Director's blog

Lots of tedious progress this past week.

On Thursday I finally finished several core page layouts of the new site and sent them over to Jason. Jason is the Drupal web developer who did our last site. I spoke with him yesterday about some of the issues facing the new site, including the complexity of some of the functionality and the budget range. Today he is reviewing the job with his partner, and then tomorrow we are going to touch base again with more details.

Like many good Drupal developers, Jason has become extremely busy. He is booked until the middle of the summer, so even if our site is something we move forward on, it probably wouldn't get under way for another two months! Meanwhile, I will be getting some other quotes from other Drupal developers to compare. But I should get a better idea tomorrow of what we are looking at with Jason in terms of budget and time.

On Friday, I turned some focus back toward the Collaboration Foundation, and have had another round of paperwork draftinand filing with our pro-bono legal team. There are a team of great lawyers from McDermitt Will and Emery helping us with the filing; we are refining our ByLaws and various forms that go along with the filing. I'm excited about wrapping up that process soon.

And finally, I've been re-entering pages and pages of receipts that were lost when our hard drive crashed. There is still more of that to do, but it is getting done slowly. And the hard drive was under warranty and replaced, so all is getting back in order.

There are lots of little things happening. Slowly, slowly moving forward. Support continues to trickle in, keeping hope alive. And I'm staying focussed on getting the new site launched, even though it is looking to be a long process. I have more thoughts on all this stuff, but for now I'm going rock climbing with a friend.

best,

n 

Pangea Day is a global event bringing the world together through film.

The event was born from documentary filmmaker Jehane Noujaim (Control Room), in association with the TED conference, and will feature 4 hours of inspiring films, performances, and speakers broadcast simultaneously around the world. It's happening this Saturday, May 10th.

www.pangeaday.org

You can find a Pangea Day event in your area, or register to host your own. If you are in the Los Angeles area, come hang out at Hint Mint Gallery in Downtown Los Angeles where the films will be projected on a 30ft wall. (For details- search the Pangea Day site for events in Los Angeles, and click the event hosted by Cooper Bates.

There will be free food and drinks. a $7 donation to help with costs are encouraged, but all are welcome.

I'll be there for the first half, before running over to see the History of Water.

I'm looking forward to seeing how Pangea Day is realized and the feelings people take away from it. After the event, the website will transform into a place for people to connect, discuss, and follow up on some of the ideas raised in the films.

Film bringing the world together!? Awesome.

Meanwhiles, our programmer Jason and I are going to touch base this week- I have enough of the new web design work together to start approaching the programming! Small progress :)

best to all,

n

here is a close up of some pixel polishing action. lots of zooming in and making icons one pixel at a time...

good news is i feel like i'm finally through the boggy parts of the design swamp. still a bit more to go, but the path is clearer and the remaining pages should speed up; now that the new navigation and information architecture is in place, the remaining design challenges are relatively light.

i have pretty much finished the design templates for:

• a new menu with drop downs
• a new home page
• new profile page (logged in)
• new profile page (when not logged in)
• a new "studio view" page (when logged in and viewing your main member page)
• new videos page
• new blog layout
• new film credits pages (with new credit categories!)
• a new about page for misc. pages
• a new super footer

still to do:

• registration step layout
• photos & groups layout
• profile content views

the site is a lot more involved as each crew member will be able to upload multiple videos, photos, etc. and all of this content will be accessable from the new members profile. we are adding some great drupal features like organic groups and also designing space to begin tracking everyone's referrals and participation.

i have been sharing the designs with friends and have been getting a lot of positive feedback. the general consensus is that the new site does a much better job at communicating the overall project. if all goes well, the new site will be a major proof of concept, pulling everything together and making it functional.

not much else going on. i went to pick up the crashed hard drive thinking that the data was unrecoverable- but after a second look, we may be able to recover some of the data. i'm keeping my fingers crossed on that and hope to have an answer by tomorrow.

back to polishing pixels.

best to all,

n

So our production is in a slow moving swampy swamp stage. but things are still moving, with over 9,300 producers and counting :)

yesterday someone was asking me how things were going, and i tried to describe the overwhelming swamplike march i've been feeling the last few days.

i've been struggling through a sticky design spot. trying to design an intuitive user interface for the new profiles.

the new profiles will have two views; a public view and a more dynamic production overview. they will also integrate groups, crew photos and videos, and record referrals and a contribution history with a participation point system...

