I’ve put together a number of videos for Entrepreneur & Innovation Exchange (EIX), including those that spotlight e-Fest: the yearly competition between student entrepreneurs looking to fund their startup ventures. The idea behind this particular video (one of four like it) was to spotlight the event itself: how the day is broken up, what the teams are doing, how much funding e-Fest has awarded, and so forth. It primarily featured the perspective of HydroPhos Solutions: the 1st place Grand Champion team from e-Fest 2022.
Putting the video together from start to finish required combing over an hour’s worth of B-roll, archival interviews with HydroPhos team members at the event, and dozens of photos. From there, I created the storyboard for a three-minute video that referenced these resources and organized them into a fluid narrative. I would iterate upon this storyboard several times and create multiple versions of videos following its progression. Sharing my progress with my employer, we came to a final version that we both liked, and this was the result! This video and the others in its series were produced entirely in Adobe Premiere Pro, where I trimmed footage, added transitions, inserted music, and fixed audio hiccups.
Many times the raw footage from a Zoom session needs to be edited down to just the points that matter. In this case, I worked with an hour-long discussion with four panelists who talked about their experiences selling their family business, hosted by the Family Business Center at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis.
I identified the seven most important takeaways from the discussion and organized segments of the video around those takeaways. The heavily edited, 14-minute video was published on FamilyBusiness.org, a journal that brings practical advice to family business owners. Take a look!
I’ve had the pleasure of working with Entrepreneur & Innovation Exchange (EIX) since 2020, putting together a host of video projects and articles for them. EIX is an online academic journal offering free resources and advice for entrepreneurs of all backgrounds. It is expected to receive close to 5 million visits this year.
One of the projects was a video series called “Learn from Leaders,” which detailed advice from CEOs and founders of groundbreaking companies–including Best Buy, MinuteClinic, and LegalZoom. I took pre-recorded interviews with the founders and CEOs and produced videos that distilled their advice on founding a startup into manageable steps. This included combing through the interviews to organize clips by topic, splicing the clips together, adding transitions and title sequences, and adding background music.
For the success of the first episode in the series, which has received more than 400,000 views, EIX has honored my work with a 2021 Schulze Publication Award. These awards are geared toward celebrating the EIX articles that have had the most impact. You can find the announcement and full list of award recipients here:
I am sincerely touched and beyond grateful for EIX’s recognition of my work. They have provided me with exceptional opportunities to hone my craft in writing and video editing in the realm of entrepreneurship. I would especially like to thank Schulze Distinguished Professors Daniel Forbes and Jon Eckhardt for working with me and providing guidance, and I look forward to continue working with them and others at EIX.
I produced several videos for the Schulze School of Entrepreneurship at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, which hosts e-Fest — an annual competition that pits teams of student entrepreneurs all over the U.S against one another. Winners earn a share of $215,000 to fund the startup they’ve envisioned. Each April the student finalists convene at the UST campus for the last round of competition, an exciting three days when they both compete against one another and network and learn from one another.
My role was to work with footage that a videographer took at this very lively and noisy event and create something that captures its energy and excitement. It was challenging because of all the background noise, but through the editing and music I strived to minimize the distracting parts, and the client was happy with the results. Here is one of about a dozen videos I produced.
Sometimes one long stretch of video footage can serve many purposes. My work with the “Everything Thought Leadership” video and podcast series usually involves three versions of a video interview: a trailer that previews it; the video itself and a podcast.
In this example, I was able to take an interview with Jim Wetherbe — a business professor, thought leader and highly sought-after speaker — and develop four versions of it. The full-length one (above) used the edited Zoom interview as well as “B-roll” pictures to make it more interesting, and “digressions” to explain background or concepts that were unclear or useful.
Variation #1: The Trailer
Before editing on the full-length video was completed I also developed a trailer for the it, which can be viewed below.
Variation #2: A Narrower Focus On One Key Topic
Another edited version of the video was useful for EIX, a client with whom Jim has worked. In this edited excerpt from the original video, Jim explains why businesses and academic researchers need to work together more closely to identify real-world business problems that need rigorous research to find answers, and improve the success rate of businesses.
Variation #3: The Podcast
With my work for “Everything Thought Leadership,” I always develop podcasts based on the video. This involves far more than just posting the audio version. It requires different editing and many times involves adding commentary that fills in for the missing visuals and helps the listener comprehend. I post the videos on SoundCloud and set up feeds to Buday TLP’s channels on Apple Music and Spotify.
I’ve worked with Entrepreneur & Innovation Exchange, a web site dedicated to improving the success rate of entrepreneur-led businesses, on several videos for a series entitled “Learn From Leaders.”
A few years before I did my work, EIX editors did one-on-one interviews with noteworthy founders and CEOs of groundbreaking companies. The interview subjects include Dick Schulze, founder and former CEO of Best Buy; Linda Hall, former CEO of MinuteClinic; Eddie Hartman, founder of LegalZoom; Scott Nash, founder of Mom’s Organic Market; Seth Goldman, founder of Honest Tea; Jeff Freeland-Nelson, founder of Yoxo Toys; and Ann Winblad, founding partner of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners.
Each of these videos was published on the EIX site, but we wanted to find a way to make them more focused. The “Learn from Leaders” concept focused on essential steps to launching a company, with each episode featuring the parts of the original videos that spoke to each theme: developing an idea, getting financing, building a team, advisors and mentors, and growing the company. My role was to pick out the relevant footage from each of the original interview videos and compile them by theme.
The first video focused on how ideas develop — and you will see that the process is not always neat or linear. That video was wildly popular, attracting more than 400,000 views and counting. It continues to be one of EIX’s most popular posts.
