Director's blog

Today marks a big step as we have finally finished (and filed) our application for non-profit 501(c)3 status for the Collaboration Foundation.

Our completed application was 130 pages long(!) including By Laws, a Conflict of Interest policy, accounting statements, a narrative of activities, signatures of our Board of Directors, and various forms. It's a fairly complicated process.

Fortunately, we had the guidance of our pro-bono legal team at McDermitt, Will, & Emery. Big thanks to Christopher Lovejoy and Ben Wolkov for their incredible diligence and persistence in seeing this through.

Next we await review (and hopefully approval) from the IRS. This could take anywhere from 3 to 9 months. If approved, the 501(c)(3) status will allow us to qualify for grants while also making donations tax-deductible in the US.

This will be a crucial step in building project infrastructure for the Collaboration Foundation moving forward.

I'm pretty excited. Seems like a lot of things that have been in development are starting to come together!

now back to web development!

nm

Yesterday I met for several hours with our project manager and reviewed 30 pages(!) of technical specs.

Michal had gone through the designs and matched all the functionality to the specific pages, and highlighted various questions. There is a lot of pre-planning involved before starting to physically program; it's very similar to film production in that regard. it saves time/money in the long run.

We went over a lot of the details, and isolated a few decisions that still need to be made. Meanwhile, the majority of  design coding is moving forward. But some of the remaining decisions are on hold for a week; Michal is off to the Burning Man festival next week, and I'm headed up north for a few days of camping with some old friends (with two year olds!), so it seemed like a good time to take a small break.

I'm looking forward to getting away from this computer for a bit. I do have a few design homework assignments (laying out the registration flow and designing the flag/feature content system), but will be taking at least a few days off.

Excited about the next few steps!

best to all,

n

I spent the weekend uploading PSD files of our new site designs to our client server on Ciplex. Meanwhile, Ciplex has started to layout some milestones for web development. Screencap of milestones is below:

So here is the current plan:

.........................................................

Tomorrow I'm meeting with Michal, our project manager, to go over everything.

Also, you may notice that I've added a Production Status area on our homepage, along with a link to some of our past and future production milestones so everyone can get a better sense of what is going on.

Looking forward to tomorrows meeting. Until then, I have to prep some spreadsheets for our accountants. I've been doing a lot of bookeeping as part of our 501(c)3 filing. Getting close!

Today we signed the contract for web development of our new site! The site will be built by Ciplex, LA's premiere web design firm. They are coming on board as partial sponsors of the project, giving a deep discount to make the new site something we can build within our budget.

The new site will be built using Drupal 5.8 open-source CMS, and will really take this project to the next level, allowing much greater participation, scalability, and tools for collaborating. I've been designing & fundraising over the past 8 months, so today was a pretty big moment.

The new site is going to cost us $13K. To put this in perspective, other firms bid as high as $49,000 to build the same set of features. I spent a month getting quotes from Drupal developers, following up with references, etc. I feel we are going to be getting a lot of website for the investment, and think Ciplex is the best fit for our build.

We paid the first installment today ($4,333.33) using donations saved up since returning from our presentation tour. Whenever making a big production expenditure, I always have a moment of incredible gratitude to all of you that have supported this project and chipped in to make this happen.

Over the next 12-16 weeks, I will be working along Ciplex to migrate all of our project data to the new site. I'm also going to be working on a new intro video and other site features. I'll be making an effort to document the process along the way.

Also, big thanks to Marcin Nadolny of TwoCan.org for joining me today to document the kickoff of our web development. I'll try to get some video together soon. 

excited!

best to all,

nirvan

Hey everyone, exciting news- tonight I had a great follow up conversation with the lead drupal developer at Ciplex, the web design firm we've been in talks with, and it looks like we will be moving forward shortly!

We spent a few hours going through our functionality spec document, and making sure we were on the same page. And it's looking like all is well. I'm really excited to be finally taking this step! This has been a good 7 months of planning, designing, fundraising, and then searching for the best team for our budget.

This will be a significant investment in our infrastructure and the future of this project, creating a key stepping stone toward the Collaboration Foundation. I hope to have contracts together and signed this week, then it's looking like the site will take 2-3 months to program.

Ciplex is located in LA, so I will be able to document the site development process as it goes, and look forward to sharing it with you.

More soon. best,

nm

Some of the 1SF thingamajigies I did today:

• made a Facebook group for the Collaboration Foundation: join it here

• made some changes to the Collaboration Foundation home page: peek-a-view

• talked with Mike, the lead Drupal guy from the web development firm we may hire to build the new site for the1secondfilm.com... hope to iron out contract details soon, but I'm pretty excited about moving forward!

• entered a few new producers that gave me dollars over the weekend.

Unrelated, some of the day was spent cleaning up cat pee. My kitty- "bunny" is her name- has cancer. It's inoperable, and she has become incontinent. Cat's often pee out of place when they don't feel well. She is about 15, and has taken to urinating wherever she likes, usually not in the litter box, instead, mostly up in a corner of our loft, which happens to be directly above where my roomate Levi sleeps. Today Levi awoke to find his pillow soaked with cat urine that had dripped down the wall. Needless to say, this is a pretty awful way to wake up. I'm buying him a new pillow. We live downtown, no yard, so she can't be an outdoor kitty. Plus the cancer is on both of her front paws, which get infected easily. Levi started build a little kitty pen under our stairs, where the floor is concrete, so it will be easier to clean up accidents. We're going to try keeping bunny in at night and when we leave, and to keep her downstairs in general.  Not sure what else to do... any suggestions much appreciated.

