Video Interview Series With Community Members

Marketing
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I miss the podcasts from Mr Ferguson - on that note and based on some discussions with @Sotros25 @piluso and @JimCollinson on finding more ways to scale new video content I am going to kick something of an experiment off. Over the next few months I will create some processes and reusable assets for other community members to create videos.

The project that will drive this I’ll call “Safe Network For A Better World”

This would involve me interviewing 1 community member and via a 45min jitsi or zoom call.

In this call we we have a quick chat, nice to actually talk to people these day. Even better that they are community members from here :smile:

We’ll have 3 guiding questions.

  1. Why is the Safe Network important to you?
  2. How did you get involved in the community?
  3. What is the one application or use case you are most excited about?

This structure and focus I think is meaningful and valuable for a few reasons:

  1. The content is human, personal and emotive
  2. It can showcase a sense hope, of belonging and community
  3. Emphasises Safe Network purpose, features and possibilities
  4. It involves community members

Given other commitments I’ll likely be able to produce 1-2 per month as there is a decent amount of effort involved in pre/post production. But the effort will scale down after a few. I also want to create the process to have other community members do this as well.

What will be the output?
5-7min video with some basic animations.

This can be hosted on YT and shared via twitter, FB, reddit, telegram etc.

I am thinking of using OpenShot as it is free and open source. Which lowers the barrier for others to pick it up. I’ll have to learn how to use it but I’ve got some general skills and a few years experience in making videos. Ultimately I want to make myself redundant so there is enough documentation, tutorials and assets for others to pick it up.

Thoughts on the approach? Anyone wanting to be the first interviewee?

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It’s a great idea! Perhaps if there are no takers, we could start with you @m3data, so people can get a feel for the format, and might get a spark of inspiration to give it a go?

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Good suggestion Jim…I shall be my own lab rat!

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Very nice initiative, I would gladly join, but unfortunately in my life I have spoken 10 minutes in English and I do not want to spell on air :lol:

I quickly want to draw attention to an unlikely problem for people who have decided to show their faces.

As we know, popular opinion about Bitcoin is that it is used for money laundering and crime. There is a high probability that the same will be said about Safe.

If you decide to show your face in public, there is a danger that you will become a focus of public hatred in the first cases when it is understood that bad things are uploaded on Safe that can never be deleted and can be accessed publicly and anonymously - pedophilia, terrorism, fascism. etc.

Every year we have people from the community who want us to delete their forum account because of such concerns - that their name will be associated with an anonymous network used for bad things.

Just something everyone should think about before going public with their face…

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Thanks for bring this up, these are all really valuable points to raise Dim.

It forced me to do a little rethink after reading this while burning the midnight oil.

I want to create some videos myself but more importantly I want to create a system that can scale. And the modular branded assets, sufficient documentation and concept inspiration to spur on some self organising from the community. It will take some upfront effort and experimentation but I’m playing the long game.

teach a person to fish and all that…:slightly_smiling_face:

So last night I started getting into this further. Sketched out some basic ideas and a simple storyboard on paper. There are a few considerations I had going into this and lots of assumption.

  1. I want to make sure this aligns in some way to the existing brand look and feel we can see on safenetwork.tech site - consistency and congruency in brand identity is an important area.
  2. This needs a modular approach to putting together videos that means assets (animations, transitions, composition blocks etc) are extensible to other formats and styles different from the one I am starting with. Short snippets (e.g. simple audiogram with moving imagery and captions) and longer form (e.g. interview style or explainer).
  3. Everything needs to be made accessible and available on github with readme, video and static assets, documentation and some simple tutorials.

All this will be explored over the coming months, ideally with other community member involvement (but I’m committed to leading as much of this effort as possible for now). Prod polish will come over time.

Your points did make me rethink this initial format @Dimitar. The concept can be done with faces or without. It can be done with waveform audiograms. This also can work for non english speakers with some captions, which I’d been thinking about along with translation process. This also opens it up to scale easier as well and will require less effort and logistics to execute. E.g. community members could just send me an audio file answering a few questions. I can then take that and do some post prod on it, produce a final export and associated content variations, push to the repo for that episode, tag the person that will upload to YT etc and Alice’s your aunty!

So I have a reasonable tangible concept for the initial video format to anchor this to and test with. Here is a basic rough concept with the intro to this series format.

https://vimeo.com/505895603

Still needs some polish on animation easing and timing and some other tweaks but should serve the purpose of enabling me to be the first episode guinea pig @JimCollinson :slight_smile:

Appreciate any feedback and suggestions :sweat_smile:

The style using the blocks copied from the safenetwork.tech site means I can focus on creating variations using this style. I’d played around with more flowing, softer shapes and lines but this can be overlaid later if it works. The simple block style for the look and feel will make it easier to create modular and extensible assets as well.

