Permaculture & Blockchain: YouTube

A video series that explores the commonalities between permaculture & emerging blockchain technologies to propose "the decentralized state".

With over a decade of experience in consulting, designing, & teaching Permaculture, I understand the underlying concepts that can be tied together with the emerging technologies of the future. My interest/expertise in filmmaking, cinematography & video editing are also an asset.

[IMPACT]

The 3 - main goals of our solution:

1. Production and promotion of educational and entertaining content focused on mass adoption of cryptocurrency payment solutions presented as a solution to current financial structures.
2. Revealing the link to cryptocurrencies and general sustainable practices and making viewers understand why we need decentralized blockchain technology to become more efficient as a race.
3. Producing regular content for platforms such as "YouTube" to guide people on the path of sustainability while promoting an ideal, romantic social structure.

Understanding the problem & solution:

Most of the problems we face as a race are related to uninformed decisions taken by a few people with a lack of democratic say, resulting in long-term consequences that they no longer have to deal with.

Sustainable communities have avoided these situations, and great civilizations have been built by respecting resources and knowledge. Today we are at a metamorphic stage again as humans. What decisions we take and what resources we respect and protect/promote will decide how we continue as a race among everything else on our planet.

Everyone has a responsibility in this metamorphism, and my role as an individual is to inform and educate society about the power of decentralized, sustainable solutions to all our problems.

As a Permaculture teacher and an expert with a decade of experience and understanding, I would like to take this opportunity and place my stake in the Cardano Fund to build powerful content that will inform and impact thousands.

I would like to start a simple YouTube channel, build content on sustainable practices, and promote technology and solutions that can help us better and ease the burden on our planet. Since our economy is a large part of who we help draw the decision between the blessed and the unfortunate, the channel will focus on sustainable practices and how blockchain is a blessing to save us from our overburdened, traditional systems.

The channel will address Permaculture Ethics, Sustainable Design Principles, Blockchain solutions, sustainable practices, alternative societies, off-griding solutions, among other things.

The video series aims to motivate people who understand, admire and/or practice sustainable lifestyles to explore, identify and embrace the technologies of the future as a necessary part of human upliftment. To demystify the existence of blockchain, NFTs, smart contracts, and cryptocurrencies while explaining their relevance alongside the relevance of critical sustainable practices for humanity to repair themselves and thrive.

An example of the content we would like to bring: One of the videos we plan to make is to explain what a "Smart Contract" is by comparing it with something tangible that everyone can understand, like a "Farm". A Smart Contract is very similar to a farm where the three main parts of a smart contract are: The Input, The Code or the contract that automatically executes itself after receiving the input and the final output. If you were to look at a sustainable farm with a similar Lense, once it receives the seed and the water as an input, the "code" in the soil transforms it into a plant/tree with multiple tangible and intangible outputs or benefits for us to see and enjoy.

Three main challenges we currently face are:

1. Funding a small team with a writer, equipment manager, and talent.
2. Connecting and influencing the Cardano community to believe in our idea and achieve extraordinary content that could shine a future light.
3. Investing in the necessary equipment to make existing workflows predictable & straightforward.

[FEASIBILITY]

The plan starts with securing the team with consistent pay and procuring the necessary equipment for the project. While most of the topics for the video series are already decided, a thorough overview will be followed by scripting and storyboarding the entire series. This is followed by complete production on a weekly basis according to the plan below.

Week 1:

Building the team and forming alliances

Week 2:

Finalize topics for content creation.

Begin scripting content.

Week 3:

Finish content scripting

Finalize procurement of necessary equipment.

Week 4:

Start video production (minimum two videos per week)

Week 5&6:

Generating 4-6 videos

Channel promotion.

Week 7&8:

Generating 5-7 videos

Finetune demographic promotion.

Week 9&10:

Build ties with the community

Organize live online events

Focus on making 4-6 videos.

