Library Management System Geeks For Geeks
Arridano Tillo
Toby has a great combination of executive level skills in the areas of technology, law, economics and non-profit organizations. The former director of the Utah State Bar and now knowledge management/biz dev/alternative fees guy at a top 50 AmLaw law firm, he is taking no prisoners. Toby loves to lead us to the edge and dare us to jump. With strong marketing and technical knowledge and management experience, he is at the forefront of developing legal alternative fees. An accomplished speaker, Toby is renowned in the areas of legal management, marketing and technology topics.
Casey Flaherty is the Director of Legal Project Management at Baker McKenzie. He is a former Biglaw associate and corporate counsel who moved into legal operations consulting for law departments and law firms before taking on his current challenge. Casey has an affinity for systems thinking, strategic sourcing, process re-engineering, KPIs, and the practical application of technology to the legal dimensions of business problems. His long-term focus is the mesh point between law departments and law firms where he promotes structured dialogue to foster deep supplier relationships (read about that here and here).
A law blog addressing the foci of 3 intrepid law geeks, specializing in their respective fields of knowledge management, internet marketing and library sciences, melding together to form the Dynamic Trio.
Geek & Sundry produced many shows exclusively for Legendary's streaming service, Alpha, from its launch in 2017. In early 2019, Critical Role Productions separated from Legendary, as well as Geek & Sundry, to distribute their content independently. In the wake of their departure, Alpha was shut down and Geek & Sundry went into decline.[7] The company has been largely inactive since late 2019, and the YouTube channel is now only used to re-release existing content.[8][9]
The company originated as a pitch made to the YouTube Original Channel Initiative by Felicia Day and Kim Evey. The two learned of the initiative in fall 2011, and set about producing a pitch based on a fifth and sixth season of The Guild, Wil Wheaton's Tabletop, Day's The Flog, and Sword & Laser (hosted by Veronica Belmont and Tom Merritt) among other shows.[1] Some of the shows in the pitch were only devised the day before the meeting with YouTube. Around half of the package of shows received funding in the form of an advance payment "against future advertising revenue to jumpstart production."[1][10]
The channel's founders and show hosts attended a number of fan conventions over the following years including ComicCon,[11] Dragon*Con,[12] VidCon,[13] and WonderCon.[14] In March 2013, the channel announced three new series: Felicia's Ark (featuring Felicia Day), Fetch Quest (created by Jordan Allen-Dutton) and The Player One[s]. Two programs, Tabletop and Space Janitors, were renewed for season 2 of the channel starting April 1, 2013.[15] Day later described the production schedule for the company as exhausting, as they were producing a large amount of content with only eight full time staff at the time. She came close to "pulling the plug", but elected to keep going, and received a second round of funding from YouTube.[16]
YouTube announced in December 2013 that it would not be continuing to invest in original content; Geek & Sundry continued however by relying on crowdfunding support. The next season of Tabletop received $500,000 in a single week. The surge in fan support led to commercial interest in buying the business;[17] in August 2014, Geek & Sundry was acquired by Legendary Entertainment for an undisclosed sum.[6] In December 2014, Geek & Sundry was listed on New Media Rockstars Top 100 Channels, ranked at #68.[18]
In March 2015, Geek & Sundry launched their Twitch channel with a 48-hour stream in support of The Lupus Foundation.[19] After Day heard about a private Dungeons & Dragons home game from Ashley Johnson, she approached the group about playing it in a live-streamed format for Geek & Sundry;[20][21][22] Critical Role began airing on March 12, 2015;[23] however, the show remained creator-owned.[24]
In 2016, Felicia Day left Geek & Sundry after growing "fatigued in a less creative, more managerial role in the company".[30] Day said "I gave it my heart and my soul. When I realized I had given as much as I could, I needed to move on".[30] In January 2017, it was announced that Thomas Tull, Legendary's founder, had exited as Legendary Entertainment CEO[31] and that Eric Campbell, a writer on Geek & Sundry shows such as The Flog, Felicia's Ark and Signal Boost!, would become the Director of Development for Geek & Sundry.[32][33] In July, Marisha Ray became the Creative Director.[34]
From 2017 onwards, the network increasingly focused on tabletop gaming shows. This included actual play shows such as Sagas of Sundry, miniature painting with Painter's Guild and game master chat shows such as Roundtable. Season 4 of Wheaton's Tabletop was exclusive to Alpha in 2016 before premiering on YouTube in 2017.[35][36][37][38] The Twitch channel reached its peak subscriber count at 55,349 in February 2018.[39]
