Liberapay pitch

[fanialivio]

Hi there,

I think it would be a good idea to present Liberapay with a short video (between 30 and 60 seconds long) that explain briefly its features. I do make whiteboard animations here, and I offer to do it for free for Liberapay. Consider it like my personal way to contribute to the project.

If you are interested, please let me know.

Cheers

[Changaco]

For the record: @fanialivio proposed this in an email to support, I suggested discussing the idea here. I think it would be great to have a short video introduction.

@fanialivio What would you need from us?

[aggsol]

I like this idea. So what would it cover in what details? The basic idea, flow of donation, pledges?

[fanialivio]

It is up to you what you will show and how you would like to present Liberapay.
In order to achieve the task, I would need 2 elements:

1. A script (I think it's better if you do it, you know better than me Liberapay). It should be between 75 (equivalent length of 30 seconds) and 150 words (equivalent length of 1 minute).

2. The voice over. First of all: I guess the video will be in english, am I right? With real commissions, this is provided by me. I usually hire an actor (because my first language is Italian, and you can tell it when I speak other languages), but this would costs money, so it is not a valid option. We have two choices:

• If you know an english-native speaker in your network that can manage to read a text and barely interpret a pitch, this would be great.
• If not, we can try to make an open call for an english-speaking volounteer in the internet who can provide for the voice over.

[Changaco]

Ideally the video would have audio tracks for multiple languages, but of course we can start with only one (preferably English, with French as the second choice).

One difficulty is making a video that won't become partially obsolete quickly due to the evolution of the platform. For example the video shouldn't say that all donations are anonymous, because that will probably change (liberapay/liberapay.com#271).

Another difficulty is the diversity of the potential audience. Our users are basically divided into two groups: donors and receivers. Moreover we have various categories of creators/projects: software, art, knowledge, etc. It's not always possible to talk to everybody at once, so we may have to choose a subset of people as the video's target.

[jorgesumle]

Ideally the video would have audio tracks for multiple languages, but of course we can start with only one (preferably English, with French as the second choice).

Subtitles are also important (specially for blind people). I can help with the Spanish audio track and Spanish subtitles.

One difficulty is making a video that won't become partially obsolete quickly due to the evolution of the platform.

For me the video shouldn't talk a lot about the latest features. The one feature we should talk about though is the democratic distribution of donations in teams, that's an awesome feature very unique. Our values are the following:

• democracy
• radical transparency
• the commons (free culture, free software, open data, etc.)

so we may have to choose a subset of people as the video's target.

In my opinion, we should focus on receivers. When a receiver makes an account, they typically convince people to use the platform inviting people to donate them with a Liberapay button. I'm also a donor, and I want to know that most of the money I donate will go to the donor. We should emphasize that a lot. We should say that we're not a company trying to make money (like Patreon), we are a community and a non-profit organization that doesn't charge any fees.

And one thing I want to note. We should use some nice video player like video.js (some browsers don't support subtitles very well). At the same time, we should upload it in other places, but I don't like the idea of embedding a video from a third party software, as it's not neutral, (most times) privacy-respectful and we depend on a third party.

[aggsol]

I would focus on how Liberapay works and how to receive donations first. The interested creator will have it easier to set up an account. His/her audience will follow then.

[fanialivio]

I also think the video should focus more on the general principles of Liberapay and not on its specific features. If you try to write a 150 words text, you will realize how short it is. After all, that will be just a presentation. We can either imagine it like a story telling from a receiver point of view:

• like : "John is a developer involved in a free software project. He would like to spend more time on coding and bugfixing but the lack of funds for his project...blablabla"
  or simply describe the platform:
• like : "Liberapay is a recurrent donation platform that allows you to...blablabla"

Of course I can help in writing the script