nirvan's blog

Today I hit the streets for the first time in a long time to try and get out the vote for the Ideablob contest. Seems most of the work I've been doing has been web design, accounting, and other computer related tasks, so I was looking forward to being out in the real world again. 

The idea was to take the bus around town, talk to people, and ask for their vote. I made some paper-strip fliers and xeroxed them this afternoon, took a trip to Burbank to get our gear from the office, and got back to the bus to meet Marcin, Arlene, and Levi, who joined me for the trek.

Together the 4 of us set out to the Silverlake area where we canvased the street for an hour or two, handing out fliers and talking to folks we met about the Collaboration Foundation and the Ideablob contest. People were generally really positive and a lot of folks said they would vote. A few even signed up to be producers :)

Sent out a newsletter flash yesterday about the ideablob Vote, and we got 129 votes! We still need another 871 votes in a week to reach 1000. We stand to win a $10,000 Grant for The Collaboration Foundation.

I heard from some of you that the newsletter went to your Spam, or that you didn't receive it. There is a copy of it online here: http://www.the1secondfilm.com/newsletter/flash/2

Voting continues for another 7 days here:

http://ideablob.com/ideas/1247-The-Collaboration-Foundation-C

Hey everyone,

Our non-profit, The Collaboration Foundation, is one of 8 finalists in this months Ideablob contest!

We received enough votes to make it into the finals, now the votes get reset to zero, and we have one week to get the most votes. If we do, we will receive $10,000 to help build the Collaboration Foundation. This would be absolutely amazing, and make a huge difference in our ability to finish this film faster. Best of all, they give the winning idea the award via a GIANT Check! How great would that be???

Yesterday my friend and I were biking through Silverlake on our way to Santa Monica for the Glow art fest. We pulled up to a red light and Kiefer Sutherland was standing right next to us on the corner, about to cross the street. I said "hi." It took him a moment to remember where we had met, until I mentioned that he had given me $600.23 to help Executive Produce The 1 Second Film. Then he smiled and said he had just been telling someone about our film the other day. I thought that was pretty cool :)

It has been about a year since I randomly ran into Kiefer at a restaurant. We caught up briefly with the project and I gave him one of our new fliers that has his photo on it, which was sort of funny. Kiefer is a really nice guy.

i've been entering/itemizing receipts, etc. for some time, and finally finished! photocopied docs yesterday, organizing a packet and delivering to accountants today. this is one of the last steps toward our 501(c)(3) filing for the Collaboration Foundation. i'm also prepping final docs for our Board of Directors to sign, and will be mailing out in a few days. it will be amazing to finally have all this stuff done!

i've also been reviewing proposals for our web development and am narrowing down to final choices... big decision time.

YouTube recently added the ability to view videos in high res, and I recently learned how to link to and embed to the high res videos directly (thanks mikeb!).

For posting/linking to a YouTube URL, add to the end of the URL:

&fmt=18

For embedding to a high res YouTube video add the following code onto the end of both URLs in the embed code:
&ap=%2526fmt%3D18

The hack links directly to the MP4 version instead of

High Res Embed:

Got some great feedback on the new home page design, and then made some more improvements. 

Here's the latest design for our new home page:

Summary of changes:

• main content area has been broken apart to feel less overwhelming.
• Intro video player is bigger.
• eliminated the "enter credit name" field (too confusing from user POV).
• added member sign in box to right column.
• crisper copy.
• dynamic blocks on bottom to display latest production blogs and featured videos.
• Action Blocks moved down to be consistent site-wide.

If you have any design notes, please let me know!

Hey everyone,

So, this is a big update regarding our web development.

A few days ago I put the finishing touches on our site specs, and reached out to Drupal developers to put a bid on our job. The response so far has been great, and we have a lot of interested developers. 

I posted the job on the Drupal forums here: http://drupal.org/node/275024

There are links in the job posting to several of the design mock-ups i've been working on.

Here is a little preview...(click for larger images)

new home page:

For anyone in the LA area, come to the LA-IP (formerly TED>LA) this Sunday. The Los Angeles Idea Project is a single-day event designed to catalyze Angelenos' imaginations toward action. www.la-ip.com

I presented at this event last year, which was really cool. This year's event looks to be even better, with 17 world class speakers and doers presenting topics such as human trafficking, sustainable land use, and the sacred geography of Los Angeles.

Many of the speakers have presented at TED, like Joshua Klein who taught Crows to use a vending machine.

We recently cleared 9,500 Producers and 10,000 Crew Member Mark! We have raised $264,812.18 with the help of thousands of people from 59 countries.

Here are some charts I put together for our Board of Directors meeting. Really helps to visualize the rate in which this project has grown.

This First Chart visualizes the # of producers over time (in Blue). After our site was automated in 2007, some people joined but have yet to donate (shown in Red).

Some key moments are also pointed out (getting listed on IMDb, getting featured on YouTube, etc). You can really see how our growth slowed down after IMDb decided to remove all of our crew credits. You can also see the spike achieved while on our Road to Oprah tour. Currently, most of our new online producers stumble across us on Wikipedia.Below is another chart showing money we have raised over time. This includes a lot of donated services and equipment.