Re: 30 day webathon for kickstarter support (issue 6068045)

[address@hidden]

On Apr 19, 2012, at 4:40 PM, David Kastrup wrote:

address@hidden writes:

Reviewers: ,

Message:

Hey all,

My ensemble is launching a Kickstarter project in a day or two to

support our tour in France and Ireland.

We have a sweet plug in the project video for GNU LilyPond and I was

wondering if I could strike up a partnership with LilyPond to put a link

to the project on the LilyPond front page for the duration of the

Kickstarter fundraising drive (30 days).

I probably should be the last person to complain, but I would consider
that inappropriate.

The benefit for LilyPond is rather indirect:

There are three benefits:

1)  Imagine it like part of the bounty program.  I don't cash in on bounties because I devote all my time to my career in the arts, but this career in the arts needs to succeed in order for me to devote the time I do.  Part of this success is linked to donations, and the LilyPond site is an avenue that can lead to the getting of those donations.

2)  Everywhere we go we propose talks and workshops on score making.  So while LilyPond itself doesn't gain a benefit as in (1) above, people know more about it, which can't hurt.

3)  In the video we're using (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsC6asiyEew) there's a big fat I <3 LilyPond.  This is bound to be seen by 500-1000 people who know nothing about LilyPond.

basically every publisher or composer or user using LilyPond would have
similar grounds for comparable wishes, and we would have our front page
drowned in ads if we were to heed them.

With respect to the three points above:

1)  The ads should not be paying and should be a community decision by the developers to support a worthy cause that somehow feeds back into LilyPond.  If there's a developer or user whose LilyPond related project can benefit from the work they put into LilyPond, I for one would be happy to spread the word about it.

2)  The project being promoted should link back into LilyPond somehow - not just "I use LilyPond" but "I use and I promote LilyPond."

3)  We'd want said person to link back into LilyPond for the ad to be worthwhile running via their site or their ad, which is what my video does.

I don't think we should go over 1 ad at a time, so there's no drowning.  It's purely a question of choice.  For example, Janek is currently applying to GSoC and there is another candidate who applied for LilyPond stuff as well.  Either of them would stand to gain $5000ish from participating, which is huge.  Only one of them will get chosen, and the LilyPond community has had no problem sorting out internally which project is most worthwhile.

People can propose patches if they want the real-estate on the site which will be pushed or not depending on what people think.  It is a great way for LilyPond to help those who help LilyPond and to benefit from the deal as well.

What I would suggest is that you write up a short article about your
tour and your use of LilyPond, mention the Kickstarter campaign, and
publish the article in the next LilyPond Report.  You can then flaunt
that issue of the LilyPond Report to whatever music and/or computer news
sites you wish, and thus get a combined tour/LilyPond exposure to the
degree you find yourself willing on working on distribution.  I think it
should be possible to time the next issue in a manner where it
reasonably agrees with your tour dates.

I am going to be sending hundreds of e-mails around flaunting the kickstarter site.  The few forums where I won't be able to spread the word about Kickstarter and would need to talk about it obliquely via the LilyPond report won't get much traffic.  I know that the LilyPond report is read (I read every issue!), but I doubt this'd have 1/100th of the effect that something on the main website would have.

I remember that one of the reasons I didn't download LilyPond early on was because I didn't associate it with living music projects.  I think that the rubric on the website w/ LilyPond projects is great, but I think it'd be even better to feature them on the front page.  Like these sites:

http://www.python.org/ (right corner)

http://www.blender.org/ (the mango project, also on the right)

http://www.appcelerator.com/ (the bottom of the page)

These things pull me into the site - they certainly don't push me away.

Of course, one can cite many differences between all of these projects and LilyPond.  But I don't think these differences are prohibitive or impinge upon my logic.    I think that this can set up a great precedent: if throwing something like this up on the LilyPond site winds up paying off for my ensemble AND sending new people to the lilypond site AND sending the message to people who want this real-estate "hey, if you want to get your project promoted, you better be promoting us and while your at it how bout some beam quanting code?", this seems like a win win win.  Obviously I'm biased, but I think the benefits can be huge from this sorta thing for all parties involved (which is, at the end of the day, what economics is at its best, and free software IS an economy).

Cheers,

MS