Framing the year end review as a mock board meeting may have not been one of my best idea. I tried my best to make as entertaining as possible, but being as 3D Printing Professor LLC is a company with one official employee, and being as board meetings are just dull, I don't know how well I could pull it off. Still, I get off a good dad joke at the end. I promise that will be my last dad joke. For this year.

I feel like year end reviews often end up being Q4 reviews in most organizations that I've been a part of. It's difficult to even remember a years worth of information, let alone report on it's effects. To compile this report I went over the analytics, but I also went over the pictures I took of this past year. Not only have I seen my fleet of 3D printers grow from... well, basically one, to more than I have time to assemble. Hopefully, becoming the Makerspace director will give me opportunity to find others who want the experience of building a 3D printer, and I can let them do the heavy lifting.

Oh, yeah, if you didn't catch it, I'm going to be a Makerspace director. If you're ever in my neck of the woods you should stop by. We're having our grand opening on the 6th of January. Maybe I'll see you there.

If you were quick, you may have noticed in the video that I put some data up there that most people avoid, like revenue and the like. I honestly want to be more open about that. I feel like there's no benefit to hiding that stuff, except to maintain the illusion that I'm a successful rock star. And in a way, there's good reason to maintain that illusion. Because if people knew the actual numbers, they might not be happy, and they might not stick around. So... that may have not been my best idea, too.

I'd love to hear your suggestions for the coming year. What would you like to see me accomplish? Where should I strive to be, and how can I keep improving this thing that I'm doing.

A lot was cut from this video, so here's the outline I followed for the video, including everything I didn't mention:

3D Printing Professor LLC Board and Stakeholders meeting

Knocked down a bunch of the toys while waiting for the camera.

2017 was a year of staggering growth for 3DPPLLC

90 videos
Over 1 million views
Hardly missed a Wednesday

Improved video quality while only slightly increasing editing time

3 public events
1 book
Many new 3D printers thanks to affiliates
Reorganization of Cymon’s Designs (sole proprietor) to 3DPP LLC
Over two dozen published models

MyMiniFactory
Pinshape
Thingiverse
Including Wood Wars 3D

First successful kickstarter
4x increase in Patreon backers
New ways to support directly
Affiliate Partnerships with Amazon and Gearbest

My other great accomplishment this ye

Lessons learned

Certain videos do better than others

Hardware reviews (esp with clickbait titles) gets a lot of negativity but results in a lot of views and affiliate sales
Spinner video ludicrously popular, with little result, and follow up videos were not as successful. https://youtu.be/4gO8TdCFObA
Project videos are moderately well viewed
Topical discussions are moderately well viewed
Live Streaming this past year was not successful or well watched