I didn’t do this using OpenShot as I don’t have time to learn some new UI last night. But this will be the focus moving forward so it becomes scalable as the community takes over.

I’ve got some concepts sketched out on paper and some static look and feel ideas I’ll aim to get done over the weekend evenings when the kidlets and wifey are asleep. Some of these are using the block style variations and others for modular ways to generate multiple output from one input. As in I would create the main format for that episode (5-7min video). In the process of doing that and getting that main output I also generate:

  1. A simple static thumbnail for the episode with a powerful callout quote and block style look and feel.
  2. A twitter (can do other SoMe channels as well) dimension audiogram (30-40sec snippet exported as video)
  3. Additional assets that come out of this process (static images, animation modules etc)

So I’ll continue on with this over the weekend and have some more concept variations for people to see later next week.

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The video looks very good! Thank you for your efforts! :thankyou:

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I second that, it’s all these things that will make this project a success. It’s becoming much more than a bunch of Engineers now and that’s great, but we still need the Engineers though :slight_smile: The’re great too.

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This is fabulous, @m3data!!! As they say on the A-Team, I love it when a plan comes together. Looking forward to chatting about this tomorrow too :smile:

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And thanks for yours! We’re all contributing in our own ways where we can.

Community driven efforts are coming into a more mature stage now as Fleming is being polished and anticipation of Maxwell Ramps up. More engineers will come!

Another little audiogram video in tribute to you David, and creative engineering and biommicry. Audio taken from the interview on the Keiser Report

There was some great divergent and convergent discussions on our call! Excited to have some more tangible stuff to show in our next session.

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Quick update on this. I haven’t forgotten about it :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: It is still chugging along, just a little slowly as I’ve had some major changes to work and life over the past several weeks.

I’ve made a little progress with the first experiment on me. Similar to the example ones I’ve already shared. Almost done…

https://vimeo.com/543516755

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Taking very good shape and I love the depth of pure honesty and no-nonsense approach. I see @JimCollinson does this in a similar way and it’s very powerful. I think people can hear it and it matters.

Compare to the big white teeth grinning bouncey up and down could not be more happy and excited typical stuff we see. This approach you are taking to me is strong and I honestly feel the story goes deeper into the listener’s cortex in a more concrete fashion. I mean you are likely to remember the content whereas in the bouncy crowd I think your brain protects you by not listening (self-protection mechanism).

It may just be me, but I like substance and this is right on the mark.

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Yes, great stuff. Some will not like the style, just as we may not like a lot of what’s out there, but I think this style is also good because it should land well with people who want what the Safe Network will deliver.

Since I’ve stopped watching any TV ads (I mute every break), I really notice how demanding and manipulative they are when I occasionally see, and more importantly hear one. So to me, something that is not trying to do this is refreshing and I’m able too think for myself about what I’m hearing while listening.

The video goes black/silent at 4 mins for me, just in case that’s not intentional.

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Me too…

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Yep something wrong here no sound no vision from around 4 mins untill ~6;30 when we get som pleasant landscape but no sound.

But the first 4 mins was good :slight_smile:
Please keep at it.

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I told @m3data I would answer these three simple questions but I still haven’t gotten to it but I want to post this to remind myself and hold myself accountable! Pushing the reminder button now.

This is a great format.

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This was unfinished so the going black at ~4mins is where the edit is up to. I didn’t realise there was some landscape footage further in the timeline that came out in the export. I have the audio for answers to question 2 and 3 (How did you get involved in the community? What is the one application or use case you are most excited about?). Just need to do post prod on it. Will make some time overt the next few weeks.

Once this is done I should have a template with some pattern variations for us to create more.

No rush mate, whenever you have the time and headspace to record.

I think the bouncy marketing videos are still needed, though I am much the same, I switch off to it, I distrust corporate advertising. They are mainly about bombarded the senses, overriding executive function and appealing to cognitive biases. The personal, emotive and anecdotal stuff resonates with different audiences. It can speak to the heart and the head, particularly when they come from people in a community. From a perception point of view this is likely to be seen as more authentic and genuine. Mainly because it is.

Focusing more on the audio is a style that enables people to connect with the emotion in the tone and meaning of the words being spoken, the visuals convey connection with nature and open spaces.

Thanks for all the positive feedback peeps :slight_smile: slow progress. Tiny steps. Compounding effects.

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Has crossed my mind that many of us are easily traced back to our real life’s from out usernames and profiles here.

And there is no option in the setting to change usernames or alias’s in the settings.

Is this an option that can be added to the profile setting s in the forum?

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You can request anonymization of your account by sending a request to the moderators and create a new anonymous account with vpn / protonmail / new user name. :dragon:

Privacy. Security. Freedom

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We can also change the user name for you. Unfortunately it is not a user option to do so. While we do not encourage it as people get used to others known by a certain user name and changing it makes that difficult.

But if a user just has to have it done then it is possible.

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