One of my favorite films is “The Shawshank Redemption.” In it, an innocent man is incarcerated for the murder of his wife and her lover and how he adapts to prison life. It’s not a new movie but I don’t want to give away the twist just in case there are those out there who haven’t seen it. Which you should. Anyway, in one scene, the main character, Andy Dufresne, says out loud, “I wonder where ten years went.”
I had that same thought this week as SVI Media gets ready to start our tenth school year of video streaming endeavors. I often think back to that first year and how far we’ve come since then in terms of knowhow and relationships with schools and other entities that we work with. I remember standing in the vestibule of the SVHS gym after a particularly grueling weekend having hauled equipment and cables and such out to our vehicle in the snow and having quite a frank discussion on how things were going and what the next moves should be.
Thankfully, some of those decisions were excellent and the people we’ve had to work with have been stellar. We’ve also learned a heap of things during that decade of work to lessen anxiety, maximize our energies and work past obstacles. Those never stop coming. There are always things that are waiting to pop up and cause an issue with a broadcast, especially where we live and work.
One of the stories that the new staffers tend to like is that of myself losing my cool in that first year while trying to unthread cable and carry it in a cardboard box back and forth to our office and destination. We didn’t have reels yet and we were making things work, so every week we would unravel and straighten out hundreds of feet of cable. I wasn’t medicated then. I am now.
Overall, it’s been a fun journey filled with some amazing experiences and interactions as we’ve gotten feedback from all over the world. From a guy in Alabama who just decided that Star Valley was his team, to a dad who got to watch his son play from the Middle East while deployed with the military, to superfans in our area care centers and health care facilities, those are the stories that keep us going.
Is grandma happy? That’s what we ask ourselves as we set up and try and keep improving our product. I can’t believe this will be our tenth season. Who knows what the future may bring.