once implemented, this will make it much easier to communicate with everyone. we currently have hundreds of people that have offered to volunteer, but we are unable to coordinate efficiently with our current site. this redesign should address a lot of these bottleneck issues.

but for now, the process feels like a march through a swampy bog. sort of overwhelming.

hopefully i'll find a good solution to the design challenge; otherwise i'm just gonna power through it and move on to the next issues. i've learned with webdesign that things can always be improved in the future, and it's often better to just move forward while continuing to look for solutions down the line.

web development is not much to write about. but i just wanted to give an update for those following this process- and also to give thanks to everyone who has joined lately.

it's really really encouraging that people keep donating, spreading the word, filling in profiles, and adding friends to their crew! every penny is extremely helpful, and every person that joins is much appreciated.

dollar-by-dollar we are currently saving up for the site upgrade. i believe improving this site and our ability to collaborate will be a key step in opening up this project, completing it sucessfully, and building a foundation for future collaborations.

little by little, we are getting there.

thanks again for all the support and for being a part of this!

best,

n

Wanted to thank our Swedish Producer William Johansson for making this cool video promo. (William made the music too!)

And also John MacIntyre from Warwick, Rhode Island for helping spread the word:

If you would like to make a video promoting The 1 Second Film, upload it to YouTube and add it to Our YouTube Group so we can feature it on our video page and possibly incorporate it into our documentary.

Meanwhile, BIG THANKS to everyone who has signed up lately! If you have a sec, please vote for us on ideablob.com to help us win $10,000 for the Collaboration Foundation. It's free to register/vote here: http://www.ideablob.com/ideas/1247-The-Collaboration-Foundation-A

I haven't been blogging as much as i've been working. I'm back from Texas and returned to the office only to find one of our new Macs had a fatal hard drive crash. :(

It's still covered by warranty, but the data recovery is not. i have to see if i can get it recovered at a reasonable cost. the drive had a lot of receipts i'd spent a couple of days logging, and i'm hoping i don't have to do that all again.

meanwhile, i've been working hardcore hours on the new site design. i've been getting deep into layout and organizing all of our content in a way i hope will be easier to use, while also integrating a heap of new features, including the ability to form Groups and a Participation Point system that will reward our most active crew members.

The last few days Ive been working almost exclusively on the new Profile Page design. The profiles are becoming much more functional hubs for communication and project management. We will be able to post announcements/production needs across site profiles while allowing you to keep up with the people in your crew.

We are still in the design phase. What I love most about designing is that it's the first real intersection that bridges concept and with functionality. As i'm laying out ideas, they are becoming more and more concrete.

There is also a lot of self-discovery during the design process, the ideas sort themselves out and sometimes form new and better ideas. It's pretty cool- unless you are stuck and don't know what to do- which is not the case right now. Currently there is a ton of momentum as the ideas are really fitting together well. I'm hoping the majority of this can be carried through to the actual functional site!

Once the designs are finalized, the next step will be to convert the designs from Photoshop PSD files to web HTML and CSS. We are currently planning on using an online service called psd2html.com, but if there are any CSS wizards taht would like to get involved, feel free to give me a shout.

Once we have the design coded, Jason will Drupalize our themes and begin installing/programming all of the Drupal 5.0 modules and features.

It's an involved process, but i can't wait to get the new site working and share it with all of you. I'm trying my best to balance my natural inclination for perfectionism and pixel pushing... i know can get lost in the details... but that's also a part of what the 1 second film is about. and enjoying the process along the way.

anyway, that's the process right now :)

best to all,

n

Hey everyone,

iJustine made this nice video about her recent visit to our office, with music by The Evangenitals!

I wanted to give a warm welcome all of our new producers who have joined our crew recently after watching this video, it's super cool to see this spreading and new people joining up from around the world. I really really appreciate it!

I haven't been online much- I've actually been in Houston, Texas for the past two weeks helping take care of my father who has not been well. I originally came here for 3 days, but have had to extend my stay.

I brought a laptop with me and have continued to work on the web redesign when I can. Life can get in the way, but things with this project are still moving forward thanks to our crew.

Best to all,

n

Political views aside, from a strictly grassroots marketing point of view, I'm really blown away by some of the creative innovation i'm seeing around the Barack Obama campaign. Probably most of you have seen the Yes We Can video remix of this Obama Speech. It was made independent of Barack's campaign by Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas who felt inspired, got some people together, and made it happen.