Week 11&12:

conclude preliminary social media strategy

Generate Final video(s)

Organize and host an event to conclude video series and promote/celebrate "Cardano"

The project requires a budget of 35,000 USD to develop relevant content to inform and promote blockchain solutions for the future while we nurture sustainable living. While over 50% of the budget is focused on procuring/renting necessary equipment for the production of the video series, the remaining budget is allocated towards building a well-equipped team, channel promotion, and running the entire show for 12 weeks while we develop more content strategies to monetize and sustain the production for future ideas and films. All gains from this effort will be re-invested to generate content that will inform and promote Permaculture, Blockchain, its various solutions, and Cardano.

Budget allocation:

Video Production Equipment: 9,500 USD

This will include but is not limited to: A-cam: Full-Frame 4K Camera Body, a set of 2 lenses (prime & zoom), a more economically priced B-Cam, Professional Grade 3-Point Lighting System, monitor-recorder, a film rig for A-cam & necessary stands, tripods, & miscellaneous equipment.

Video Editing Workstation: 6500 USD

This will include but is not limited to: Mac Studio, Mac Studio Display, Davinci Resolve License & Speed Editor.

Set Design & Props: 2000 USD

Hiring a video production team for three months: 800-850 USD per Week (12 Weeks)

Channel promotion and Marketing Budget: 3000 USD

A Live Event and Promotion towards the end of completion: 4000 USD

This budget has been designed after carefully considering both the equipment necessary and the team for content production and editing. It will be a dedicated effort to inform the masses and monetize our channel for profits as we plan to use the entire fund allocation only for content creation.

We are well aware that this fund allocation will provide us with the necessary equipment along with our existing tools and expertise to produce long-term content apart from just the video series proposed, and we intend to establish a production house that will continue to focus on the said goal until we address the problem statement mentioned.

Filmmaker and Permaculture Expert: Azlan Mohammed Shakib

Script Writer and Storyboarding: Aisha Valappil

Equipment Manager: Syed Rayyan

Blockchain Expert: Vinay Deva & Sangeet M (KONMA ORG)

Talent: Asjad Ahmed

Art & Illustration: Amina Iman

[AUDITABILITY]

Our most recent "video series" on the "Introduction to Permaculture" followed an effective pattern of scripting and storyboarding, followed by video production and post-processing running side by side till the completion of the series, which was later turned into an LMS Module for popular platforms like Skillshare, Udemy, & the better academy. We would like to measure our progress along similar lines with minor, necessary differences:

1. The progress and development of the project can be a three-fold approach where topic selection, scriptwriting & storyboarding followed by procurement of necessary equipment can be considered the first and essential step to understand and the number of videos to be addressed.
2. The second phase involves the quality of the production and the actual production itself, followed by channel promotion; this is the longest stage of the project and is spread over a span of 7 weeks.
3. After completing the video series, the project's final phase is to promote the content for maximum outreach, which will also involve an actual live event to further the message.

We would like to measure success for the project in 3 stages:

• Easy: Gain over 1000 subscribers on YouTube with over 4000 watch hours.
• Medium: Everything in "easy" plus establish a similar presence on at least 3 other social media channels and 1 other video sharing platform for maximum outreach.
• Hard: Do everything in "Medium" in just 6 weeks, followed by organic growth, promotion and a grand event to celebrate the completion towards the 12th week!

This new proposal has been greatly improved over a previous non-funded proposal in Fund 7.

SDG Rating

SDG goals:

Goal 2. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture

Goal 6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all

Goal 11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

Goal 14. Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development

SDG subgoals:

11.3 By 2030, enhance inclusive and sustainable urbanization and capacity for participatory, integrated and sustainable human settlement planning and management in all countries

2.4 By 2030, ensure sustainable food production systems and implement resilient agricultural practices that increase productivity and production, that help maintain ecosystems, that strengthen capacity for adaptation to climate change, extreme weather, drought, flooding and other disasters and that progressively improve land and soil quality

Key Performance Indicator (KPI):

2.4.1 Proportion of agricultural area under productive and sustainable agriculture

11.3.2 Proportion of cities with a direct participation structure of civil society in urban planning and management that operate regularly and democratically

#proposertoolsdg