Communication Kit - for participants @Tbilisi 24-26 JUNE 2014

Workspaces Spot the Future
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After going through today’s community call session and taking up the actionable to post it a tentative idea of developing a communication toolkit for participants and futurespotters event aims… This is what I propose to take up as a task and seek support from anyone willing to work on the following design …

  • The flow of developing a communication packet for the participants at the pre, post and during the conference, based on the need to address the "specific" and "key" messages ....instantly and effectively,
  • following is the suggestion i propose .. (add comments or queries)

Why Communicate?

  • A communication pack can be developed for the  User's/participant's of the conference that can be posted on the either newly developed Edgeryder profile or update existing one's , that can include
  1. Choose your Message ! ...From fact sheets to videos? create a multimedia packet that addresses your specific needs. == video, pictures, graphics, html5, css
  2. Tell your Story .. ?```` Essentials, Empower, Effective - >content flow 
  3. Case Study in Digital copies with links to ....Participants campaign/idea/project..
  4. Photographs of the candidate and campaign/idea/project.. 
  5. Consider offering several versions for download audio files recorded jingles, adwords for the participants that can be used for web, 
  6. Links and images Newspaper or other media excerpts that the participant/user was mentioned.
  7. A Question and Answer interview transcribed in text for printing on hardcopy newsletters or online newsletters.. covering participant/user's motivation to be a part of the conference and futurespotter .

Navigating Communication … But where and what ?

  1. At the event .. Portrait photo and related web links can be collected at the start and publish on ER platform or Futurespotters 
  2. During the event ... Participants can be asked to write a letter to themselves in the future (either next two days/or a week) describing the candidate's intended actionable planned for their campaign/idea/project "in this conference" or "edgeryder/futurespotter platform"... and write a little biography (100 words) with it.  
  3. After the event ... a Video Podcasts can be made that involves different participation and engagement of the participant at the event , where the material is collected from the participant himself or friends/people around that can be email it to the user/participant and/or uploaded to the Edgeryder profile ->

How to Communicate?

  • Making sure audiences are made to understand the nature and benefits of the Message...(Develop User's/participant's of the conference an "Edgeryder Profile" on the platform (if they have one, update them links, projects) 
  • Creating and maintaining new channels of communication..(links to profiles of User's/participant's of the conference various social/community online or offline)
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Meet Futurespotters media guy for Tbilisi!

The thing is: if you’re coming to Futurespotters in Tbilisi, why not take to opportunity of having @Aden there help you with your project communication? Why not improve the way you profile yourself as a change maker using a well designed multimedia package, with peer help included?

We are so often held capture by day to day work that we lack the time or money to have even a professional photo taken. Or a sharp video, which is not easy to pull off!

The only thing I would add is that the Communication Kit would be made available for whoever chooses to have it done- in digital format and up for being posted, taken away, re-mixed, used for any purposes which would further their project. Who’s in?

@Inge, @Khatuna, can you think of a professional photographer in Tbilisi up for joining in? What would be the daily rate?

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not sure if I got it

am not sure if I got it right or not !

so the intended target of the communication kit is to repackage or to profile some of the initiatives /change makers during the event ?

and u need a team of 6 ? or how do u plan doing that ? how to help?

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Profile, Projects, Portfolio

Thanks @hazem for the comment …

Yes initially the idea is to be simple but effective. Making profiles that leads into participant’s activities.

This method initially is to gather data or profile around the conference and then design, develop flow of information flows through consensus and debate… (for example: i would like to test live radio broadcast of the sessions at the conference, rather having live video streamings of the session). After profiles, the links to projects either on edgeryders platform or to their own platform can then be linked  to any of the fab labs or lote-4 labs and share feedback.

The process of developing content on rich media to simple instagrams or snapchats being passed on, any medium or media that helps mobilize resources for individual/group projects, which is and will be a continuous process, therefore - starting point i suggest is using twitter, youtube or facebook or from any other platform that can be presented easily on networks like newsle (paper.li) (in order to showcase or present projects description, outcomes and hopefully live tracking of activities via various rss information feeds)

I aim that from this process, we should be able to have few communication templates ready … that addresses issues of communication from planning, execution and managing group activities (especially when establishing communication channels between online and on ground enviornments).

Starting from Profiles seems to be a good starting point, gather projects and group them in terms of people places and other variables,  and lastly develop the portfolio to send messages to key internal and external stakeholders that can support complete participants/groups projects.

And as interest of the community starts, and data is getting organized then we can bring more tools, features and versions to the communication kit.

Well, on how to proceed on it … i feel we should have a hangout in coming one or days for anyone who is joining the conference and is interested in taking participation on “conference newsroom” at futurespotter.