This was a super effective remix, and has already been viewed by millions. Well, now they have taken that remix one step further both technically and conceptually via a site called hopeactchange.com

The site invites people to upload photos that are then mapped onto a collage of the Yes We Can video. You can scroll over the video as it plays and see thumbnails of the submitted photos, and click on them to get a bigger view.

I've never seen anything exactly like this video mosaic technically, yet alone the way they are applying the technology conceptually. it's pretty impressive.

it also sets my mind racing with the possibilities of incorporating tools like this to make collaborative art in the future, specifically the animation for some frames of our future sequels.

I think the flash was created by the talented folks at Syrup.

To me, this is the future of grassroots marketing for political campaigns and also points a way toward new forms of collaborating artistically.

If you guys know of anything like this being done by other political candidates or artists, please let me know!

Hey everyone, we put together a little video from iJustine and Brooke's visit, who came by our office a few weeks ago with Evan. Check it out:

big thanks to Marcin who has been volunteering and helped edit this.

before posting this video, i joined a really awesome (free) video publishing service called TubeMogul.com which allowed us to upload this video once and then distribute it to multiple video sharing sites like YouTube, blip.tv, myspae, yahoo, revver, etc. this is a HUGE timesaver, and motivated me to sign up to many different video sites that i haven't tried before. it will be interesting to experiment with web traffic.

meanwhile, new Producers continue to join up! we now have 9,162 Producers from 58 countries, including a few new Executive Producers, such as Priit Noormets from Estonia!

Here are a few pics some of our new producers helping promote:

Victor Dorantes, Associate Producer

Christopher Bohler, Associate Producer

Thanks everyone! and thanks for all the kind words and encouragement as well, it really keeps me goin.

I've been working 15 hour weeks lately obsessing over the new web design, stumbling home from the office at 2 in the mornin. crazy hours, but the new site is going to be insane cool!

i'll post some thoughts on that soon.

best,

nirvan

Coolio is now Producer #9,131 of The 1 Second Film!

I was at a dinner party last night and Coolio was there helping to cook. Los Angeles is sort of absurd that way. It was at the house of a friend - and another of our producers :)

Coolio actually has a cooking show called "Cooking with Coolio" on MyDamnChannel. He is a really cool guy and a great story teller with tons of interesting tales to tell. Definitely a nice guest to have at a dinner party and a welcome producer to have on our little movie.

Unfortunately, I didn't have my video camera with me, and my digital still camera seems to have brok- but my friend Kene snapped the pic above and emailed me a copy.

Meanwhile, I've been back in front of the computer, burried in the web redesign which is making some progress. But that's relatively boring compared with getting $2 from Coolio.

Coolio's Gangsta's Paradise: 

Coolio's Fantastic Voyage: 

Cookin' With Coolio Episode #3: 

Just wanted to give a quick update, and also to thank all our new producers who have been joining up recently- it's much appreciated!

best,

n

While designing the new site, I couldn't help but make a few changes to our current site. this was sparked after finding this cool new YouTube tool that lets you embed a video bar horizontally and vertically, like this:

So I started to redo our Video Page and then our Photos page. I also added more video on the home page; in exchange, i deleted text that can be found in other parts of the site.

I'm always experimenting with the layout to see how people use the site. Google Analytics has been helpful in seeing how people navigate. but it's stll a certain amount of trial and error finding the best mix of info/content.

I also made changes to the main menu; i split the "Gallery" into Videos, Photos, and Art, and put our Forum in the footer. I also made a little button to promote our Ideablob entry, which will be displayed around our site. we are currently in the top 4 ideas on Ideablob's home page. If we can make it to the top 2, we will be in a vote off to win $10,000 toward building The Collaboration Foundation. this would be huge for us. If you haven't voted yet, please visit us at ideablob.com, register for free, and vote for our idea. You can also submit your own ideas.

As always, thanks you all who have joined us recently and have helped tell a friend!

i'm taking a few days away from the computer. I need to get some perspective. a few days of camping and surfing should help. i'll be back after the weekend and will catch up on any emails. so i'll leave our studio in the hands of our producers ;)

Meanwhile, please Vote for Us on Ideablob!

thanks,

n