Nervos Community Video — July 2020 Update

Nervos is a layer one smart contract blockchain run by Poof of Work. If you are not familiar with what makes Nervos special, check out our post on why we invested, and follow our podcast, Nervos Nation. Nervos is homegrown in China but is quickly gaining awareness in the rest of the world.

One of the things that impressed me most about Nervos was the strength of her community. While the Discord channel is where you find more of the core members talking, there is also a Telegram group for traders, a group for more casual chat, and a group for the community video project.

A few months ago, a casual conversation with some of the core team lead to a discussion of effective ways to explain to a massive audience what makes Nervos special.

Arguably, the magnum opus of Nervos can be found in the Positioning Paper, which explains in detail all the problems Nervos came to solve. The only problem is that this paper can be heavy at points, and take the average person 30 minutes or more to read.

Short-form video is the most common method of explaining concepts today.

Nervos created an intro video that highlights a number of topics.

This is a great start and is followed by a large collection of videos, mostly focused on attracting developers, which can be found here on the Official Nervos Youtube page.

On April 30th, community member and video producer, Mordy Rapp proposed a grant to create a community-driven video. This was met with great feedback from the community along with many open questions.

1. Who would produce the video
2. Who would write the script
3. What audience would be the focus of the video
4. What elements of Nervos would be showcased
5. What style would the video be created in

Many informal discussions occurred on various social media channels such as Reddit, Discord, Twitter, and telegram, but as more people became involved, it was challenging to create consensus on these issues.

One video that was particularly impressive, as measured by the community’s feedback was the Aragon launch video.

The immediate pushback on this type of video is the budget. While Mordy referenced a $30K-$60K budget, many members of the community felt this was too much money to spend on a marketing video.

Over time different styles were proposed, more animated, and educationally focused.

Feedback from the Foundation

On May 1st, Ben Waters, a foundation member responsible for community operations gave feedback that was generally positive, but concerned about creating a process that is truly community-driven.

Focusing the community around a vision

On June 4th, Michael Hasson, a community manager (and my business partner) Reissued a proposal on Nervos Talk, encouraging members of the community to focus their feedback on a dedicated Telegram Chat.

Over the last 7 weeks, 30 members of the community joined in to make this project a reality. 8 of those members joined in July.

The proposal on the Nervos Talk page is the #2 most active Grant Proposals as measured by English replies!

Collecting the communities thoughts

Michael created a series of polls to identify which style of video was most sought after by the community.

The results of those poles focused on creating two different paths for the video, a

1. China/Asia focused video
2. Global Finance focused video
3. We will start with one video and based on its reception decide if we want to create a series of videos

Michael created two drafts scripts for feedback to compliment the recorded high level goals of the project

The chat has grown in activity to hundreds of messages and 10s of video recommendations as more and more of the community get involved.

Creating Public Town Halls

On July 8th, the group had a Town Hall.

A few clear outcomes came from the call.

1. The video should be focused on a general audience, not specifically developers
2. The video should showcase how Nervos can impact a general audience’s life, not just a crypto trader
3. The video should showcase some of the consumer applications available on Nervos (this may mean waiting for these dapps to come to market, ie 3–6 months)
4. The video should capture the imagination and be emotional
5. We need more people giving feedback
6. We need more proposals from scriptwriters and production teams to have a better sense of what the market can provide at various price points.

Finding more production studios to get fresh ideas

After this call, Matt Quinn, a Nervos community member scouted out Ernest Kissiedu, a Rust developer familiar with Nervos. Ernest has worked with a video studio from LA that has worked on a number of successful branding projects.

A follow up Town Hall meeting was set and Ernest presented his vision for using a video studio with experience working with big brands like NFL and Apple.

A new member of the community Gabrial Haines, has extensive experience managing video project and production studios. He joined the latest town hall call and reviewed the material and gave feedback.

Finding the right Budget

It is unclear what a budget would look like to work with a high-quality studio like this, but given the location of California, and the brands associated with the studio, it may cost over $100K USD. More research will be needed to determine what the budget is for this project.

On July 23rd, I brought up the question of budget, but this will require more research to figure out

1. What is a budget that is likely to be accepted by the foundation
2. Who is the right production team that can produce what the community wants within that budget

On July 29th, community member Jlomba15 was personally offended to the extent he argued that a budget above $5K USD would be disrespectful and taking advantage of the Nervos Foundation. His feeling is reasonable and should be taken seriously by the community members participating in the creation of this video project.

My personal experience with video production

I have participated in the creation of many videos over the past 10 years. Finding the right production team with the right budget is never an easy task. For context, in one of my previous companies, we produced the following video with Sandwich Video (also based in LA) a budget of $120K USD. I do not believe this kind of budget is reasonable for the project.

Produced by Sandwich Video

You can see other videos produced by my previous startup, Glide Video Messaging. These videos had various budgets from a few thousand dollars to $10s of thousands of dollars. I worked with around 5 different video production studios depending on budget style, and resources needed.

Finding the right balance is a process.

What are the next steps?

Today we are at an interesting point on the project. We have succeeding in building a community of active participants that have come together to tell the story of Nervos.

The Nervos foundation will soon launch the Marketing and community building Grant program.

We as the community members working on this project have a lot of work we need to continue doing.

1. We need to continue the discussion of what makes Nervos special, and what is the best way to convey that message to a broad audience
2. We need to find more teams that can make videos so that we have a good sense of cost vs quality
3. We need to gather content and narratives from key members of the community that can be used in the creation of the video
4. We need to encourage more community members to create sample scripts
5. We need to encourage more members of the broader community to participate in the creation of this video project
6. Track the progress of consumer-facing applications built on Nervos and curate a list for potential showcasing in a video or video series.

We need your help!

If you are a believer in Nervos, and you want to play a direct roll in adding value to the growth of the platform, please join our chat and encourage your friends to join and to contribute. The process may feel slow and unfocused, but that is the nature of creating something truly owned by the community.