 Hey everyone! Hope you're having a good Tuesday. Today we're going to talk about Storymakers. It's one of our contests that we have right now and this is Fish joining. He is an office dog here at TechSoup so he's happy to make an appearance. And today we're going to talk about Storymakers, our contest going on right now. Really exciting opportunity for nonprofits to win some prizes and tell us their story. So that goes on through October 31st and today I have Lewis and Susan with me. So they're going to take it away and tell you more about production and what we have going on with Storymakers and other webinars. Great! Thanks so much Molly. I am Susan Bard and I am going to be taking you through a couple of quick tips and this is... Hi I'm Lewis Hite. I'm the senior manager for social media, online community at TechSoup and the senior manager for our Storymaker campaign. Great! A couple quick things just to note that you are in something called a Google Hangout which is in your LMS platform. If you're having any issues with the video and the audio not matching up you can refresh your browser. We do recommend you use Chrome to watch these events. It seems to be the one that works best. Something else you can do at the bottom right hand side of your screen there is a little gear. You can click on that gear and you can adjust the video mode so you can go all the way up to high definition depending upon your connectivity to the internet. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to have Lewis help me share my screen and we are going to talk a little bit about the PowerPoint that we have prepared for today. So we're just going to set this up everyone and then pull up our slides here. Great thanks so much Lewis. So I think I'm going to let you talk a little bit about the amazing sponsors we have this year. Yeah so we want to really call out all of our sponsors. We have three levels here so thank you to Adobe and Microsoft for being our platinum level sponsor. At the gold level we have Autodesk, interconnection, mobile beacon, USB memory direct and at our bronze level we have our grant station sponsor. So we're excited all of these sponsors are members of the TechSoup donation program. So whether it's Adobe, Microsoft, Autodesk, recycled hardware, hot spots for mobile beacon, memory cards from USB memory direct or access to thousands of grant giving foundations, grants through grant station all of those are in our donation program and we want to thank them for being helping us do story makers this year. And a quick shout out to Grant Station as well because we've got four webinars coming up from Grant Station to help you build sparkling grant proposals. Yeah and we have our grant station special coming up at the end of this month as well so make sure to follow our social channels for all that information. So going on I'm going to talk about now why TechSoup cares about storytelling. TechSoup has been doing storytelling campaigns for seven years. They began after we saw you know YouTube just blowing up and it became very obvious that the communication landscape was only getting more and more cluttered, more and more competitive with pieces of content. So TechSoup we know we provide nonprofits with access to technology but we realized we also had to give nonprofits the capacity to tell their story through video and images to show what they're doing with all the technology that we provide them. So one way that we think about storytelling at TechSoup is we divide the process into training nonprofits to understand how to create a good narrative. So that's one part. And then the second part is the production component. And production we divide into three parts pre-production, production and post-production. I want to call out that for the narrative part you can still sign up. We have a really exciting hour-long webinar that is this Thursday the 14th at 11 a.m. Pacific time. That's with talk about a good job. Greenpeace's Searing Lama travels around the world giving storytelling events for different Greenpeace chapters. So she is their resident storytelling expert. So she's going to be talking about how to basically create a narrative, the 10-step process to forming your story. And then today we're going to be focusing on production and post-production. We also have two more hour-long webinars, one focus on production and another focus on post-production. Then we also have, and all these things we'll put out, our comprehensive digital storytelling course. So those are all the resources. And now Susan, take it away. Thank you so much. A big thanks to Molly on the back end today. So it's important for you to know as we start talking about production and the steps in production that we here at TechSoup are learners as well as helping you to start understand the storytelling process. And creating a plan and a script and important documents like release forms and shot lists is an important part in your production process. Last week or two weeks ago, was it two weeks ago? Yeah, we talked about the pre-production process and we stressed how important it is for you to have a plan. Before you ever embark with your camera or your iPhone or your droid, make sure you sit down and have a plan. In the production steps, it's really important that you create a script that's very detailed and you also have printed or have available things like release forms. The great news is we do have all of those available for you in our free course that you can download and use. Also have a shot list. List all of the places that you're going to go to film your video or to take the images that you're going to use in your photo digital story. The other step in production is to apply production standards. And these are best practices. So set up your framing like the rule of thirds, lighting best practices. That's something we're learning about here at TechSoup because we've been producing these TechSoup 30s from our training lab. And that's one thing that we're trying to get better at is get better lighting and better audio so that the viewer has a better experience. And the last step is then create a video or photo story based on self and peer evaluations. We've built in a lot of measuring tools that you can use in our storytelling course where you can gather feedback from folks you work with, friends or family, because that will help you produce the best possible video or photo story. Yeah, and just one thing to add here. I have a before I worked in nonprofits. I worked in film production and I cannot emphasize enough the importance of audio. If you go out and have great footage, but your audio isn't good, isn't kind of acceptable, then you're going to be in trouble. You're going to be in deep trouble and you run the risk of having wasted the whole effort. So really think critically about audio and that it has a primary part of your production. Great. So let's take a deeper dive into each of those three steps. The first one was creating