Perhaps on the coming community call, a slot for this can be used for discussing further on the issue … six people i proposed, mainly because of that, 2 person would be copywriter (searching news feeds/RSS and linking them) , 2 person Audio/video recording interviews, b-rolls, 1 person editing material, 1 person publishing posts/web admin.

Any suggestions, advises or comments … is welcome

People who are interested in participating to develop communication kit, can post here and possibly reflect on what has been suggested. And also in the coming community call, we can hangout on this topic too …

 

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Keep it simple and reuse

I would suggest not being too ambitious with cross media, the time is limited and conferences are messy events. Profiling is super-useful, but I would suggest integrating it with Edgeryders (platform) profiles as much as possible. It means the information is maintained, fully integrated with the rest of the ER ecosystem etc.

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Keep it very simple

and stay away from mixed media. Our task is more basic here. For me the communication kit that every participant leaves with consists of :

  1. A professional set of photos: beautiful individual shots in high resolution

  2. A video interview in this style, as visually consistent as possible with it please.

  3. A written description of what they do, the story behind it, and the call for action. It should be short. less than an A4.

This seems simple, especially the third one. But it is not.

It requires us to describe what we do, get feedback and help one another refine the description until it is very clear and simple to understand. For someone who has less than a minute to spare. And possibly doesnt even really understand your language.

Or more often than not, does not believe the facts presented because they contradict his or her world view.

Screen shot 2014-06-14 at 7.51.36 PM.png639×957 467 KB

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The Art and Science of Viral Videos

The video Vake Park Occupation is very well made. I found an article that present a good guideline to make such videos for inbound marketing …

check the link, The Art and Science of Viral Videos

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Hey, how’s it going?

Hi @Aden, hope you’re back home and rested :slight_smile:

I want to ask if you need help with releasing the first examples of comm kits after the futurespotters event? I know you did interviews + we have beautiful photos of almost everyone at the event & their contact info / twitter handles etc.

We’re missing the written description I believe? Any way we can work together on this?

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Some Examples of Com Kit

Hey Noemi I am good and healthy :) 

I have been working into how the communication kit first prototype might look like, I came across three varied examples …

First is a short video interview, with cross fading with participants projects visuals online (eg website or other graphics) and pictures of the participants at the conference… (i only interview 5 people, first draft showreel is …

Second, using audio podcasts, and pictures of the events to correspond and make a story that emerged out from the conference sessions … example of which can be seen here … (first draft example … I can extract more such story podcasts and connect patterns from it)

Note: the audio of both the videos can become more better, also video quality can be improved too

lastly, I have been trying to connect these profiles and sessions at the storybuilder, which firstly I had been playing with the portal and beginning to get hang of it … this is the storybuilder link, which can be developed collaboratively …

I also have one complete session recording of EarthOS session @Matthias session on first day , which was recorded on a studio style,  I have only done one such recording, this also gives an idea to check and test communication methods the viability, usable and effectiveness for speakers documentation at the conference)  

These are some of the examples, which i like to share and discuss what does the community thinks? and Noemi yes you are right about writing descriptions, although i tried some quick research on the platform of the participants and trying to visualize by showing participants projects websites or some videos/pics/texts in the background. 

Moving on to completing the actionable, driven from the storytelling/communication kit hackaton at the conference, I could not gather a lot of video interviews or b-roll BUT enough to test different prototypes for building conference communication kit templates for varied size and nature of conferences. (producing 3 profile videos of participants, 3 to 4 visual stories of combined sessions and 1 complete 30 mins video documentary about the event) 

Support in crowd editing, crowd copywritings and sorting, publishing media content on the platforms would be highly liked :)) also the process of co-working on this task could either be turn into a group based learning activity under course data journalism- using radio, video and mobile  … 

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Much too complex: fast and simple wins the day.

What we need is really just a filled in table with links to the right material for each participant: Name |Twitterhandle| Project URL| Photo| Video interview | Text describing their initiative/challenge, what they are doing next and a call for action from the reader.

This either happens this week or it will no longer be relevant imho. So keep it simple, better raw footage that is relevant now than too edited material that is too late. Also, like Noemi I feel the video style/colours should be consistent with the futurespotters style set by Sam’s footage…

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Thanks!

This is interesting work, albeit in a different format and aesthetics than the ones @SamMuirhead did in April. I notice you like to “burn” a little the colors?

My 2 cents:

  1. the first video seems a bit disconnected as the speaker is telling about their conference experience, yet in the background you half-learn about their project (it’s too small frame to get anything). It’s not a profile of the person per se…

  2. second video I like much better, yet it’s focused on insights about Edgeryders and Futurespotters - could go well as the overall video.

  3. the third - using the storytelling portal I think should go in a final round, when we have collected all the materials. We can then do a puzzle like exercise and fit everything together, and see what comes of it and if it’s a helpful template for future events.

