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Ubuntu Community Considers a Crowd-Sourced Promo Video (ubuntu.com)
Slashdot reader Beacon11 writes that "Alan Pope, a community advocate for Ubuntu, has requested comments and ideas regarding the creation of a crowd-sourced promo video that, in 30 seconds, conveys that Ubuntu is for everyone." Alan Pope writes:
So for example you might see a woman on a train typing an article, a guy in an office creating a presentation, a kid on the sofa playing a game with a controller on their TV, someone watching a film, someone developing code, kids playing with robots, a farmer planning animal feeding. You get the idea...
So I'd really like to do this as a shared community project, with video clips submitted by Ubuntu users from around the world, perhaps even taking in a landmark or two here and there. I'd expect the video to represent the diversity of users, and variety of activities people are able to do with Ubuntu.
Though they're currently just discussing its feasibility, Alan writes that "I think if we work together we could make something amazing."
So I'd really like to do this as a shared community project, with video clips submitted by Ubuntu users from around the world, perhaps even taking in a landmark or two here and there. I'd expect the video to represent the diversity of users, and variety of activities people are able to do with Ubuntu.
Though they're currently just discussing its feasibility, Alan writes that "I think if we work together we could make something amazing."
A crowd sourced porno video with a Linux/Ubuntu theme would be wonderful!
Light your hair on fire, jump off a roof, and somehow involve cute cats in the video. BOOM, 10 million views easy.
People looking for a printer driver, finding out their audio doesn't work, trying to figure out why system d has shat the bed again....
Well, those are things Windows users can already do. Adopting a new system takes a lot of effort, so you better give people a good reason: how is your system better than Windows?
Circumcision is child abuse.
That's a good point. My first thought is that using Linux you can do all those things without paying for crashes and getting hacked. That doesn't make a great promo video, though.
Open source definitely needs better marketing. Right now at work we're dealing with an issue where we need to switch vendors for certain software, but we can't get our data out of the old system and in to the new system. So we're a bit stuck; stuck with software that doesn't fit our needs and costs too much. With open source software, we COULD easily get our data out, licensing costs would have never been an issue in the first place, and we could adjust the software to fit our needs. So everything about the situation shows three reasons open source would be better, but none of that fits well in a 30-second video.
A woman on a train typing an article, a guy in an office creating a presentation, a kid on the sofa playing a game with a controller on their TV, someone watching a film, someone developing code, kids playing with robots, a farmer planning animal feeding. HA!
They can't be using Ubuntu seriously because of systemd, pulseaudio, "break of Unix philosophy", Firefox Quantum and other things that don't belong to 90's anymore.
I know 30 seconds ads have their place if you want to get people to eat a burger or drink a soda or to pick a particular brand of car or whatever. But it seems like an awfully short time to selling in a Linux distribution since what users really care about is applications and you'll just get one or two oddball use cases with no time to explain why. So I'd probably go with less is more here.
Here's roughly what I think you'd have time for in a 30s ad:
"Linux is used by billions of devices from cellphones to supercomputers (swirly circle of cell phones, servers, supercomputers, set top boxes and embedded systems rushing by) and now laptops and desktops are next. (PC and Mac guy going like "huh?") Ubuntu is your free and class-leading Linux distribution full of applications, games and productivity tools for everyone (logo + infographic).
Then have people start walking into camera like "Hi I'm Bart and I use Ubuntu for $something." "Hi I'm Lisa and I use Ubuntu for $something_else". And just have them pop in faster and faster like a bigger and bigger group photo and make it briefer and briefer like "Paul, photo editing" and eventually just one-worders and then just crowd the screen and turn it into a buzz like there's thousands of stories you could tell but don't have time for. And you really need to save a few seconds at the end to say something like "Visit ubuntu.com. What's your thing?" (same in text on screen)
I think intro/setup would eat like 10 seconds of your ad. You need 2 seconds for the finish. If you let the first two finish in full that's roughly 2*3 seconds. That leaves 30-10-2-6 = 12 seconds to build the crescendo. I'd say 5-6 seconds more of increasingly rushed and short stories, then 3-4 starting to be like one-worders shouting over each other then the last 2-3 seconds going to more like a buzz and the camera zooming out.
Did anyone get to say why they're using Linux? Nah. But in 30 seconds I think it's more important to get across that Linux is for a wide range of people that could include you. Because you're going to want to know a bit more than that before you try it...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Use the money to get the documentation in order.
It's currently non-existent, as far as I can see.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
Well yeah the problem would be that Ubuntu has an identity crisis.
Whatever innovation they did with Unity Mir and phone/tablet has been tossed. Now just a poor man's Fedora for dpkg.
Ubuntu is ancient African word for can't install Debian.
Cats using Ubuntu! Like Cats with Cisco's products.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Even then you can use LibreOffice on Windows - which is what comes installed on the vast majority of desktop and laptop computers - or Mac. There's not much you can do with Ubuntu that you can't with macOS or Windows.