Brave, Brilliant, and Broke
In 2009, Ravi Jain pitched a 60-second video series to Boston College and got told you can't tell a story in 60 seconds. He said “Well, let's try.”
A Boston College Minute ran eight episodes a year for over a decade and taught a generation of higher ed marketers what campus video could be. It was years ahead of Reels and TikTok, and it wasn't his first one. In 2002 he made an interactive web sitcom that got recognized at SXSW before YouTube existed. Then a talk show shot from his car during his commute, which earned a Webby nod in 2007. He's taught at Northeastern since 2004, sits on CASE faculty, teaches AR/VR at MassArt, and picked up an MBA from BC 16 years into the job.
Ravi walksMallory and Volt through where the 60 seconds came from, how a pilot got approved on an iPod Touch with a pair of headphones, and what it cost to be the guy funding the future of campus video on a shoestring budget. He gets into the year he learned what an Instagram Story was, from a colleague, in 2017. And he lands on AI with the least breathless take you'll hear this year.
🔑 What You'll Take Away
Why constraints made his best work, and what disappears when production stops being scarce
How a 60-second format got approved with no data or committee
The case for building your next thing as a rebuttal instead of a bet on a platform
His position on AI in creative work, including the one thing he says you always have to disclose
What 25 years of "this changes everything" actually taught him