or completing a production plan checklist. We have a fillable form that you can download and then keep on your desktop and you can fill this out yourself and you can always modify it at any point in time. So your production plan checklist is comprised of at least 12 things. The first is that you have a purpose. So before you start out, you want to think about what problem is your nonprofit trying to solve? What is the solution and how is your solution unique? And the other thing is your messaging. What is your message to your audience? Also know your audience. Who are you primarily speaking to? Are there as donors? Is it folks you want to sign up for your newsletter? Take action, sign a petition? The next thing would be budget. If you're like us in nonprofit land, usually budget can be a big challenge. So know the amount of money you have to spend up front so that you can spend it wisely such as on things like good audio quality, a good mic, or if it's some type of lighting or any type of props. Shooting location. So in your production plan checklist, a really important thing is to scout out and write down the shooting locations in advance. So when you plan with your actors or your crew, you can actually be more efficient. So you can actually schedule those that are opportune to you and the actors. Yeah, and you know, I would just say about the first few items that we have here, you know, purpose message audience that can feel if it feels too intimidating or overwhelming to try to figure out both two things. One is our webinar Thursday with Syrian will really give a comprehensive structure to provide you with the steps to go through to really fill out the purpose message and audience. And then the second is you don't need to figure it all out lock stop and barrel the first time, you know, you can start this come up with the purpose message audience, get going and you can come back and revisit it three months, six months a year later. Great. A couple of other things that are in that production plan chess checklist are your script and your school storyboard. We have samples for you that you can download from the story makers free course where you can actually storyboard out what you want your viewers to see along with any call outs or things that you need to incorporate into the video. The other thing is your marketing plan on October 12. We are going to have a library video specialist that actually will talk to you about really marketing your video or photo story to the right audience and how to set and measure your outcomes. And this is something she does. She's with the Scottsdale Public Library and I hope you join us for that. Quick note. This is all free. All of these are fillable form fields and you can share them with anyone. Great. So your camera shot list. This is just a quick snapshot of what the camera shot list looks like. Again, group your camera shots by location. You do need to scout out, which means you need to physically go to these locations that you're going to shoot determine what kind of props you need the lighting, the audio equipment and of course any of your if it's a digital camera or it's a like a big camera where you're going to shoot a video depending upon your budget and of course the experience that you have. Yeah, and especially even, you know, if you're shooting with a smartphone, you know, as an example, Molly and I are going out and doing a Facebook live tomorrow and you may not need to think about it in terms of the camera shots, even though that's important, but you could think about it, say, if you're doing an interview, you know, what are the questions that you're going to be asking and then have the camera shots kind of flow from the questions. So you really do want to have the the script, the camera shots, the content, the topic mapped out before him. It's all about planning. And again, just a quick screenshot of the release forms. I think we do want to stress this to you if you're going out there in nonprofit land or library land and you're doing this, make sure that you do have people sign release forms, especially minors, make sure that you do have some type of authorization from the parent or the legal guardian. And these are actually sample forms that you can use. And you can also brand them with your your own nonprofit logo or your library. This next one, Framing, Lighting and Audio. Lewis talked already about audio and I want to also stress it's important to identify the tools you're going to need ahead of time. Some you may need to rent, some you may need to buy, some you may need to just make it work. And we do that in this room and we're talking about creating a set in our training lab. And we have to budget these things out such as specific lighting tools, also having a table so that when you look at us, we're not sitting and the background is an empty wall, which it is right now. And we're trying to work on all of those things to improve the viewers experience. I would also recommend you check out our spreadsheet of tools, because there are some free or relatively inexpensive resources on the spreadsheet that you can find out more about. And then you can also go to those websites and order those or you can find those to rent in your area. So after you've gone out and you've done your shooting, you come back and now you're sitting with all of this footage or you have your photos. So now it's time to really sit down and be critical. Editing your video or photo story based on self evaluation and peer evaluation. And one of the things that I've been told, and that I do myself when I do screen capture videos, less is generally more. I usually Lewis is nodding his head and saying, uh huh, because usually we shoot a lot more than we need. But for a video to have impact, the shorter, right, the better. Right. And especially, you know, even, um, you know, again, talking about smartphones or if you're actually using a editing software, you know, these days, you know, the viral videos are often, you know, a minute to a minute and a half. So, you know, don't think that something that's only a minute long is too short. Given today's attention spans, that's probably, you know, very close to the sweet spot. You know, at the same time, you need to not air too much on the side of doing short videos, just because they are the popular kind of buzzfeed or, you know, kind of a norm out there. They may not be right if you're creating videos for fundraising purposes or to launch a campaign or to for advocacy that really wants to explain your mission. They may, you may need to consider a series of videos that is a combination of the super short and the longer two to four to five minutes. Great. And I think this is just a quick screenshot of the self-evaluation and peer evaluation. This is a form that you can actually click on these buttons and there will be a number. It actually will give you categories. And you can say, okay, did my video concept identify and explain a problem