For just over two months, I contributed gaming news articles to Screen Rant, the online news site for all things pop culture. I have been a fan of video games for near my entire life, thanks to the influence of my brother from a young age. My first system was a Game Boy Advance, back when it was still the new Nintendo handheld on the block. Fast-forward to this 2021, and I earned the opportunity to right about my hobby as a Screen Rant freelancer. The following are my favorite articles that I’ve written.
Smash Bros Ultimate’s Final DLC Character Possibly Leaked In Bizarre Post
An anonymous 4chan leaker claims a Zelda rep, Capcom rep, and Waluigi are inbound to Super Smash Bros Ultimate despite the lack of a 3rd season pass.
An anonymous leaker on 4Chan claims a representative from The Legend of Zelda series, a Capcom character from a non-action-based game, and Waluigi will come to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. The post arrived in late January, before the reveal of both Xenoblade Chronicles 2‘s Pyra/Mythra and Tekken‘s Kazuya, and predicts more content for the game to drop after the end of Fighter Pass Vol. 2.
Samus Aran’s mission in the upcoming Metroid Dread will pit her against enemies both new and familiar, with a Nintendo Switch trailer recapping the most important story and gameplay elements. After a hiatus more than a decade long, the newest entry in the 2D Metroid series looks ambitious based on its cinematic cutscenes, story beats involving the E.M.M.I.s and Chozo species, and the variety of abilities and weapons at Samus’s disposal.
Undertale‘s sixth anniversary livestream culminated in the reveal of Deltarune Chapter 2’s release date, and it’s arriving Friday, September 17. Undertale creator Toby Fox dedicated the stream to the original game, celebrating the six-year milestone of the franchise in a Deltarune Chapter 1 playthrough streamed alongside the indie game merch aficionados at Fangamer.
Fans grappling with whether to purchase WWE 2K22may have another reason to hesitate, as a report from Sports Gamers Online details. The team behind the WWE 2K series has spent a troubling past few years of developing games. WWE 2K20‘s legacy endures as that of an unenjoyable mess of glitches, and WWE 2K21 failed to release at all.
It turns out Lynels in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild don’t need Sheikah stealth clothing to sneak up on Link. A member of the game’s subreddit learned this through personal experience when a Golden Lynel charged from out of nowhere and clubbed Link on the head, triggering an instant game over.
This is an example of my business writing. The client was Entrepreneur & Innovation Exchange, a web site funded by Best Buy Founder Dick Schulze that aims to help more entrepreneur-led businesses succeed. I did a series of articles that featured past winners of e-Fest, a student business plan competition that EIX co-sponsors. I produced several articles for this series. Each article involved talking with the winning team and with the editors at EIX, who are professors, to embed key business concepts into the article to make it more useful for other students thinking through their own ideas.
As the leader of McKinsey’s global publishing for three years and counting, Raju Narisetti has a knack for helping businesses, media companies and journalists remain relevant in the digital age. His goal at McKinsey, a leader in the management consulting industry, is to triple the size of its audience over five years.
Raju’s 32-year career includes 14 years as a writer and editor for The Wall Street Journal, where he was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. He was both the youngest and first person of color to appear on the mastheads of The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. (The masthead is a newspaper’s listing of its top editors, publisher and owners.) Raju also founded Mint, an Indian business newspaper, where was editor in chief for three years.
Raju and Bob Buday met each In November 2022 at Profiting From Thought Leadership, a conference that Bob has co-produced six times since 2016. At the event, Raju and McKinsey Global Editorial Director Lucia Rahilly spoke on their firm’s approach to thought leadership.
Today, Raju joins Bob on his firm’s “Everything Thought Leadership” video & podcast to discuss how McKinsey is able to produce so much high-quality content in high volume. Raju will also delve into how the firm has been using data visualization and digital tools to change the way it presents content, how he views the state of the thought leadership profession, and how he transitioned from journalism to professional services.
In advance of the new year, I wanted to spotlight my most recent stint of writing. Once again, I have returned to writing about my life-long love of video games.
About 9 months ago, I took on a freelance writer position at SVG.com: a multi-platform news and feature outlet dedicated to all things gaming. SVG.com is owned and facilitated by Static Media, which facilitates a number of other pop culture brands including Wrestling Inc, Grunge, and Health Digest.
Working for SVG has been beyond fulfilling, and I am very grateful to the knowledgeable, warm, and welcoming editors who have helped me improve my craft writing about all facets of gaming. I’ve covered topics ranging from industry news, to the streaming world, to Xbox and Nintendo games and beyond, and I’ve enjoyed it all. I look forward to what the new year has to bring with my writing at SVG.
My SVG profile can be found here: scroll down to find every article I’ve written, updated in real time.
Paul Roehrig has done it all as a thought leadership strategist, marketing officer, and more. Before he became Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer at Ascendion, the Syracuse University PhD graduate spent over 11 years at Cognizant in three VP roles, cultivating big ideas within the IT services giant’s Digital Business, Process Operations, and Center for the Future of Work business units. Previously, Paul served as a Principal Analyst at Forrester Research. Moreover, he has co-written three bestselling business books: Monster: A Though Love Letter On Taming the Machines that Rule our Jobs, Lives, and Future , What To Do When Machines Do Everything , and Code Halos: How the Digital Lives of People, Things, and Organizations are Changing the Rules.
Alan Alper worked extensively with Paul while the latter was at Cognizant. The two reunited on this episode of “Everything Thought Leadership,” where Paul shared what he believes the future holds for thought leadership in gene_ral and its role within the code economy.
John Buday: Digital Storytelling 