pdc streaming kickstarter

Looks really good. I am glad I have my $100 saved still

the one question I would have: is there some way to download the streamable material (since it seems like the $100 level would only grant you access to the material in a steamable format). That way I can listen to it while I work in my garden/farm and gain insights into how I should have set everything up

I seem to remember that in the past you setup your kickstarter campaigns where people could promote the campaign and get a kick back for the people they funneled to it. Are you planning on doing that again for this one? I will promote this campaign anyways but if I can reduce my cost for it that would be so much better

M Kaer wrote:
The reward are a bit complicated, and maybe a few too many levels for contribution.  But given the sophistication of the existing community, I think you will be ok.  First timers might be a bit overwhelmed...

I am a little worried about that also.  

I just had a long talk with josiah.  

The key is that digital download of 220 hours of video is about 100 gigs.  We talked about many different approaches for server loads and bandwidth, and support, and ...    the bottom line is that HD streaming is now so easy and we have a really smooth solution.  But the "tiny download" thing is tough.  I think we hashed through about two dozen ways to manage it ...   and we have a way, but it comes at a cost.  So we thought "just charge a bit more for that option".

And then comes the thing that M Kaer mentions above of "maybe a few too many levels for contribution" ---- that is an issue for any kickstarter.   It's like kickstarter 101 - don't have too many different rewards.  

So after heaps and heaps of discussion we thought of:

$120:  same as the $100 level, but available as "tiny download".  

And then at the $150 level we add the tiny download option.

Click on the thumbs up for this post if that sounds like it will work for you all.

paul wheaton wrote:

gordon walton wrote:Raise the price of all rewards  $50 and higher is my $0.02.  

$60, $90, $110, $175, $250 (the rest are fine)

Most people are going to go for the $50 package and you have costs to deliver the video.

Good luck!

I was thinking that damn near everybody was gonna go for the $100 or $150 level.  

Are you thinking that you are going to go for the $50 level?  Maybe we should start a poor man's poll.  

What level are you all gonna support?  What level would you all support if the prices were different?

if this is the 'poor man's poll' ... here's the answer of a 'poor woman': yes I would go for the $50 level, my budget doesn't allow for more. I.m.o. the rewards are very very good!
So I think Gordon is right: you can raise the prices (but don't raise the $50 to $60 ... maybe $55 ... )

I like it.

I will be a $100 backer when it goes live.

Thanks Paul

I admit I didn't closely read either the campaign literature (can one say literature when it is several digital pages or is there another word for this?) or the replies on this thread. However, the campaign looks effective to me.

About the rewards. What really got me were the Candy and Thanks levels. It was wonderful to see all that valuable information offered at very low supporter levels. Makes one's heart swell to know there are still people out there who practice generosity.

K Putnam wrote:I also think you could reduce the levels of contribution and eliminate everything under the "one full day" level.

So you think I should take out the $15 level?

Lots of good feedback.  Great descriptions of the rewards but takes a bit to find any given item as the list is generous.  Can the brief rewards section have active links to the full description on the page?  See example below.

Bernard Welm wrote:the one question I would have: is there some way to download the streamable material (since it seems like the $100 level would only grant you access to the material in a steamable format). That way I can listen to it while I work in my garden/farm and gain insights into how I should have set everything up

I think I just posted about that.  

We are thinking of offering all the stuff at the $100 level as "tiny download" for $120.  Will that work for you?

Bernard Welm wrote:I seem to remember that in the past you setup your kickstarter campaigns where people could promote the campaign and get a kick back for the people they funneled to it. Are you planning on doing that again for this one? I will promote this campaign anyways but if I can reduce my cost for it that would be so much better

We are planning on setting up with kickbooster for exactly that.

Inge Leonora-den Ouden wrote: (but don't raise the $50 to $60 ... maybe $55 ... )

Inge,

I have the hat you made for me, and the painting you made for me.  And I see other gifts from you all over the internet.  I suspect that I can figure out some gifts for you of my stuff.  

Max Kennedy wrote:Can the brief rewards section have active links to the full description on the page?  

If there is a way to do it, I have not yet found it.  Can you find instructions on kickstaarter for something like that?

paul wheaton wrote:

Bernard Welm wrote:the one question I would have: is there some way to download the streamable material (since it seems like the $100 level would only grant you access to the material in a steamable format). That way I can listen to it while I work in my garden/farm and gain insights into how I should have set everything up

I think I just posted about that.  

