Zcash Media 2023

[decentralistdan]

The latest @ZcashGrants meeting minutes will be posted early next week.

[alphaysh]

I second that Zcash Media has done quality works and I am looking forward to this grant

[alphaysh]

Coca Cola could make a commercial for soft drinks if they wanted to play the long game..…

[zancas]

Hey! We’re eager to hear about UX issues! This isn’t really the right thread though.

Perhaps you could join us on matrix.org ?

Or message me on this forum. I want to know what’s coming up for you.

Thanks!

[noamchom]

Zcash Media has 3 videos on YouTube (nothing published in the past year), are there any new ones coming up on the horizon?

I also wonder why there haven’t been any shorts made out of what must be the dozens of hours of interview clips and animations. Zooko’s invisible black cat on the couch deserves its own upload *if nothing else. YouTube shorts are an increasingly popular format, it really feels like Zcash Media is missing a huge opportunity to be growing its footprint on the platform by not keeping the channel active with new content

[pkr]

Would you be incentivized to keep working on something if the milestone is complete and you aren’t getting paid for it any longer? Same thing is happening here and will continue to happen on their next videos. World’s worst investment (aside from perhaps Zcash itself).

[noamchom]

My suggestion isn’t for another team’s effort of work (I know that there is a new Zcash Media major grant already under way with an almost $1,000,000 cost sticker, i’m not suggesting anyone has their energy pulled off of those efforts). I am suggesting that one person with access to publish video on the channel should spend a few hours on a 1-2 week basis to make short clips from the original full length videos. Essentially no new work at all and only requires trivial video editing skill.

If we want Zcash Media to be a broadly known content platform for the next wave of new Zcash enthusiasts, we should be making good-faith efforts all along the way to keep some energy on that channel.

The earliest 2023 video deliverables aren’t planned to release until 08-06-2023 which is about 2 months from now. In the lead up to that date, the Zcash Media channel could do itself a favor by getting reactivated during these next 2 months, by releasing some re-clipped bits as YouTube shorts.

(Posting content onto the Zcash Media twitter, facebook, instagram, tiktok, snapchat, et al accounts would also be simple, but effective).

Driving viewership in the future can be given a multiplier impact now by pushing out content during the lead up to the deliverables release cycle.

[Blazin8888]

I think our Media efforts should be ramped up BIG time while the price is low like this. Zcash has only traded at these levels (against USD) for 3 times in its prior history and it did not last long.

This is a great opportunity for many people across the globe to discover Zcash. If our mission is to empower people the time is NOW more then EVER!

[noamchom]

The new Zcash Media grant was funded in early February, have any status updates been shared that i haven’t noticed in the past 4 months?
Are the Milestone #1 deliverables on pace for mid August of this year?

[zancas]

I’m not experienced with this sort of work, but @noamchom 's suggestions seem sensible to me. It’d be nice to have more content to point at. Especially if it’s as easy as @noamchom suggests.

[David_Heisenberg]

Hello Zcash fam,

I wanted to provide a quick update on our progress before ZCON4. First, we’ve invested a lot of time over the last 5+ months to build our operations systems to be able to work more and more efficiently. We’ve also spent a lot of time researching and writing the overarching topics and material to be covered for all 20 videos. In addition, early on, we planned a switch to a hosted format for our future videos. We think a hosted format is helpful for succeeding on YouTube and has many advantages, including being able to more easily make future content and being able to talk about current events. But it also comes with its own challenges, including experimenting with tone, style, and delivery.

Regarding our timeline, we structured our grant to have two Milestones, each estimated to take 6 months, for a total of 12 months. We received the startup funding March 13, 2023, which put our target for Milestone 1 completion to Sept. 13, 2023. (There was a bit of a gap between getting the grant approved and being ready to receive startup funding, which pushed our Milestone 1 timeline back a bit from initial estimates.)

However, our internal schedule currently predicts we may need until October to complete Milestone 1, although this is still flexible, and we are working hard to keep to six month Milestone intervals. As a reminder, our deliverables are:

-Milestone 1: 8 videos completed and submitted to ZF for verification.
-Milestone 2: 12 videos completed and submitted to ZF for verification. 6 videos released.

What’s the bottom line? Our first 6 videos will be released between October ‘23 and March ‘24, with the other 14 videos being released at a regular cadence throughout 2024.

Again, we really appreciate the community’s support and can’t wait to show you what we’ve been making

If you’re at ZCON4, I’d love to talk to you more about our progress and get feedback on our ideas, so please reach out!

[skyl]

@noamchom

In the lead up to that date, the Zcash Media channel could do itself a favor by getting reactivated during these next 2 months, by releasing some re-clipped bits as YouTube shorts.

