerocket's first social art campaign come January 2014. The first in a series of 12, if all goes well;)

This is still in the very beginning stages, and I would love your feedback. If you click on the image, or here, for details.

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Sat January 04, 2014

Happy 2014 classmates! This new year is seeing me put-into-practice the video lessons I blitzed through (well, strolled through in timely installments...) in the last 2 months of 2013. On January 1st, Bottlerocket launched our first social media campaign called "This Year I". There's a dual purpose for these campaigns.

We hope to collect enough creative and dynamic visual submissions from around the world in the year 2014 to design and publish a "Beautiful Lives" portrait/photo book in 2015 - images of the hopes, dreams and passions of... you!
We also hope to drive more traffic to our social media accounts (namely facebook, tumblr, instagram, twitter and pinterest.

Since our social media following is pretty limited thus far, we're concentrating on word-of-mouth (especially via email and facebook) to get the message out about our project.

I created the following infographic to help clarify the submission project:

Bottlerocket - Map your passions - image 14 - student project

... and used it as part of our January "call for Submissions" Newsletter.

I also created a facebook event for "This Year I..." and have started inviting people to it. I'm excited to see where this goes! Submissions have just begun trickling in but I'm very hopeful to see where this leads!

See below some example submissions:)

Name: Linda Yi Place: land-o-sweet Georgia peaches (GA, USA) descriptor: meditating-doodler #thisyeari

Submit to project here

Bottlerocket - Map your passions - image 16 - student project

Name: Areeya Place: River Town (Bangkok, Thailand) Descriptor: lost geographer

submission details

... and that's all for this update folks!

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p.s. my HOOK for skillshare:

please consider creating your own Ch1 This Year I... entry and submitting to us! This skillshare class is so chock-full of passionate, creative and innovative people that I'd love, love to get some representation and hopefully promote you on Bottlerocket's website. - Linda

Linda Yi

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