How can the BI best leverage the community?

I’d like to figure out a way for us to help the Blender Institute leverage us (the community) and perhaps develope a guide or strategy for them to market to us. After all who knows what we need in order to give our support better than us.

While Gooseberry will probably be a main focus as it was/is the most recent, any info about the past projects will also be helpful. For this to work critisisms of Gooseberry will happen, but try to phrase it in a way that isn’t insulting, and always add what could’ve made you change your mind.

The strategy of GB clearly was enough to generate a lot of donations, but it also clearly missed the mark for some people. Are there things that could’ve changed your mind?

For example some people liked the dramatic “change the industry” approach. Some wanted more hard information and definitive answers. There were several good ideas in the old Gooseberry thread, maybe we can collect them here and boil it all down and do a little market research for the BI.

Just paper clear transparency could work.

Hell, I bet people would be willing to fund an accountant additional to the regular needs of a Open Project if it meant everything was laid down crystal clear and the devs could just go and do what they do best: Develop.

Someone brought up focus groups, perhaps this site could have a invitation-only section where you would have individuals that would be trusted to give useful feedback and suggestions have an intensive and in-depth chat with the developers (of course this also implies that could be banned from that section as well if your involvement devolves into a negative and pessimistic spiral).

The benefit then for others is that they can read what’s going on and see it as an example of how community/dev interaction can and should be done, thus being something that will provide a benefit for everyone.

Make users more aware of ways to contribute: esp. bug reports and documentation.

Make better use of popular communication channels: IRC is not an appropriate way to communicate with an average user anymore. BN, BA, official blog, twitter, facebook would be better. BI’s presence on all of those is minimal.

More transparency about how BI works, where the money goes, etc. I’ve been using Blender for about 10 years and I still have no real idea about how development is organized, where these open movies come from, etc.

Truthfully there are a lot of good models for this type of activity today on Kickstarter. Projects that generate a lot of enthusiasm, pull in a lot of money, and have a lot of people excited about a common goal. They all make effective use of PR and social media to get the word out, two things Blender is fairly bad at from what I can see.

Is there even an official marketing / PR person? Even a volunteer? How is anyone supposed to learn how to contribute? Just stumble across the information? Will a gnome emerge from the darkness one night and whisper it into their ear? Organized outreach!!

Agreed on several points Kemmler.

A centralized place to get up to date accurate information would be ideal. Right now it seems to be collected from several different sites, immense long running threads, someone remembering hearing about something a while ago…

Perhaps we could figure out a framework to organize users that already fallow specific parts of blender to essentially become “reporters” and that info could be collated into a bi weekly podcast or google hangout. There was mention of something like this in regards to gooseberry in the cloud. Perhaps user volunteers could piggyback off of that set up?

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/Process/Module_Owners/List

Looking at the official list, it seems like there are lots of places the community could help. There are almost no user members (is that list accurate or out of date?) How does one become a user member?

I think the PR thing is very important. Often the way the message is delivered can have a big effect on how people react to the information in the message. There are many studies done on it (Andrew Price mentions this kind of thing frequently on his podcast) My main goal is to set up a framework on how to “pitch” to the blender community.

For example: don’t just announce a new feature. Explain how it is important, how it will help workflow, or if not explain how doing it will take care of long standing issues and allow future development to be freed up for other more exciting features.

The strategy of GB clearly was enough to generate a lot of donations, but it also clearly missed the mark for some people. Are there things that could’ve changed your mind?

It’s the name. To “Goose” someone means to “pinch” or “rob” them. Who wants to contribute to being robbed? Now if the name was “Rockets To The Moon” then we would know that we are getting spaceships and explosions instead of cute cuddly animals.

@Atom, (assuming your not trolling) are you saying that the subject matter and character designs put you off GB? If it was presented as:

“$200 million dollar movies can barely bridge the Uncanny Valley, using cartoon type characters will allow us to focus on establishing a pipeline and take care of much needed basic upgrades, leading to more ambitious projects down the line. Basic pipeline and general polish first, so we don’t bite of more than we can chew.”

Ton said something similar, but it was not part of the initial “pitch”. It came much later as part of the Redit AMA (I think). But if people are put off by the cartoony (as many stated they were) you can hardly expect them to track down and read an AMA for a project they are not really into.

I think if it was packed into the initial pitch it would have done a lot to mitigate some negative reactions.

I don’t want to beat a dead horse about the importance of having a complete script before even thinking of crowd funding. Again, I liken it to designing a house. You don’t restrict your design just because the materials and tools are not available. You make them available.

Right now they’re doing the same things they did in the past - make a partial script and anything goes from there. The Blender experts, artists, instead of focusing on their respective crafts are obligated to participate in the script development. Meaning, waste of manhours.

The director and the crew are among the luckiest people on earth right now. They’re having fun, they’re learning and making money all at the same time. These guys should even pay for this like a tuition fee or something. They’re not following anything.

So to me the ideal thing is spend time working with a script first for at least a year or so. Make two, three scripts or so, then chose one.