We are thinking of offering all the stuff at the $100 level as "tiny download" for $120.  Will that work for you?

Yes I would scrounge the extra $20 to be able to download the material.

paul wheaton wrote:

K Putnam wrote:I also think you could reduce the levels of contribution and eliminate everything under the "one full day" level.

So you think I should take out the $15 level?

I wouldn't, because being able to buy an individual lecture or two looks really interesting to me, and woiuld probably be the option I'd buy if I do buy one. What happens during a day vs an evening session? If the day is most of the hands on stuff and the lectures only happen in the evening, then maybe have it be $20 for three evening sessions. I like the ability to pick and choose which one to watch. Some of the stuff I probably already know a bit about, but there's bound to be sessions I know nothing about and would love to learn about, and those would likely be more "bang for my buck." I'm probably not the only one who thinks like that,  but maybe I am!

Nicole Alderman wrote:

paul wheaton wrote:

K Putnam wrote:I also think you could reduce the levels of contribution and eliminate everything under the "one full day" level.

So you think I should take out the $15 level?

I wouldn't, because being able to buy an individual lecture or two looks really interesting to me, and woiuld probably be the option I'd buy if I do buy one. What happens during a day vs an evening session? If the day is most of the hands on stuff and the lectures only happen in the evening, then maybe have it be $20 for three evening sessions. I like the ability to pick and choose which one to watch. Some of the stuff I probably already know a bit about, but there's bound to be sessions I know nothing about and would love to learn about, and those would likely be more "bang for my buck." I'm probably not the only one who thinks like that,  but maybe I am!

There is a full list of what is scheduled for the pdc here:  https://richsoil.com/pdc.jsp

What do you all think of the video?

paul wheaton wrote:

Max Kennedy wrote:Can the brief rewards section have active links to the full description on the page?  

If there is a way to do it, I have not yet found it.  Can you find instructions on kickstaarter for something like that?

Nope, was just asking.  However might be something to ask Kickstarter to develop if not an available option.

I'm really new to all of this. I'm not sure if this kickstarter is for people who are already interested in permaculture (and/or gardening and homesteading), or for people already fairly educated about all of this. For someone completely new, trying to remember the acronyms of everything is a bit difficult, so you might want to use full names for the funding levels, if you are allowed enough characters for them.

I think you could get rid of $5 and $10 levels and put the rewards from those in with $15. But that's coming from someone who's never run a kickstarter! If you had a lot of people purchase those levels in the past, it may work better to keep them, though.

If you can work around with some of the formatting, I think it would be nice to put the bio for each instructor closer to their image (get rid of some white space), and move the extra space to after their description to break up the sections between instructors. Not a huge deal, but would be confusing for someone who looks away for a minute or two then tries to finish reading. Also an extra space before each new reward level.

As a previously employed proofreader, I think that some small words ("that" especially) can be deleted and some wording be moved around to make an overall shorter read, mainly through bios. Not sure if you can rewrite bios to make them shorter, but that seems to be the first/best place to do that. If you'd like me to give it a go, I'd be happy to.

I'm incredibly excited about this kickstarter. I'm about to go through OSU's Intro to Permaculture course in May, so am in education overload right now, but wouldn't blink at spending $30 - a cheap date night's price.

I gotta process stuff quickly, cuz time is running out.  The kickstarter will finish just before the pdc starts!

I get the impression that folks like the $120 reward with tiny download, but there is no interest in the jump drive.

??

paul wheaton wrote:Josiah was telling me that most of his peeps prefer the downloads because they live in the sticks where they have lame internet or no internet.   So it sounds like we need to figure this out.

My impression right now is that most people far prefer something like netflix instant view over downloading an mp4 file.   But, I'll try to have something figured out before the kickstarter begins.

I have a lame connection, but the library has a good connection so I'd rather have a download and go to the library to download it. Are you planning to make one download (which would take quite a while even on a good connection), or multiple? Multiple downloads would make it more manageable and would allow people to pick what they want to download first. On the flip side, the more it's broken down the more processing and organization you'll need.

Adrienne Scott wrote:I'm really new to all of this. I'm not sure if this kickstarter is for people who are already interested in permaculture (and/or gardening and homesteading), or for people already fairly educated about all of this. For someone completely new, trying to remember the acronyms of everything is a bit difficult, so you might want to use full names for the funding levels, if you are allowed enough characters for them.

A lot of those on the right side - i hit the maximum allowed charcters and had to make them shorter.  There is an option to add a description, but some people  have mentioned that they are already too long.  So, as always, a trade off.  But I do think we can be a bit more verbose in the descriptions.

