Huh?
What’s all this Schmoo about?
Why schmooru? — What’s in it for you? These are all good questions, but Schmooru is not like all your other social networks by design — we build things. In fact, “Together We Build Media.”
What’s different in particular?
Our Mission…A creative cooperative of multimedia producers with the intention of advancing the causes of rebuilding media, stable employment and fulfilling work for all.
More specifically, We have goals that reflect our values… do you share them?
Mutually Beneficial Social Community of Creatives
Schmooru is a closed-community of the best creative producers who cooperatively seek the independence of freelance work, yet wish to collaborate on creative development and production. Sarah Evershed, a founding member of Schmooru, has been tasked with ensuring we always have the strongest community available.
Employment
We seek full and flexible, on-demand employment for all schmooru producers where ever they find themselves plugged into our network. Though it is the goal of schmooru curators to encourage and facilitate as much employment as possible for our community, this goal will never be achieved without the support and efforts of our entire community to seek out jobs and share them with their fellow producers. Seeking gigs and larger works is an on-going priority of schmooru — if this goal ceases to exist, so does schmooru itself.
Schmooru Original Productions
Schmooru.com will not just react. We won’t just turn the crank. Ideas will form here and together through our various tools — mush will be made into a reality. Times are tough these days and if people aren’t still taking chances — who will be left to rise up from the ashes when the sun comes out again? Chronicled through our blog on the creative process SchmooNEWS, Schmooru will devote a great deal of resources towards the encouragement of creative producers to do what they do best: take chances, create, and feel free in doing so. We will work to find grants whenever possible to encourage a creative environment beyond producing the daily work that may be our bread and butter, but is not the cream what we all strive for in our creative lives. Creative work and freedom with our art is what binds us. Otherwise, we would be hire filmic guns and mercenaries — and we all know we can make more money doing something else.
Media Production is a Profession
Put most simply, we are devoting our lives to this work because it takes time to develop these skills. Time is a limited resource and in many ways is all we have to offer. Schmooru intends to establish an understanding of how much work and time are worth for its membership. This won’t be all settled on day one or one-thousand — instead as we are all humans evolving with our different backgrounds, experiences and skills sets, so too will our understanding of your value to the community and to external clients mature through our SCHMOOPOINTSŪ system. Sometimes its valuable to work without any pay, but on a challenging project you believe in or just something you need for your reel. Other times, its all about the money. In every case, producers at Schmooru need to have a feeling that they’re getting something out of it.
Since Schmooru is really just an empty strip mall without its talented people — it’s very important that you know who we are.
Our clients
Let’s face it — everyone needs video these days and we have clients in every realm of quality level and industry. Schmooru’s curators have worked at major television networks, in the film industry and in the political/non profit world and one thing’s for sure, their story ain’t ending like the Bridge over River Qui-we don’t burn bridges! (sic if I ruined it for you — if not just move on).
Our producers are often called to run to breaking news stories that erupt in their towns, non profit missions to illustrate things that make our world a better place and just about anything these days that calls for video. What jobs we get depends on a few factors — the quality of your work, the quality of OUR work — and that mysterious creature which determines at any given moment when someone needs video of something that’s happening right next to you {cough cough, in schmooru we trust}.
Right now we have working arrangements with the following clients:
- Governments
- Broadcast News Networks
- Non Profits
- High-End New Media Film
- Internet Video Networks
- Commercial/Corporate
Our Producers
We’ve got ’em all from just entering the game to been there, done that — don’t go there it explodes too much! We need them all — the common thread of all schmoorus as we curators like to call them — is that they come with a full tank of gas. If you’re the best, that energy will serve you well — if you’re the rest, with a great attitude and a willingness to work we can point you in the right direction. Above all else, everyone goes through our application process — it’s what binds us — and everyone stays because we’re all in this together (we build media..;).
THINGS WE ARE
- Your friends
- The place you always wanted to share that idea with to make it better and not worry about someone stealing it
- Helpful
- Human
- This schmooru is your schmooru, this schmooru is my schmooru, from California to the New York Islands… this schmooru was made for you and me…
- In it for all the right reasons
- Nice to everyone, producers and clients alike
- Tryers — we keep trying over and over again and then after that, we try some more. It’s hard out there, not only these days, but every day you try to make a living doing this on your own, so we keep trying because we know you have to
- Not a big HONKING thing — we intend to keep overhead to a minimum and pass whatever comes along to making us all better
- Sort of like an ELKS HALL that leases space to a “guild”, but without that smell
THINGS WE AREN’T
- A LinkedIn for the creative class, nor “facebook for filmakers” — schmooru is an organic living breathing thing that has to manifest itself on the internet because we all live too far away from each other
- Our success is not based on the quantity of its members, but their quality
- We are not your agent. Nor are we an agency
- We are not like the other guys/we don’t know who they are — if they’re already out there, we’re NEW and IMPROVED, if they’re coming soon, we were the first, the original, everyone else imitates us
- We don’t need to be known to be successful — but our work does need to speak for itself so it can be successful
Schmooru Curators
Dan Beckmann — Managing Director/Lead, Business Development
Dan Beckmann is a New Media developer and award-winning journalist with a career spanning over a decade, who founded IB5k where the Obama campaign left off. At the campaign’s Chicago headquarters, as part of the New Media department, in addition to producing supporter-generated and viral initiatives, Dan piloted new video concepts to help voters better understand the candidate’s positions during the critical home stretch of the campaign.
