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Involver: How Nonprofits Can Create Video Campaigns for Social Networks.
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Open Source, Open Standards Video
Voting Summary (Elevator Pitch):
We are to Google, AOL and YouTube what public television is to the big networks. We are a nonprofit, fully open source and open standards, dedicated to creating the next Firefox of web video.
Supporting organization:
Participatory Culture Foundation
URL:
www.getdemocracy.com
City:
Worcester
State/Region:
MA
Country:
USA
Give and Take: Describe your project's top three needs
Type of expertise needed:
Other
Fund-raising is our biggest need, by far. We would love to hear from people with connections to angel investors willing to support our cause.
Type of expertise needed:
Marketing/Media Expertise We could use more help building buzz for our work, such as a truly effective, grassroots marketing and public relations campaign.
Type of expertise needed:
Management Expertise We’re unlike a for-profit venture in that we cannot reward hard-working employees with bonus money, yet we yearn for a way to motivate our employees. Thoughts?
Project Vision Statement & Potential Social Impact:
The Participatory Culture Foundation, a 501c(3) non-profit organization located in Worcester, Mass., has a single mission: creating free and open access to video content on the internet.
We are a team of about a dozen designers, programmers and video enthusiasts dedicated to creating an open-source and nonprofit alternative to all the corporate goliaths who recently have flocked to the web. Our core product is The Democracy Player (soon to be renamed Miro), a much acclaimed desktop application that can be used to organize and watch existing videos on personal computers and to search for, find and view other Internet videos.
With its supporting suite of desktop video applications, The Democracy Player is helping revolutionize internet video in much the same fashion that the iPod has changed the way people download and catalog music.
We are to Google, AOL and YouTube what public television is to HBO and Cinemax. Like the purveyors of public television, we believe that the airwaves should be as free and as open as possible, with consumers able to view content with limited commercial influence and to freely distribute video content of their own without the punishing cost of network, cable and pay-per-view models.
The for-profit video sharing sites seek to build huge, powerful, internet-driven networks that someday may rival CBS, ABC and HBO. We recognize that there are benefits to this, and we in fact are developing ad-supported revenue models to support our growth. Nonetheless, our mission runs counter to rampant commercialization.
We support free enterprise, but also believe that at least a part of the internet should remain largely noncommercial. That’s why we are dedicated to spreading free and open video on the web. We are creating tools for broader, deeper engagement with internet television. We're working to ensure that the new mass medium of internet TV will remain as open and independent as blogging and podcasting.
Sustainability (financial) model:
Our work has been made possible by seed funding from the Rappaport Family Foundation and Mitch Kapor’s Open Source Applications Foundation. In addition we have been backed by other foundations including the Surdna Foundation and the Knight Foundation.
This initial funding in 2005-2006 has allowed us to build a growing user base now averaging nearly 200,000 downloads a month. Based on those numbers, we believe the Democracy Player is being used by more than 500,000 people – a number that is sure to grow as we begin to ratchet up our marketing efforts.
Thus, we are focused on delivering version 1.0 of the player, announcing a new name, and gaining additional financial support to fund much-needed growth.
Life as a nonprofit has its advantages – and its drawbacks. As a nonprofit we are free to stay true to our mission of creating open source applications that avoid over commercialization. At the same time we face increasing needs for additional funding to support our growth.
Our burn rate is small, only about $70,000 a month. However, our constant need to raise money as a nonprofit detracts from our No. 1 priority of creating great open source software.
That’s why we currently are in the throes of a major fund-raising and partnership campaign targeting major corporate players, high net-worth individuals and traditional foundations.
Our goal is to raise just under $1 million to fund our next 12 months of operation. We have one commitment from a donor willing to take a secondary role in a major funding package. In addition, we are busy creating revenue models through partnerships with larger for-profit video sharing sites. We have developed an extensive knowledge base since our inception, and believe we have much to offer larger corporate players eager to gain market share in the hottest segment of the internet.
Potential obstacles:
Fund-raising is our biggest challenge. The for-profit video space is extremely well funded, making it more expensive for us to keep up. However, it is important to note that Mozilla faced a similar challenge when it launched Firefox to compete against Internet Explorer.
Today, Mozilla and Firefox are a runaway success. Mozilla quickly learned that a large segment of the Internet community wanted a browser that was open standards and open source. Over time, contributions and financial support grew. We believe the same will happen with us.
Resource Needs:
We can always use better hardware and such. However, our biggest need is in the area of staff resources. As a nonprofit, we operate on a lean budget, which means we are considerably understaffed. We need to raise enough additional funding to support the hiring of several new programmers.
Key Milestones:
- Gain additional financial support from angel investors.
- Close on several grants that seem promising
- Release version 1.0 of the Democracy Player
- Build extensive marketing campaign around planned name change to “Miro.”
- Expand user base; increase downloads of the desktop application to more than 250,000 per month.
- Leverage user base to create grassroots buzz.
- Seek a long-term partner with compatible goals and philosophies
Project Summary:
We are seizing an opportunity to build a new, open mass medium of online television – through the use of Internet video. Through our nonprofit software development we’re making watching internet video channels as easy as watching TV and broadcasting a channel just as easy.
Our project is relevant because:· Television is the defining medium of our culture. There's now an opportunity to create a television culture that is fluid, diverse, exciting, and beautiful.
· Our platform is open-source and built on open-standards. This matters because it keeps video flowing freely. When you lock people in to closed, proprietary services, you lose everything that makes the Internet work.
· Television is moving online. Will it be the same narrow, top-down cultural stagnation that we see on traditional television? All the major media and computer companies are clamoring to control video online. If they succeed it will be a disaster.
· We don't have to spend years playing catch-up. Open-source and open- standards can lead this fight for the future of video online. We’re not in this to get rich. We’re in this because of our deep commitment to fully open and not-for-profit video distribution on the Web.
Comments
Built on open (not free) standards?
You write: "Our platform is open-source and built on open-standards. This matters because it keeps video flowing freely. When you lock people in to closed, proprietary services, you lose everything that makes the Internet work."
Your proposal does not contain a single word about patents or free audio/video codecs/formats, and your website advertises playback of formats that are clearly neither open nor free (f you could send me the specs for the various windows media audio/video codecs, that'd be great, thanks, and the same for Sorensen which is often found in Quicktime).
The decision not even to try and promote free and open formats is disappointing and doesn't really justify the grand rhetoric you're employing IMHO.
One the point about open standards
I am not connected with the Democracy Player project, but my understanding of its build is that it uses Video LAN player as the backend to play all its videos. Video LAN player supports nearly every video format and is itself an Open Source program.
Just because it can be played, doesn't mean it's open or free
Codec and Format Patents
I voted for this project. Some time ago I downloaded the Democracy Player, but so far I don't get into internet video much at all. Still, I support having an open source player and other video tools.
As for proprietary formats, etc., there is anoher commercial venture that goes about providing a video service where one can upload a video in most any format and the service goes about generating clones of it in all the various formats out there, and the end user can choose which format they prefer to view it in.
As for licesning, I'm sure that this project can pursue proper licensing, and if they're turned down for some particular format, there'll probably be another format that'll work on the user's system. Perhaps this project might be able to provide for converting proprietary formated materials to a non-proprietary format for distribution. Seems like a winner to me! Unless you actually like watching commercials in front of your video downloads...
Peopleunit
i voted for this
this was my top choice.
This is one of my top 7
This is one of my top 7 proposals. Good luck!
Top Project
This is definitely a top project!