We run a pretty lean operation here at OMAAT. Tiffany does an amazing job handling so many things on the back end, which means I can focus on my passion, which is miles & points, rather than managing things.
I’ll admit that I’m often hesitant to try new things. I like to stick to what (I think) I do a good job at. Tiffany always encourages me to try new things, but generally I’m not very open to them if they come at the cost of focusing on the core of what I do. In other words, I’ve considered trying to add some video elements to reports, but I always felt like I couldn’t do that without compromising the quality of the pictures I take.
During my recent trip in the Residence I decided to experiment with Instagram Stories. While I’ve been posting pictures to Instagram for years, I’ve never before used their stories function. If you follow me on Instagram then you may have seen these when I took the actual trip.
For those of you not familiar with Instagram Stories, I suppose it’s intended to compete with Snapchat (which I’ve never used), and allows you to post clips of up to 15 seconds each. They’re posted to your account, though automatically disappear after 24 hours. So they can be viewed by others within 24 hours, or you can save them to your phone.
This was my first time experimenting with this, and I was surprised by how many people viewed them, and more importantly, how many people found them entertaining. I always tend to think I just write for myself, so when I saw that tens of thousands of people were watching these videos within a few hours, I was caught off guard.
Like I said, I don’t want this to in any compromise the quality of my trip reports, but it was something fun to try.
Earlier I posted the review of my flight in the Etihad Residence between Abu Dhabi and Sydney, and I figured I’d also share the short Instagram Stories that I posted during the flight. I saved the videos to my phone. This morning I asked Tiffany if she could quickly put them into a video for me, which she did. While I’m sure we could have done better with the transitions and production quality, this was a very last minute thing.
Yes, I’m slightly drunk in some of the videos, and they’re intended to be lighthearted, so don’t take anything I say seriously.
I figured I’d share them here, since perhaps it adds another fun element to this. Maybe it will help further emphasize just how excited I was during the experience:
Again, I apologize for the quality — these videos weren’t ever taken with the intention of being shared beyond Instagram, but I figured I might as well. I forgot to save a few of the videos that I posted, I didn’t cover the whole flight this way, etc. If you guys enjoy these, let me know, and I’ll do more of them (and put more effort into improving the quality next time). If you don’t, no worries either.
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