There is a lot of video editing talent in the community. @robmarn @Dbarreira @Tecnopapapi @Edicksonjga @ryan.taylor … Zcash Media should use some of the grant to activate this talent to make some noise on TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, Free2Z, Odyssey, Rumble … I agree that there should be a lot of shorts and appetizer content that would be really useful to share … Zcash Media has been completely quiet on Twitter and YouTube … I’m not an expert but don’t the most successful channels on YouTube constantly release new content? I think keeping the engagement and excitement up shouldn’t be too hard with the amount of video talent we have. If the idea is that the main channel will only have masterpieces, maybe secondary channels cpuld be created “Zcash Media Shorts” … “Zcash Media Esp” … “Zcash Media Brazil” … ?

[noamchom]

@skyl

I’m not an expert but don’t the most successful channels on YouTube constantly release new content? I think keeping the engagement and excitement up shouldn’t be too hard with the amount of video talent we have.

Yes completely. Zcash Media will once again fail to make a broad impact if they aren’t doing the 101 level work in the lead up. @David_Heisenberg gave some helpful updates, but made no remark about how the Zcash Media accounts will be warmed up in advance (or how the community can help do some of the warm-up efforts) to the start of releases in October.

YouTube shorts are the best engagement drivers on that platform today, Zcash Media would be shooting itself in the foot by not getting active with that format asap. (If nothing else, there ought to be a series of recycled clips from the first 2 major video releases as shorts). This is 101 level stuff, its a bit discouraging that their Zcash Media 2023 proposal was accepted despite having no specific plan for how to keep their existing accounts active and engaging.

Your point about the other Zcash YouTube accounts is also good, they could be clipping and releasing shorts also for their respective audiences… Zcash Brazil and ZecHub come to my mind first.

[pkr]

Agree on YT shorts. Low-hanging fruit stuff.

[dismad]

Excited for your releases! Let @ZecHub know if we can help in anyway

[Jgx7]

shouldn’t POS and UDAs take priority over marketing? seems like the product is not there to be spending much money on marketing. Wallet, sync times, proof of stake, and UDAs seem more important to me. Especially given the price of ZEC. I don’t think it’s a marketing problem as I may have in the past.

[noamchom]

As in my other post, I can emphasize it here also. The #1 marketing mechanism (and the crypto industry gold-standard) that Zcash and all other altcoins have is the value on the chart.

#2 marketing mechanism: Memes; we’ve got some great ones but they aren’t viral.

[pkr]

Zcash Media

Is @David_Heisenberg on vacation? 2023 is almost over…

[zkcroc]

Someone should post more content like this on tiktok/yt shorts, I think this video is great. Short, to the point, and sells you the problem that zcash can fix

Zcash 🛡️

[noamchom]

@GGuy

Can’t wait to see what the Zcash Media team can deliver!

@januszgrze

If we can sustain their efforts, we could see more Zcash virality in our social channels

@covfefe

so let’s fund so they can continue the great work they’ve started.

@Angst01

past work done by Zcash Media speaks to the quality of the output we can expect.

@spectre

We need to get the product out there, so to speak.

@ryan.taylor

I have no doubts that they will deliver top-quality work this time around, again

@zancas

Trust the judgement of community members who’ve demonstrated their trustworthiness.

ZcashMedia has demonstrated BOTH necessary qualities for me to consider them trustworthy:

• Intention
• Competence

How? When they have not even made so much as a 60 second short clip all year.

Where exactly has all of the Milestone #1 funding went?
(ZCG grant was awarded and payment began in early Feb 2023)

I am deeply troubled by this Zcash Media grant, which is such a grand cost but is yielding quiet literally no social media engagement for Zcash in its first +7 months.

Some of us in the community were highly skeptical about recontinuing an even more expensive grant, with a team that did an average job with their first $1,000,000 grant.

Zcash Media 2023

Good intention and competence aren’t the only reasons to fund a project. What about the need, impact and value? The media videos were fun to watch but I doubt they made any significant change to the perception of zcash. Actually, now MSM associate Snowden with zcash and not in a good way of course.

Zcash Media 2023

Perhaps you forget what happened with the first Zcash Media grant. They delivered ~10 months later than originally proposed, and to keep their work going they required additional tack-on proposals. Did they ultimately get the job completed up to par? Yes, but it was to the context of a significant schedule slip and required an extra $200,000 or so. The videos and content did okay but were by no common use of the word “game changing”. The community paid about $700,000 for 3 videos and a new …

Zcash Media 2023

It really does not. ZCG would be spending a million dollars on literally the least effective type of communication channel for innovation adoption, at least according to the most widely respected theory on technology diffusion. And if you need any evidence of how that plays in real life, just take a look at the non-existant impact on adoption that a (very expensive) youtube video with the grandiose revelation that Snowden “played a key role in Zcash privacy coin’s creation” had. And it will c…

Zcash Media 2023

The rapid funding of this proposal, despite a clear lack of staffing conditions, or sizing of deliverables really calls absolute question to the nature of the committee members who voted in favor. How much blind trust are we giving to 37L? This community to my understanding is one founded on principles that assert the elimination of trusted parties and black box processes! Not even 15 calendar days elapsed, and many questions and concerns beyond just my own were never addressed by the prop…