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Creative Production 285to their creative hobbies. For example, doki 13 (a white thirty-two-year-old),one of the leaders of the AMV world, describes himself as “a game designerby day, AMV creator by night.” Another anime fan, Scottanime 14 (a whitethirty-one-year-old), spends almost all his time off from being a mailcarrier organizing anime conventions (Ito, Anime Fans). Even though theseactivities may not result in economic or vocational outcomes, participantsin amateur media creation work hard to improve their craft, and theyget tremendous validation from their creative communities and audiencesfor a job well done. Some researchers refer to a category of creators as“proteurs,” or “people who have gained recognition as professionals fortheir hobbies even if they don’t have relevant professional certificates ordegrees” (Faulkner and Melican 2007, 53). As discussed in box 6.4, severalgroups of youth podcasters have achieved recognition for their achievementsfrom fans and from major corporations such as Scholastic (the U.S.publisher of the Harry Potter book series) and Warner Brothers (the studiothat produces the films).Box 6.4 **Spoiler Alert**: Harry Potter Podcasting as CollaborativeProductionBecky Herr-StephensonSitting on the floor of a crowded annex of a Los Angeles bookstore, I amjust one of nearly two hundred people waiting for an event to start. To myright, a mother and son talk about a theory on time travel. Behind me, ateenage girl scribbles furiously in a well-worn notebook. All around, excitedconversation ebbs and flows, at times becoming uncomfortably loud. Onecan only imagine what the other bookstore patrons are thinking. This placehas often served as a quiet space for a cup of tea and a new book; that iscertainly not the experience available today. When the event starts, the audiencecheers for a group of people making their way to the small stage. It isnot a prolific author, nor a band, nor a popular public speaker that we arethere to see—it is a group of regular (if geeky) people who have become BNFs(big-name fans) for recording podcasts about Harry Potter. But one wouldnever know that if she were just wandering by the annex on the way to thetravel guides section.Since the publication of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone nearly ten yearsago, Harry Potter fans have adopted a variety of technologies for sharingwriting, facilitating discussion, creating artwork and computer graphics, andproducing audio and video. Podcasting, the production of audio files for