What I suggest to get done this week as Futurespotters is already cooling off: it’s either now or never, is upload the materials in the Futurespotters aftermath group, tentatively:

  1. upload the 3 video profiles you have - interviews (minimal editing work, keep it simple) + transcript excerpts written below + 1 photo of the person (choose from the existing albums).

  2. upload 1 or 2 videos you have or are working on for the overall Futurespotters project and event experience (your 2nd video falls in here i believe)

Works?

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Works good

Hey Noemi, yea that works well, well i can keep the color combination bright , i like to play with contrast.

Ill upload the three profile while keeping it consistent with Sam videos. I tried to do that, but i didnt had graphics of spot the future to go for it.

@Nadia, most of the participants attending the conference had already been interviewed in other conference, some of the new people i interviewed but not all. That is why, i try to make the second type of movie … Using participant directory which Noemi made, is the list I am following.

Will upload more videos in this week

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technical points

I don’t have much time to add much right now but just a couple of suggestions for the videos from a technical perspective.

-color grading: really just go pretty natural here, I would suggest just adjusting the raw footage for basic things like consistent white balance and exposure but not increasing the saturation or crushing the blacks.

-effects: (eg. vignette, side-by-side tiny videos) can be pretty distracting. For example when someone is talking and you want to show images of what they’re talking about, you can simply cut to the images and then cut back to the speaker. It’s very difficult for the viewer to follow two small images at once.

-dimensions:  The black lines either side of images or around videos don’t need to be there - use the whole frame. if you’re shooting 1920x1080 or 1280x720 (16:9) but you’re using 4:3 photos, you can just crop the photos to fit, there are plenty of pixels to play with. Make the video footage fit within the frame as well, those black spaces are just wasted pixels.

@aden you mentioned the idea of a 30min documentary video… I would strongly advise against this. Very few people would actually watch a 30min video popping up in their facebook feed, and regardless, it’s a huge amount of work. If you throw together a 30min piece very quickly then the quality won’t be very high, and if you put in the time and effort required it will exhaust your/edgeryders resources and the video will be released far too late to be relevant. The shorter videos can be shared more easily, and if you want to create a longer narrative then making a youtube playlist works well, you can also make a couple of ‘joining’ videos to upload to fill in any information gaps if you need.

I’ve been super busy but I’m looking forward to catching up on STF when I’m back home in a day or two, can’t wait to see everything!

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These are all sound points

I recommend we strictly follow them.

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Profile Interviews

Keeping in view the specification shared by @samMuirhead (thanks for the quick tips), this time I try to be consistent with it. In terms of audio I tried to level out the background sound (if this is not good, i can re-edit the audio further). @Noemi let me know if these videos works…I try not to burn the colors :slight_smile:

Ulrike von Ruecker - Cairo, Project Co-working

Anuka Lomidze - Tbilisi, Caucasus ArtMag

Uri Rosenberg - Tel Aviv, Activist

Lilit Khurshudyan - Yeveran, Internee UNDP Armenia

Leonid Mujiri - Tbilisi, Freelance Professional Photographer

Alexandre Sandro - Tbilisi, Graduate Student

And also I like to elaborate to what I said earlier about developing a documentary was not to make it as one story but using collection of stories. Rather produced by single editor/producer why not crowd it and develop learning models from it by visuals.

And, to clarify about the first draft videos that I edited were on a studio software, ‘wirecast’ to test mixing multi video feeds. I used this process because for developing templates for communication kit within gatherings that helps materialize messages into actions, I was testing some methods and share it on ER. On the previous cuts, the graphics were not the priority in the first draft, but to test if different video feeds of web shots, interviews and pics could be used in one frame and still doesnt look bad as in television shows. Which I gather it has not cleared this time, perhaps next time :))

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Set up the wiki?

Hi, ok better I think, but I have a hard time understanding the stories through - there’s no beginning or end to them  eg if it were punctuated by interviewer’s questions that take the viewer somewhere. although some of the things mentioned are relevant to many in the community.

Can you make them public on google and then start the wiki @Nadia suggested above so we have them in 1 page? I can help with adding the photos and key quotes on it if you get it started, as well as past interviews…

First Uri is actually Uli.

The visual quality of the last 3 is very blury, not sure if it works…

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Videos posts

Extending media wiki  for futurespotters at telly, three final profile videos, @noemi i incorporated questions within videos to have a flow of the profile videos. Also i checked the spelling again its right,  Uri checked from his fb page, this is different from Ulrike, whose nick name is Uli, from Egypt.

@SamMuirhead, here are the public google links to the videos, if u can add them to the youtube playlist that would be nice, as i dont have the account details

Ulrike von Ruecker - Cairo, Project Co-working

Uri Rosenberg - Tel Aviv, Activist

Anuka Lomidze - Tbilisi, Caucasus ArtMag

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This didn’t end up happening as planned

…so moving on.