Hi all,
I agree with Anvay on the fact that having a repository of OOo videos
would be helpful for a lot of people. If they are licensed under a
Creative Commons license they can be re-used for different marketing
campaigns and other purposes.
I also agree with Sagar as he points out that professionals film makers
do a very good job and that it would be good to try to get them to
videos for OOo. But we will need a budget to pay for their professional
work and probably we could only afford very few videos.
Mozilla did a video contest for Firefox back in 2006. They wanted short
videos (30 sec) promoting Firefox and they tried to get everybody to
participate (users, amateur video makers, film students and professional
film makers) and had ¨big¨ prizes as incentive.
You can take a look at http://www.firefoxflicks.com/ and see the winning
videos, the target and rules of the contest and the prizes. Firefox also
collaborated with different film festivals and got sponsors for the
prizes. Maybe we could think about this.
I personally think that it isn't necessary to have paid professional
film makers, as the production costs for producing video have
dramatically gone down in the past years. The alternative of having a
professional production still remains. But I think that it would be
better to have less professional videos coming from more different
cultures, than having a standard video for all cultures. We can increase
the quality of the videos if we target film students and young artists,
who have time and want to experiment, and might be motivated by the
prize and the honour. If they're already using OOo or if they start
using it because of the contest doesn't matter (IMHO) as long as their
videos are good. We could also get the film makers in touch with people
with successful OOo stories.
Let me know your thoughts.
cheers,
Rosana
On 01/09/09 06:12, Sagar Shankar wrote:
Interesting points from Anvay. My two cents on this
- We need videos. But do we need videos from individual users telling us
how OO changed their lives? This where I differ from the suggestion of
soliciting videos from users. I think the videos that we need should focus
on the use of OO by communities and enterprises in their day-to-day work. I
think a video where a CTO or a small business owner talks about how they
have replaced Office with OO, how that has impacted their work and
productivity, and how other people can get on board would be more useful.
For communities, it could be video documentaries on the use of OO in
schools, in government offices and interacting with the users with the focus
being as above - replacement of Office, impact on work & productivity, and
how more people can use it
- How do we give incentives for people to do this? Again, do we want
users to do this for us? How many people can actually bring out a
well-produced, good looking video. My experience seeing home videos is that
there is a reason people are certified cinematographers and editors :).
Let's think of this differently. Let us ask our users to give us their
stories or stories that they know about - wrt usage in business and
communities. Let us shortlist the best and the most moving stories. Let us
then collect sponsor to get "professionals" to actually go out and shoot
these videos. Are we in marketing or not? Then we do need spit and polish on
our materials. It might be corporate-ish but thats whats needed to gain
credibility. Let us contrast the following
- User video posted by Anvay
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dury0VEJT3U
- Corporate video on rural internet services
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=aZ5QG65FKzk<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dury0VEJT3U>
- Which one would you prefer seeing again, and which message would
stick in your mind?
Hope this fuels the discussion further
Thanks,
Sagar
On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 4:54 AM, Anvay Lonkar <anvay.lon...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
First let me introduce myself. I am an Indian software engineer, working in
Singapore. I have been scouting around OOo mailing list's for some time
looking for way's to contribute, and would like to share some thoughts on
this video contest and more generally on promoting OOo via video's.
1. Do we need to promote OOo via medium like video's?
Simple answer: Yes.
As far as my perspective goes, the true reach of OOo right now is amongst
the relatively "tech savvy" crowd. If we truly want OOo to reach wider
audience's we need to more and more mediums to reach them. Blog's,
pamphlets, banners etc are good - but nothing touches the human psyche more
than audio-visual, especially the type of crowd we are targeting.
Imagine if we had a repository of video's (mind you not tutorial's)
promoting OOo. Not only listing out the good things but comparing it to
other such licensed products out there (read MS Office). It would be so
easy
for a volunteer to pick up one or two of such video's and putting up his
case for OOo as a presentation at his office, university- or even at home.
2. Importance of contest -
It is very important that such video's are viewed as being presented by
peer's rather than as by an organization .
Take the example of this video :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dury0VEJT3U
Highly lacking in content, this video is still able to put a point across
that the user was highly impressed by OOo ( we could ignore the last part's
of the video though :) )
By enforcing the framework of a contest we can also ensure quality levels.
3. Is it important to promote the contest amongst people who are not very
familiar with OOo?
Even though the thought of enticing new users with this contest is
tempting,
i feel the real target for this contest should be current users- who are
well aware of the strength's and weaknesses of OOo. The aim being creation
of video promotion material. I am not sure how much we will be able to
attract new user's to OOo by asking them to make a video about it. (Works
for Sony as they are trying to sell camera's :) )
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