How you can contribute to Nano regardless of your background
If you haven’t seen “The Power of Digital Money” video, you can catch up right below.
Have you ever wondered how such video is created with zero budget and no professional marketing team whatsoever? I (Bryan, using Json’s Medium) am gonna tell you all about it.
Round 1
Originally the idea was floating around Discord around February 2019, and I first heard it from u/mitche50. Soon after, u/LukasND started a Google Form and u/StonedHedgehog formalized the conception of this project by writing a Reddit post and starting a Discord server dedicated to this project.
I joined Round 1 of the relay among many others. It was a wonderful experience: it was the first time for most of us to be involved in a global-scale project fueled by nothing but enthusiasm. We brainstormed together and quickly decided on March 31st, with only two weeks to prepare. Despite not foreseeing many challenges and relying on improvising, the nine of us miraculously achieved a successful round of relay that day with Colin! However, there were still various issues in the footage so we decided to use it as a proof of concept and redo for better quality.
Round 2
After realizing that we simply got lucky in Round 1 and definitely needed a coordinator for the Round 2, I decided to take this more involved role to make sure the challenges encountered in Round 1 are properly accounted for. Subsequently, Lukas and I made this extensive instruction document, and I quizzed every single participant about the instructions. The majority of the participants also went through the trouble of acquiring tripods to stabilize their footage.
However, we were overly ambitious: 18 participants were more than we could manage. Given that the instructions were demanding yet most participants had no prior practice, Round 2 on Aug 3rd was much more chaotic than we anticipated. More challenges emerged during the event: two Nanos were passed around at the same time, participants had to drop out early, the camera battery died, the chat was too messy to follow… you can imagine that it was quite the adrenaline rush! The luck wasn’t on our side either as the entire Golden Gate Bridge was covered by the fog. In the end, we didn’t obtain solid footage for a complete relay, so we decided not to make any edit that might “deceive” our audience and instead to move onto Round 3. Thankfully, the majority of the participants were able to rejoin.
Round 3
Now with much more experience from the previous two rounds, we modified the instructions, quizzed participants more to prepare them for all potential challenges, and tried again with 13 participants on Sept 7th. Thanks to u/Joohansson, you can now relive the entire Round 3 by following the private-channel conversation from that day here. Can you now get a sense of how difficult and intense it was just to obtain a successful round of footage?
It’s also important to note just how dedicated and passionate our participants in all three rounds were. Participants on the North American west coast consistently had to wake up at 3 or 4 AM on a Saturday morning, and participants from East Asia and Oceania had to go home at 2 AM. In all three rounds, we had participants that were completely soaked in the rain for 2 hours and travelled across the country just to include a scenic view in the background. Some also received numerous gifts from nature such as bug bites and sunburn. We even had participants risking to get fined by the local police or braving the potentially violent protests nearby. Mind you that none of them received any sort of compensation. Y’all are inspiring badasses!
After obtaining all the raw footage, Lukas spearheaded the post-production by teaching himself Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro. Given the solid quality of the video, you would’ve never guessed that he learned the skills on the fly for this project. Participants and u/KojoSlayer also brainstormed many ideas for the video content. ”Eau de bog la nouvelle” voluntarily produced a completely customized EDM track for the video. It is impossible to keep track of everyone’s contribution at this point. So if you have ever helped this project in any way, regardless of whether your effort was directly reflected in the final video, I just want to sincerely say thank you!
The benefits of being involved in community projects like this are that you will considerably improve your leadership and a wide range of hard/soft skills required by the project. You will meet interesting and like-minded people, build genuine friendships, and expand your world views. And you get to contribute to your favourite coin at the same time. How can it get more rewarding than that? Remember, you don’t need to be a developer to contribute to Nano!
Now
Finally, after almost 9 months since the original Reddit post, we proudly released this entirely community-made video into the wild. The video should be accessible to people without any knowledge of cryptocurrencies: it shows a first-of-its-kind global relay of digital money that is instant, feeless, and green. It’s also freaking cool to watch. Now I have a challenge for you: what can you do to make it reach as many people as possible? Of course, obnoxious shilling and spamming would be counterproductive. Just stay positive, respectful, and considerate of your audience, and I’m sure some will get curious. Don’t forget that we also have translations in Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin Simplified, Mandarin Traditional, Russian, and Japanese for your local audience. We did the best we could to create it, and now we are counting on you to spread it!
TLDR: Creating this video is much harder than it looks but highly rewarding, and now you have the power to market Nano too by sharing it with more people!
Bonus
Some local scenery from Round 2 that wasn’t present in Round 3
No background photos were available for Delhi, India since it took place inside a car.
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