I think you could get rid of $5 and $10 levels and put the rewards from those in with $15. But that's coming from someone who's never run a kickstarter! If you had a lot of people purchase those levels in the past, it may work better to keep them, though.

I tend to think of them as "stepping stones" to the higher rewards.

If you can work around with some of the formatting, I think it would be nice to put the bio for each instructor closer to their image (get rid of some white space), and move the extra space to after their description to break up the sections between instructors. Not a huge deal, but would be confusing for someone who looks away for a minute or two then tries to finish reading. Also an extra space before each new reward level.

We tried.  Kickstarter has formatting where we cannot make those changes.

As a previously employed proofreader, I think that some small words ("that" especially) can be deleted and some wording be moved around to make an overall shorter read, mainly through bios. Not sure if you can rewrite bios to make them shorter, but that seems to be the first/best place to do that. If you'd like me to give it a go, I'd be happy to.

That would be great!

Thyri Gullinvargr wrote:

paul wheaton wrote:Josiah was telling me that most of his peeps prefer the downloads because they live in the sticks where they have lame internet or no internet.   So it sounds like we need to figure this out.

My impression right now is that most people far prefer something like netflix instant view over downloading an mp4 file.   But, I'll try to have something figured out before the kickstarter begins.

I have a lame connection, but the library has a good connection so I'd rather have a download and go to the library to download it. Are you planning to make one download (which would take quite a while even on a good connection), or multiple? Multiple downloads would make it more manageable and would allow people to pick what they want to download first. On the flip side, the more it's broken down the more processing and organization you'll need.

At this time, we are looking at "multiple".

I was super sad about not being able to attend the course.  I'll definitely be funding at at least the $100 level.  Thank you so much for offering this, and the video is spot on!

I'd start it at $15 for a one-day pass.  $5/$10 isn't worth fussing with and will decrease the number of options and variables you have to troubleshoot.  And $14 for a full day is super reasonable.

I'd be thinking Minimally Viable Product that gives people what they need but minimizes fussiness.

I'm going for $100, so it doesn't affect me...just trying to help simplify.

paul wheaton wrote:so far we are leaning toward 360p for live streaming and 720p (HD) for the recorded stuff

paul wheaton wrote:click on the thumbs up for this post if you prefer digital download at 360p over hd streaming at 720p.

Is that second quote backwards? Either way I'm interested in the full download at the $100-$120 range. Streaming or thumb drive options would be OK to me if download isn't an option. Resolution doesn't bother me either way, but 720p for download would be excellent!

Only thing I would change on the page is the title of the $100 reward. The title 'BOTH' is very easy to scan past, especially if you are expecting it to be the main seller to recoup costs. Maybe "PDC + ATC courses" or similar.

Daniel Schmidt wrote:

paul wheaton wrote:so far we are leaning toward 360p for live streaming and 720p (HD) for the recorded stuff

paul wheaton wrote:click on the thumbs up for this post if you prefer digital download at 360p over hd streaming at 720p.

Is that second quote backwards?

Nope.  We currently have everything figured out for HD streaming.  But some folks are talking about how they would like digital download.  So we are trying to guage interest.

Either way I'm interested in the full download at the $100-$120 range. Streaming or thumb drive options would be OK to me if download isn't an option. Resolution doesn't bother me either way, but 720p for download would be excellent!

I put up something about a thumb drive option at $300.   Earlier there were no thumbs for that, so I'm thinking it is a non-starter.

360p will be about 100 gigs. 720p will be about 500 gigs.  Most people don't have 500 gigs of space, let alone that much patience.  And bigger downloads mean more problems during the download.

Only thing I would change on the page is the title of the $100 reward. The title 'BOTH' is very easy to scan past, especially if you are expecting it to be the main seller to recoup costs. Maybe "PDC + ATC courses" or similar.

I thought I was being clever by serving up the title, and using "BOTH" as a keyword for the later options.

I suppose I could change it to "BOTH:  all of the video"  ??

I'm in for both courses and would certainly prefer the ability to download and watch at our leisure.  Thanks so much to Paul and everyone making this possible.  

I wish we could come but it's just not possible this year.  This will be an excellent consolation prize!

Looks great!  I will want a piece of this!

I added the $120 reward, but I noticed that some of my fixes from earlier disappeared.

