@Ryan asked Keegan what’s missing from the teachings of Mirai Live. I’ve only been a Mirai member for a couple of months, so take my feelings with a grain of salt I guess. I have to start by saying that ML is amazing. The knowledge being given is just unquantifiable. The knowledge is even better when you give yourself the chance to practice bonsai, see what Ryan is talking about first hand and then go back to a video to review. We all know this, so let me answer the question directly.
For me, the next steps would be to somehow catalog the archive by species in a sort of timeline. I know that bonsai shouldn’t be done on calendar, but a logical order is possible. The current filters definitely get you almost to what I’m envisioning. It would be nice to say “show me a holistic view of short needle multi-flush pine care” and then see what is involved in as much of a chronological order as possible.
My biggest hurdle is branch selection when designing a tree. I love the end result when Ryan is done, but I’m always wanting to spin the tree on my own. The 2D nature of the medium makes it hard to really dig into a tree and get an understanding of its structure. A 360*, and possibly 3D, rendering of the tree would be amazing, but I know that it’s difficult/expensive. A VR view even more so.
Lastly, and this is like “in the year 2000” stuff now, but the ability to take a live online class would top it off. Idk how you do this when there’s no way to have similar trees or personal attention without a lot to tech.
Hey @Bonsai_Bentley! Thank you so much for sharing this thoughtful feedback. Ryan read it too and said that your advice is spot on. We are always working on ways to improve the platform and include subscriber feedback. I love your idea about the holistic view of a species–that’s something we’ve been bouncing around for a while trying to figure out the right way to make it work.
A 360 degree/3D view would definitely be amazing–something we’re for sure trying to make happen in the future. I think even just a video with a 360 degree spin for each stream is probably a great starting point.
And last, the live online classes - that is 100% something we are working toward in the future. Just haven’t figured out how to do it yet! But we will most certainly get there.
Thank you again for taking the time to share your thoughts with us!! I appreciate it so much.
Oh man, that’s awesome! A dedicated and very short loopable video of a tree on a slowly rotating turn table would probably be fairly sufficient. Ryan will do a rotation at the end of videos and I’ll legit scroll back and forth and pause to see various angles of the tree. Thanks again for Mirai!
i think not too much is missing, i’m waching all Lives, even for species that do not exist in Brazil, because we can learn and seek the Ryans’s bonsai mindset even so. i am a Mirai member for 2 years, and i am learning so much!
i would like to see more garden’s scenes and perhaps an album with some photos like a 6 month evolution of the trees.
i feel that we need to see more of Mirai that the Live’s work, not a fancy or elaboratet content, just some short movies or photos on instagram will be ok. the trees by thenselves are iconics, and i strongly agree whit the Ben Oki statemente about Ryan be a newest John Naka.
Great ideas @Bonsai_Bentley! Taking your holistic approach - I’ve been finding myself wanting a written overview for certain species, esp. where there aren’t a lot of videos yet (tropical/deciduous, e.g. small leaf linden) to look up facts you don’t get elsewhere. I’m thinking for example growth patterns (“prone to dieback when it elongates, cut after growing 4-5 leaves unless…”). This could also be a collaborative Wiki!? Maybe even include a collection of pictures of young/medium/old/ancient iterations of species (having the hardest time finding good images on the web).
I’m fairly new to Mirai, maybe I’ve overlooked such a resource. Sincere apologies if I have!
I’ve actually been taking notes during the streams. I have a desk job and three monitors, so I can have a stream up all of the time lol. As Ryan has said, the information may change overtime but it’s easy enough to update my notes.
One thing I would like to see with the live stream is it tagged with the display name of the tree which you can then click on to see all content, live streams, videos, blog posts, insta post etc over the years featuring that exact tree.
Bonsai is a very slow hobby and the one thing I am finding difficult to see is how work done at point A) developed to point B)
The above would effectively generate a timeline history of each Mirai tree that we could explore in detail