Other than the pee, she is a really sweet cat. She can even shake hands like a puppy. and yes, she is a film producer.

MikeB took some really nice pics of our live Vote-a-Thon for the Collaboration Foundation and posted em to our flickr set:  E Vote-a-Thon Flickr Set

The Evangenitals, tunin up, gettin ready for the go.

Our volunteer crew of producers, streaming live as we drive to Hollywood Blvd.

We invited two of our producers, Justine Ezarik and Brooke Brodack, both expert online vloggers, to help us get our the vote. We had talked about a bus adventure back when they visited our office (see video).

We found a nice place to park. Directly in front of Mann's Chinese Theater and throngs of tourists. Fortunately for us, we failed to notice the Red curb, fire hydrant, and "No Parking Ever" sign. 

Serenading. For some reason, this pic reminds me of "The Little Engine that Could"

Juli and Keith, roof rockin.

Mike started to improv a sign w/ a sharpie. It wasn't going well. That's when we spotted this airbrush artist sitting outside our bus. We asked for some help, and he hooked us up w/ this awesome sign. We made him an Executive Producer in exchange: Bobby Ross Jenkins. Check his myspace: myspace.com/hustlebeast

The sign really helped things take off. Evan demonstrates.

Kickin it on the roof, while streamin live to the internets, and gettin out the e-Vote.

Superman became our producer! Learn his secret identity here.

Here you can see our Mobile streaming Rig: our Sony HDV V1U and a Wireless Mic attached to the 17inch MacBook Pro (donated by Apple) connected to Ustream.tv via a Sprint EVDO card that Justine brought (thanks Justine!). All this equipment was made possible by donations.

Having fun Juli?

Anytime you can get Batman's attention in the middle of all this eye candy, count it as a win.

Justine noticed the dudes makeup was on the wrong side of his face. The internet confirmed live. But I forgot the characters name. Anyone? 

Back home downtown after a long day. Lots of fun and lots of work.

All in all, the day was a very interesting experment, and a big success. The bus didn't catch on fire and we met a lot of great folks, both on-line and on-streets.

Thanks to everyone who helped, who tuned in to our live stream, who voted, who forwarded links, etc.

I'm thinkin we should do this again. Whaddya think?  Anyone wanna ride?

:)

Here is some video from yesterday:

I can't begin to tell you how many parking laws we broke. But all went well, including a roof bus performance by the Evangenitals. We streamed live from a mobile rigg, then edited and posted today. Justine has some pics of our mobile rig on her blog: www.ijustine.com

If you use Digg, please do: http://digg.com/arts_culture/Stop_Collaborate_and_Listen_2

I stayed up all night editing. Then ran into all sorts of trouble rendering. Was hoping to get the video up earlier, but alas. Voting ends in a few hours. If we get on digg's homepage, it could help. Probably not enough time though...

Also, if you watch the video, i added the VOTE and DIGG THIS buttonsthinking that they could be linkable via YouTubes Annotation options, but alas,, the annotation service only offers fenced in links. Kind of funny.

Yesterday was inspiring. This project is gonna keep on regardless of what happens with Ideablob. big thanks to everyone who supported it.

best,

n

Vote for Collaboration Foundation on Ideablob!

Help Us, Vite Now!

Stayed up late putting together a newsletter that I'm about to send and setting up our Ustream Channel. We have some fun plans today to get out the vote for the $10K Ideablob contest. Of course, who knows what will happen. Especially on such little sleep...below is the newsletter I'm about to send out... it's 5am. These banners don't design themselves! :)

We're in 2nd Place... Last Chance to Vote! Our non-profit, The Collaboration Foundation is currently in 2nd in a down-to-the-wire race to win the $10,000 Ideablob Grant. We need 200 votes to catch the leader, with only 1 day left! Can you help? It's for a great cause! Please take a sec to vote on-line now. Please Vote Now: http://www.ideablob.com/ideas/1247-The-Collaboration-Foundation-C Live Vote-A-Thon Today w/ iJustine & Featured on Ustream.tv! Today, our volunteer crew is hitting the streets of LA in our Bio-Diesel Bus to get out the vote! We will be streaming Live on Ustream.tv from around 3 - 6pm PST along with two of our web savvy Producers iJustine, Brooke Brodack, and special musical guests, the Evangenitals! Will we get enough votes to win the $10K Grant? Watch us Live as we rally the Internets! Watch for us from 3pm - 6pm PST - Wed July 30th, here: http://www.ustream.tv/the1secondfilm Please Vote Here & Repost: http://www.ideablob.com/ideas/1247-The-Collaboration-Foundation-C
If we win, the $10K Grant will be used to build this: http://collaborationfoundation.org/preview.html Our Goal is to build a platform for global collaboration and social-change. Big Thanks for being a part of this! Nirvan Follow us on twitter for up-to-the-second updates: www.twitter.com/the1secondfilm