and how your organization solves it. And these are active fields. So you can actually use this. You can send this document out. It's a fillable PDF, a fillable form PDF, send that out to anyone and shoot them a link to your video or your, your photo story. And then they can actually grade you and give you feedback. And it's really it's quantitative so you can make decisions based on that feedback. And you should also self evaluate as well. And activating your network of peers. One of the things we talked about, I think two weeks ago was that you do need to make sure there are other folks looking at your work. One thing I learned in developing educational videos is what makes sense to me may not make sense to everyone else. Or if I think it's a very strong call to action, it may not be as strong to everyone else. So gathering that feedback from trusted peers and folks that are in the same space as you is a great idea. And TechSoup is also a great place to get feedback. Yep, we have our storytelling forums. So if you go to the TechSoup website, I should know by heart, but I believe it's under resources, the drop down, you'll find it there. And there's a storytelling branch that we have where you can ask any questions and find peers as well there. And then the second step in post production, which we talked about was really distributing and marketing and then gathering data. So it is important. You guys have been coming to these webinars or TechSoup 30s and hopefully you will also join us at our other full length webinars for 60 minutes where we have Greenpeace. We also have someone from dosomething.org and then we have a digital library media specialist for our third event. We do want you to submit to Storymakers because we actually do have goals too, just like and we have money to give away too. So, you know, there's $10,000 in prices that split $2,000 per category, five categories. The first three are based on budget size. The fourth category is open to it's our global category. So it's open to organizations only outside the US. And then the fifth category is going to be the community voting people's choice. And the other thing I would say to you is collect data about where your video is most watched. So Molly is really great at this for social media. You should track how your video does over time, how many views you have. And what other data points do you collect? You know, I think the by far views are the most important. But you can also tie it into your social media plan so that you're seeing how many shares, how much engagement your posts that contain videos have compared to other ones. And then you also want to see how much traffic if you're putting videos say on a product page compared to a product page that doesn't have the video, you want to compare there you can use Google Analytics. And you want to see if a video is making a difference in driving traffic to a page. And if you have a call to action for people to donate, that's another great thing to measure or sign up or sign a petition. Those are all great points, but have a goal before you even set out set yourself a goal. So then if you did this last year, you want to, you know, achieve 10% over last year or 15% set that goal. So you and your team have something to shift for. Again, we do have a free course. We encourage you to take it. Some of the excerpts from today are in the course. The course is designed for you to work through it. There are lots of short videos that our co-worker Glenn Fajardo made and they're really they're easy to watch. They're very informative. And then we have activities such as quizzes, self evaluations that you can do throughout the course to help hone your skills. And then we've been talking about this, but I just want to go through each of these. I know Amali has sent out a link to our home page where you can go on TechSoup.org to then click on to register for any of these events. Each of these events will be recorded and archived on TechSoup.org. So if you can't make the live event, you can register and then you'll be notified when it is available in archive. But on 9 14, which is Thursday, it's authentic storytelling with Greenpeace. It's their specific 10 step process. It's a great presentation. I've worked with Searing and I know I've seen her presentation. I think it's very powerful. And she's a very compelling storyteller as well. Then on 9 28 towards the end of this month, driving action with video storytelling production tips. So it's all about the production process. And that's with cherry from do something.org. Lastly, in October is the post production webinar. And that's tools to edit your digital story and get it watched. So it's all about that marketing side of things. So we hope you'll join us for one or all of these. And lastly, we'd like to see if anyone has any questions. So I'm going to check the chat box. What's been super amazing today is that we've had help on the back end with our camera and all of the audio and switching cameras. Yeah, I think we can stop sharing. Any questions that have come in? Okay. All right. So I think we can go to the camera and we can say goodbye. All right. We don't see any questions. We can see Molly now. Now we're back. All right. Now we're back. So we wanted to say thank you. I just want to plug of course our story maker contest. We'll put that into the into the chat as well. You know, submit now the contest opened last Tuesday. It goes all through October 31st. So now's the time to get it in. You have a few weeks. And if you want to take our webinars and then submit a photo, all you need to do is if you're going to submit a photo, you take the photo, post it to Instagram, use the story makers 2017 hashtag and then just go and fill out our entry form. If you're submitting a video, you post it to YouTube and then you come to our entry form and just fill it out and submit. So we hope that you send us your submissions. We really want to we're going to collect them all. We have a new tool this year called Stakla, another shout out to one of our new partners. It allows us to reuse and display user generated content. So all of the submissions that people send in, we're going to curate and kind of break down by different categories, different ways maybe that people use infographics or different maybe a more documentary style compared to animation. So we're going to see all the submissions that we come in and then break them out how we curate. So you'll be able to learn from your fellow nonprofits. Great. And a quick note that this webinar, the short half hour webinar is being recorded. I will post it in the module for today's date. So when you go back into TS 30 and you go to September 12th, you will see the recording of this event probably by the end of today. That's Pacific Time. So that's 5 p.m. our time here. So we encourage you to watch this again if you need to and also check out our free course. Hope to see you on Thursday. Yep. See you then. Bye bye. Thank you.