Legendary started to scale back their digital division after "Joshua Grode took over as the company's CEO in 2018".[40] In June, Critical Role Productions started to self-produce new shows and content which did not air on Geek & Sundry's channels.[41][42][43] Ray stepped down from her position at Geek & Sundry to become the Creative Director for Critical Role Productions;[44] Matt Key replaced her as Creative Director, and would remain until the post was eliminated the following year.[45][46]
In July 2018, the Star Trek role-playing game (RPG) show Shield of Tomorrow ended and was replaced by the superhero RPG show Callisto 6; the cast, with Campbell as the game master, were carried over to the new show.[47][48] L.A. by Night (based on Vampire: The Masquerade) premiered in September as a weekly show; Jason Carl, Brand Marketing Manager for World of Darkness, acted as the Storyteller.[49][50]
In July 2020, Legendary laid off 30% of the LDN staff.[40][71] Variety reported that "there was a sense that the operations were a money drain on the company's profitable film and television operations. Those cuts were accelerated by the onset of COVID-19, which has resulted in layoffs and furloughs across the entertainment industry".[40] The Hollywood Reporter reported that "the digital brands have become less important to the strategic direction of Legendary in recent years as the online content business has shifted away from the networks that grew big during the early heyday of YouTube stardom. Legendary Digital is not a moneymaker for the business the way its core film and TV divisions are".[71] Twitch Tracker stopped logging subscriptions in October 2020 for the channel, at which point there were 52 remaining,[39] and Geek & Sundry was left largely inactive.[54]
In April 2021, CBR reported that "Geek & Sundry as an original content producer hasn't exactly been operational for a couple of years".[9] The channels were sporadically used by Legendary to stream Nerdist shows such as Save Point and CelebriD&D,[72][73][74] while the YouTube channel was largely used to re-release existing content.[8] This included material that had originally been exclusive to Alpha such as CelebriD&D and We're Alive: Frontier.[75][76] Additional episodes of Becca Scott's How to Play were released from February 2021 to June 2022, as the first original content on the channel since the layoffs the previous summer and the sole ongoing G&S property at the time.[77][78][79] A single new episode of Game the Game, led by Scott, also aired in April 2023.[80] In January 2022, Wheaton and LDN settled their lawsuit outside of court.[81] The Geek & Sundry website began redirecting to the Nerdist website, and direct links to specific pages using the geekandsundry.com domain began to return 404 links. Geek & Sundry branding was integrated into the Nerdist website, under the "play" banner.[82]
International Tabletop Day originated as an event hosted on Geek & Sundry in 2013, and became a recurring annual event globally. While disrupted by the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the event is still celebrated worldwide.[9] Founder Felicia Day, who left the company in 2016, spoke positively of the influence of the company and its inclusion of geek voices. "I'm just happy I got to give people opportunities they wouldn't have otherwise and take a leap."[83] CBR commented in 2023 that "with huge shifts in management, a lawsuit between the company and Will Wheaton, and countless people leaving the company, it only makes sense that the company would largely cease its operations. [...] While Geek & Sundry may not be operational anymore, it made quite an impact on geek culture that is quite lasting. [...] Although Critical Role's departure sparked its rapid decline, Geek & Sundry has done a lot for the resurgence of interest in tabletop gaming and geeks everywhere are sure to look upon the company's golden years fondly".[8]
Em Friedman, for Polygon, commented on the impact of Geek & Sundry's experiments in actual play cinematographic style; the simultaneous display layout, pioneered with Critical Role, would come "to dominate actual play".[84] Friedman highlighted that Critical Role's "layout eliminated the awkward elements of the wide-angle lenses and multipurpose tables, cables, and other clutter. By cropping and arranging, it showed all angles of a table, simultaneously, live"; a simultaneous display led to player reactions becoming "a significant part of the audience experience".[84] However, this "look wasn't a foregone conclusion. There was no standard look early on. Even in 2015, as Critical Role began to stream, Geek & Sundry was producing fullscreen, edited multi-camera shows like Wil Wheaton's Titansgrave. The channel continued to refine both styles, producing fullscreen shows like Sagas of Sundry and We're Alive: Frontier alongside simultaneous-display shows like Shield of Tomorrow, ForeverVerse, Callisto 6, and LA by Night".[84]
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