[Qgis-developer] [FOSS4G2006] QGIS Screencasts CD Proposal

[Mateusz Loskot]

FOSS4G2006] QGIS Screencasts CD Proposal

Today, I encountered interesting article on LinuxNews.pl website (a
polish Linux news aggregator)
about screencasts and Captorials (http://www.captorials.com). Shortly, I
started to think about promoting QGIS on FOSS4G 2006 (and not only on
FOSS4G) with screencasts. I had a short chat with Gary on the #qgis and
he told me he was also thinking about similar idea. Here, I'd like to
present my proposal of "QGIS Screencasts CD" promotion activity.

What is a screencast?

Here is the answer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screencast

What is Captorials.com?

Simply, it's a video-based helpdesk center:
"Captorials.com holds homebrew screen-recordings, also known as
screencasts or simply, captorials."

What's the idea of "QGIS Screencasts CD"?

Captorials.com idea provoked me to think about QGIS Screencasts CD.
Inspiration

I believe there is no need to explain why screencasts are nice idea to
promote Quantum GIS.
In a few words, I see following roles that screencasts can play:
- a (revolutionary) way of providing support - especially for
non-technical users
- portable presentation of QGIS features without installation
- promotion - everyone likes gadgets, movies, presentations, etc.

Plan

The idea is simple and consists of following tasks:
1. Collect a bunch of QGIS screencasts
2. Prepare >= 100 CDs with collected screencasts (burn + prepare labels)
3. Distribute the QGIS Screencasts CD on the FOSS4G 2006
4. Provide availability to download screencasts or the complete CD from
QGIS website

The most difficult and time-consuming task is the first one.
Here, I hope it's possible to find 5-15 QGIS users and developers
interested in delivering screencasts about various QGIS features. To
simplify this tasks, we could record QGIS User Guide sections as
screencasts.
If there would be 10-15 people and everyone could record 1 screencast,
then I think we have the whole CD ready :-)

The second task is much simplier.
If there would be >= 5 of us and everyone could burn 5-10 CDs, then we
could collect 100 CDs quite easily.
We'd also need someone to create and print nice CD labels :-)

Distribution is easy:
- there will be two QGIS workshops, so that should be a nice opportunity
to distribute CDs
-
- .... (I don't know about other QGIS activities, but it should not be a
problem to distribute CDs)

AFter FOSS4G, all screencasts may be put on the QGIS website or
Captorials.com to download.



There are 4-5 weeks left to FOSS4G, so I believe it's feasible.

I can promise to prepare 1-2 screencasts and to burn 50 CDs.
When we meet on FOSS4G, we would need an hour or two to put labels on CDs.

I'm looking forward to hear your comments!

p.s. I'm posting this proposal to following lists:
qgis-user at lists.qgis.org
qgis-developer at lists.qgis.org


Best regards
-- 
Mateusz Loskot
http://mateusz.loskot.net