Looks Good!
I will be looking to assist to the $150 make as I would prefer the download.
$300US for a thumbdrive with everything, while it sounds economical is out of my price range and I make good money, as I would have to add an easy 30% being north of the boarder. I was hoping to support the $100 but if the download is available at 150 that is what I will probably go for.  
For me the download is important as I live in an area of intermittent internet, sometimes great but frequently non-existent, and I can purchase an extra 1T hard drive and store everything I download onto it(and hope it doesn't break or go missing!)  and save what I want and save your guys a bunch of time and headache.

Thank You  Paul for putting this together

The jump drive thing looked like a big headache.  $30 each (assuming it will all fit onto 128gigs).  Copy everything could be okay - or it could take ten hours per jump drive.  Cheap shipping, but ....   I can't help but think there will be support issues.  To top it all off, my spidey sense was tingling about it.

paul wheaton wrote:

Brett Hammond wrote:Agreeing with comments above. How do I get the 200 hours of video? Download? Forever access online? My preference is DVD or Blu-ray so I can just pop it in an watch whenever I want in any tv without an internet connection, but would add considerably to cost.

Do people that watch all the video get the certificate?

We talked about that.   That would be about 100 DVDs.  Way, way, too much.

In earlier discussions, somebody brought this up and suggested that we try to mash the 360p stuff onto a 128g jump drive.   So maybe all the $100 level stuff for $300 on a jump drive?

Actually, some standard sizes of Blu-ray discs are 25GB-50GB, which would be 4-8 discs. This does beg the question of whether enough people have Blu-ray players to even think about it and would probably entail an additional cost for you to get a Blu-ray burner (unless you could farm it out to someone that has one somehow). I'm somehow doubting you'll get many people opting for the jump drive at $300, and I got the impression from another post that you'd rather not do it because it has the potential to be a huge PITA (pain in the ass, for those unfamiliar with the acronym ). I'm not sure that the PITA factor would be less with discs though, even if you only had to do 4 of them.

The campaign looks good-trying to figure out if we can afford the extra 20 dollars for the download option. When will the kickstarter start?

I think what you are offering is great!!! I hope some day I can attend to an event like this one!!! I'll be backing the 100 tier, it's awesome!!!

Cheers from Colombia!!!

Daniel Schneider wrote:The campaign looks good-trying to figure out if we can afford the extra 20 dollars for the download option. When will the kickstarter start?

The kickstarter will start in the next day or two.

Attached, a quick edit. May not be worth the work to copy and paste into place, but of course up to you/your team (I don't have the images and captions included but did include the correct links).

Bit busy but quick thoughts

what is the tiny download exactly?

Make it clear on the header that this is a live stream event OR video after the fact.

Is the after the fact video downloadable or stream only.

App. tech course may be confusing, suggest change to appropriate  technology

Make it super obvious which level of support people can get the downloaded video for the pdc.

Suggest to start with a advert about what people will get (attractive) rather than talking about what you are doing (not as interesting)

For example
"This is your chance to follow along with one of the worlds best pdc and appropriate technology courses from the comfort of your own home! Learn from some of the best instructors in the business and help us to share permaculture with the world by investing in the technology we need. etc etc
Learn about hugels, swales, design thinking, appropriate land use etc etc

Rus

paul wheaton wrote:

360p will be about 100 gigs. 720p will be about 500 gigs.  Most people don't have 500 gigs of space, let alone that much patience.  And bigger downloads mean more problems during the download.

I don't know if this is practical, but if the tiny downloads were 60-120 little files instead of one big gob, I would only download a few at a time. Even though I tend to be a digital hoarder, I probably would never download them all, which impacts your bandwidth/support model. Maybe you don't make the gob available. It would help if there was an index and the files had short names with the numbers in the front (ATC 4.2 RMH Day 2, PDC 3.1 Day 3 Morning). I can see myself perusing videos with the streaming option, and then downloading the ones I'll watch multiple times or put onto a thumb drive for the "big screen".

For the streaming option, is it anticipated that there will be a duration of access (one month, year, forever)? If it's a short window (couple of months), I'll download more just in case it could be of interest in the future. If it's a longer window, I will certainly download less.

Adrienne Scott wrote:Attached, a quick edit. May not be worth the work to copy and paste into place, but of course up to you/your team (I don't have the images and captions included but did include the correct links).

Opened it and ...   was expecting editor notes:  the sort of thing where it shows crappy stuff with a line through it and inserted stuff in a different color.   So I can weigh the changes.

Any chance of getting something like that?