Before leaving to work for Obama, Dan worked as a Creative Executive for the cable network Current TV, where he helped develop a “Collective” model for production through establishing and maintaining a network of filmmakers and journalists from around the world. While there he was also instrumental in developing new initiatives ranging from new show concepts to ways to integrate the web into a traditional television product which help to contribute to Current winning the 2007 Primetime Emmy award for Most Interactive Television Network.
Dan also spent over 4 years at ABC News where helped launch their User-Generated product “Be Seen, Be Heard”, created an internal beat unit to generate original reporting and was credited with coming up with the concept for ABC’s first podcast at ABC News Radio before the word “podcast” existed. He also was part of the production team that won a George Foster Peabody award for the investigation into Congressman Mark Foley. His multi-platform reporting during Hurricane Katrina was featured on Nightline, Good Morning America and ABC News.com, Radio and ABC’s digital television network. During the 2004 election, Dan produced coverage at every major event that cycle from the New Hampshire primary to both conventions — culminating with the Presidential Debate moderated by ABC’s Charles Gibson at his alma mater, Washington University.
Dan holds a Masters in Broadcast Journalism from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and American Culture from Washington University in St. Louis and is presently “all but dissertation” for his PhD in Media Philosophy at the European Graduate School in Saas Fee, Switzerland. A native of Toledo, OH, he’s now splits his time between Washington, DC and San Francisco where he’s trying to learn how to surf.
Sarah Evershed — Lead, Community
Sarah Evershed is a documentary filmmaker, user generated content manager and new media expert. She began her career making short documentaries and working on shows for networks such as Discovery, HBO, Oxygen and Bravo. After a time working in reality TV, she moved to San Francisco to work for Current TV’s Viewer Created Content Department. There, she was a producer, film festival coordinator, outreach associate and associate producer for the Collective Journalism department. She managed hundreds of producers and was responsible for getting over a hundred short documentaries to air. Sarah holds a Bachelor’s degree in Literature and Cultural Anthropology and currently resides in Los Angeles.
Tori Taylor — Lead Client Relationships
Tori Taylor has worked in media for nearly a decade, and has handled responsibilities spanning nearly every aspect of production, both on and off air.
She began her career as an on-air reporter for KQED, the NPR affiliate in San Francisco, and then moved to serve as a reporter and live solo morning news anchor (and board operator) at KPFA, the Bay Area Pacifica public radio affiliate, where her ongoing coverage of several events (gay marriage, the San Francisco mayoral race, the California gubernatorial recall election) aired nationally.
She left KPFA to join Current TV, where she worked for four years in various roles, including video editor, online content manager, and line producer. As a line producer at a start up, Tori designed, built, and implemented intra- and inter-departmental policy and procedure for three teams at Current — two of the station’s keynote franchise shows and the website content department.
Tori was a Public Policy Studies and Spanish major at Duke University, grew up in Hawaii, and now calls San Francisco home.
Jared Tankel — Lead Counsel
Jared Tankel is an attorney specializing in intellectual property, entertainment and new media law. Jared’s interest in the creative arts began at an early age with weekly piano lessons. His passion for music was sparked, though, when introduced to the saxophone in the fourth grade. After graduating from Haverford College, where he majored in philosophy and German, Jared moved to New York City and almost immediately fell into the growing funk, soul and afrobeat scene. While pursuing music performance, Jared also expanded his involvement into the business side of entertainment, most notably as a co-founder of Independent Digital Entertainment & Arts (IDEA), a digital aggregator and distributor that worked with independent artists to get their catalogs marketed and placed on digital music services such as iTunes and eMusic.
After exiting from IDEA, Jared decided to head to law school to focus on the legal issues of intellectual property and the entertainment industry. Jared received his J.D. from Fordham University School of Law in May 2008. While at Fordham, Jared interned and clerked at Sony BMG Entertainment, Matador Records as well as two of New York’s most prominent entertainment and intellectual property law firms. Jared spent his first year after graduation working as a clerk and associate in the law offices of David J. Stein where he drafted and negotiated a wide array of contracts fundamental to the entertainment industry. He also conducted legal research and assisted in the litigation of a dispute regarding ownership of software.
An admitted attorney to the New York State Bar, Jared continues to work with artists and producers to protect their legal interests, as well as continuing his own creative pursuits recording and touring as member and bandleader of Daptone Records recording artist The Budos Band.
John Reed — Webmaster
John Reed has worked in web development for the larger part of a decade. After graduating from the Evergreen State College (B.A., media theory) in 2003, John worked for the State of Washington designing and building websites for the state’s budget office and Governors Gary Locke and Christine Gregoire.
Shortly thereafter he moved to Chicago and founded studio bonito, a web consultancy with a focus on standards, accessibility and flexibility. His clients include Tribune Company, cre8, and Logica3.
John presently lives in San Francisco. He enjoys gardening and producing a little radio show at radiohour.org.