Skyline alumni turn to old class for business help
February 6, 2013
By Lillian O'Rorke
Eight years ago, Jordan Reynolds was a student in Skyline’s video production class; now he’s a young entrepreneur working with the class to test his technology start-up, Clipcopia.
Designed to help people better organize, collaborate and store video projects, Clipcopia is the brainchild of Jordan and his older brother, John Reynolds, a 2002 Skyline graduate who is now a broadcast engineer at KOMO-TV.
Jordan Reynolds visited Skyline’s video production class Jan. 28 to present his cloud-based video management application, Clipcopia. Photo by Lillian O’Rorke
A little more than two years ago, the brothers were chatting at their sister’s 21st birthday party about John’s frustration with the current on-premise video storage options for broadcasters.
Eight months later their cloud-based video management application, Clipcopia was born.
“I’ve been really interested in entrepreneurship my whole life,” said Jordan. After graduating from Skyline in 2005, he studied business at the University of Washington and has launched several start-ups, including Distinctive Detail, a high-end automotive detail service.
One problem the Reynolds brothers wanted to address is that oftentimes broadcasters weren’t organizing their video clips, which made it difficult to collaborate and to find that clip again for future use.
Jordan started asking around to different groups to find out if other people who work with video experience the same problems. The answer he got was ‘yes.’ So, Clipcopia broadened its test user group to include — among others — schools.
“I think you guys are doing some cool stuff here already and I think it can help make SPTV better,” Jordan said to the 12 students in Bob Palmer’s video production class Jan. 28.
Each week the students write, film and produce around eight minutes of television for Skyline’s broadcast show, SPTV. Jordan and John have given the class a free subscription to Clipcopia so they can store, share and collaborate more easily on their weekly project.
“I wanted people testing the application as soon as possible,” said Jordan. “I like the idea of it being somebody that we are really connected to … They are really limited to how much video they can store, but with our application, they are really open to more opportunity.”
It was also exciting for him because he had poured his heart and soul in the idea for two years, Jordan said, and to see a group of people using his application and commenting on it was great. He was also happy to visit his old school.
“It’s funny seeing how young the kids are,” he said. “You think you are so old when you are there.”
Jordan gave the class a short introduction and then let the students try it out for themselves.
“I think it’s a way useful project. It’s just much easier to organize everything you do. And watch it, because it’s a public thing,” said Truman Baumgartner.
Aside from the two minute-long sports clip each week, the 17-year-old produces makes lots of extra videos for the SPTV broadcast and helps his friends make videos outside of school. “A lot of my friends don’t have the ability to be organized that well. So anything that could help organize them in any sort of form would definitely be useful.”
Tucker Russell, a senior in the class, said that he especially likes how easy it is to share video with friends and explained that the same isn’t true for other applications he has tried.
One feature that Clipcopia offers is an activity update feed along the right side of the page that keeps a running thread of what’s happening on the project.
“In order for anybody to be updated on the progress of the story it would require a phone call or an email. We thought, ‘wouldn’t it be great if people would have a real time view of where the project is or the status is?’”
Caitlin Fleming, also a senior in the class, said she likes that aspect of it because it reminds her of Facebook.
“I love that the kids are excited about it…They see the value in it, which is cool,” said Palmer, who started teaching at Skyline in 2010 after a long career in the broadcast industry. “They’re on the edge of some good stuff,” he added about Jordan and John.
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