Then start the funding drive. Isn’t these movies are supposed to be about? If the tools required to develop certain scenes in the script are not available, then make them.

This horse is dead and starting to smell. It is not possible to write a script without recieving money with which you can buy food to put on the table for yourself and your children. And how should one fund the writing of a script without a funding drive. The bf doesn’t have deep enough pockets to commission a script without external funding, unless they would let devs go. I think we all agree that would be a bad idea.

About your suggestion that “these guys” should pay a tuition to be allowed to work on the script. I hope this is a joke, because I don’t even know how to respond if it isn’t…

Uh… You do realise Gooseberry is an actual fruit right? Maybe it’s a Europe only thing, but we had them in our garden. They’re really big and sweet, I loved them. We call them crossberies in Dutch because there’s a light cross pattern on them…

@PhysicGuy, I don’t think the horse is dead, but he may have gotten out of the barn :slight_smile:

What about a pre-fund for scripting, or a contest where the opportunity to submit scripts based on chosen guidelines by the BI and director. Spec scripts are a big part of Hollywood. The chosen script could then be optioned by the BI.

Nobody’s asking anyone to starve in order to produce a script, but there are other options. The more the community is included, the greater the connection to the project.

Asking for money based on very little information is a tough sell. It worked in the past for the open movies, but times have changed. Kickstarter has spoiled people with detailed descriptions and extensive prize packages (although blender development trumps any prize).

There is a large talented community for the BI to lean on and use, with many people wanting to help and be more involved.

Unfortunately story has been widely criticised for most of the open movies. What if we as a community could help with that? What if we could set up a framework we may be even able to test it with a community micro short movie as a proof of concept.

Spec scripts are written by people who have another source of income, so that they can write for free on the gamble that they can sell it. My brother in law writes scripts commisioned by a production company and in his spare time he writes a spec script, mostly to practice writing in different genres. This does mean that writing the spec script takes forever, because paid work takes precedence over unpaid work.

I don’t know the statistics, but I would be interested to know what percentage of spec scripts actually get optioned.

@PhysicsGuy,
yup that’s what I’m saying could or should be done. The scripts so far have been pretty experimental and wierd (I’m guessing it’s a European thing :)). So maybe it could be tried a different way.

The good thing is that scripts could be worked on concurrently to other open movies. All that is needed are the guidelines from Ton (subject/theme/developement focus, etc) and a schedule:

First draft (Ton pics the ones he thinks could work)

Rewrites/second draft (Ton pics/asks for changes)

Continued on until the final draft that the director pics.

Obviously it would be more complex than that and the director could/should be involved. Lots of opportunities for community involvement, voting on theme or genre, main charcters etc. I’m not saying vote on everything (death by committee) but some stuff sure.

The point is that last time didn’t go as desired, instead of complaining, can we come up with ways to improve next time. Can we think of community generated rewards? Stuff like that, then boil it all down into a workable framework on how to pitch it to the community in the most effective way.

I’m sure the amount of scripts that don’t get picked up is staggering. You hear plenty of anecdotes about how every waiter and bussboy in Hollywood has a script they’re trying to sell.

Other than the bf-funboard (function discussion) to email in, is there a structure like Maniphest to contribute to a UI or tool development discussion? So that a broader cross section of people can be involved in a moderated fashion instead of the BA forum’s echo chamber/shouting room?

@erroll: perhaps you can just work that procedure out on paper and send it to Ton at some point. If not for Gooseberry than for a future project. I think he would be interested in looking at different writing models.

As to the weirdness of the open movie scripts. I thought ED was pretty weird, but BBB, Sintel and ToS were pretty straight forward. I would also not really consider ToS to be a European movie as the script has Ian written all over it. But he has his own weirdness.

Honestly BBB is the most commercially successful non commercial thing made with Blender. It appears everywhere, and my kids love it. I guess now Caminandes will fill that role. Not sure how that gets the weird slur?

Studios choose their scripts from the hundreds, often thousands of scripts they receive, all of which have to pass a first reading, which usually means only the 10-20 first pages, because if by then You haven’t got the reader’s attention, it means its no good!

Except for some very well known writers, and even so, writers never get paid to write a script, they get paid when the job is done and the script is accepted, not a penny before, with maybe the exception of translating books or theater plays to script.

Script writing is a labor of love, You do it because You love it, and if it gets accepted, then the money comes in, if You do otherwise, You can be sure that the said writers will milk the cow as much as possible before delivering, We’re only humans after all!

My daughter (3) loves BBB and my son (6) loves Caminandes.

I’d like it to be a collaboration, not just some random user (me) telling Ton how it should be done. The point is there are alternatives.

“Weird” may not be the best word, and I should have said “most of them”. BBB and Caminandes are great and my nephews love them :slight_smile: Sintel is beautiful, and one of the reasons I use blender, but the ending… the European comment was meant as a joke (perhaps I’ll avoid those)

So would you guys like to see the open movies target a specific demographic?

“Weird” certainly wasn’t meant as a slur! Perhaps not the best word choice. Apologies if it offended anyone.