Abstract

FWBAMP is the way you consume digital events, Town Halls, and other FWB happenings after they have happened. You no longer need to show up in real time to catch all of the great interviews and content that FWB has to offer. FWBAMP will also act as a token gated entry point for outsiders to get a glimpse of all of the great content that FWB has to offer.

Motivation

We are inspired by and engaged in all of the great chats that happen daily in the FWB Discord, but we know that many members can’t join in real time. We need a way to streamline the process of consuming archived events. Currently, Adam and Zoë are manning the archive manually: recording using GarageBand (or Craig when available) and uploading to Google Drive, then pasting a link in a private Google Sheet, then pasting the link back on the Events page on Discord.

We are excited to make the first version of this product, and know that it will unlock future opportunities for revenue generation and increased community engagement.

Impact on FWB Community

This would benefit the FWB community by allowing more members to consume events that they may not be able to attend in real time. This may in turn increase community engagement. Want to get involved in the social-impact initiatives but haven’t been able to make it to any of their chats? No problem! Take a listen to the archived talks and decide if you want to dive in. Having an archive will ultimately enable FWB to replay shows at different times, repurpose great content into podcasts and get sponsors for these podcasts to generate revenue. There are also opportunities to give lower tier FWB holders access to the archives as an incentive to ante in at the local level or something similar. Finally, having things like the Product meetings and different governance meetings recorded will give us a historical record of FWB to look back on as we grow!

Details

Overview

The goal of the FWBAMP project is to automate the recording and storage of digital events, increase the quality of those recordings, and provide a great user facing experience for playback of those recordings. This proposal is for the first iteration, which is a bit more hands on, while we flesh out the technical requirements for a fully automated solution. There is also an aspect of this project that involves an archivist writing show notes for each event, and when we do this, we begin to build a historical record of FWB that can be revisited in perpetuity.

1. Website: We already have some mocks for this, but a sleek web interface that is searchable, filterable, and token-gated where people can go to look for archived shows is a must!

2. Uploading: Uploading will be done using a CMS that Product is creating. Files will be uploaded to a central repository with the relevant metadata (date, name, show description). The user facing website will then point to these audio files and they will play in-browser.

3. Recording: For the time being, we have a solution for this: using the new WireTap bot, show hosts will be able to record their shows. Adam and Zoe will continue to support as needed for recording as well, but the goal is to have this be a show host responsibility as soon as possible.

4. Discord Integration: In the events channel, or perhaps in a dedicated channel, would be great to automate the posting of links to recently archived shows.

5. Future State (Not currently in scope): As we scale, there will be a need for an automated workflow for recording all digital events taking place on the FWB Discord that are on the calendar. We should also make sure that members continue to be able to trigger recordings in real time for chats that aren’t prescheduled.

   • Make sure that the recording bot has all notifications muted in its user profile
   • Start recording 5 mins before and end 5 mins after each event.
   • Bonus points if we can figure out how to capture the video or screen share.

Roadmap

1. Make the website. Even though we are working from google docs, if we could get the website going it would improve the community wide experience and it is pretty low hanging fruit. Website will also include a counter to give us deeper insights into listenership.

2. Make the CMS. This will be the place that archivists and show hosts can upload recordings and edit the metadata that will display on the website.

3. Hook website and CMS up to the new file storage solution.

4. Optimize use of MEE6 (WireTap bot) for audio recording while we explore automation options for the future.

Outcomes and Success Measures

Luckily it is pretty easy to measure success here. The first goalpost is to streamline the way to get events recorded and uploaded to a server. The second goalpost is to get the website up and running so that people can play things from the archive. We want to see that, with the archive site, listenership for discord events and town halls increases from that observed in real time. That spells success! Before we decide what to tackle next, we will see how people engage with this MVP and then start to build out more functionality.

Looking forward

We think that there are tons of things you could do with this in the future:

• Create RSS feeds of content for people
• Make a custom player where users can cue in the shows they want to catch up on
• Improved automation of recording and uploading
• Archiving other media types (videos, rich content from irl events, tl;dr, other editorial products).

This archive project is just the first step toward getting a more dynamic events schedule in place. I think that you can use the analogy of college radio here. We could have a full program guide, maybe even 24/7 where people tune in and something is always on. The archive could be used to fill “dead air” and events can be replayed in those slots. There are other proposals floating around like FWB Radio, but that feels like just part of what this could be. We can have music programming, interview programming, current events shows, etc. Having an archive gives us a huge boost toward experimenting with other parts of this. We could open up show proposals more widely and build a full schedule of programming ultimately that showcases the interests of more FWBers and foster an even stronger sense of community. Digital events provide real time places for conversation and community building, but archiving, syndicating and distribution will allow sustained engagement and provide a historical record of how we grow as a community and how far we have come.

Budget

Budget is $19k

• Design: “Consider that part already done,” Bodge. $0
• Development: Product estimates this phase to cost $10k to develop the CMS and website.
• Project Management: Zoe (@zoenrogers#6096) will be in charge of project management and will take on half of the recording and uploading burden. ~ part-time, $1500/month. (Jan, Feb, March)
• Archivist: Adam (@bartadamley#7554) will be in charge of writing show descriptions for each recorded event (Editorial) and will take on half of the recording and uploading burden. ~ part-time, $1500/month. (Jan, Feb, March)

Timeline

We have already unofficially started with this project in the world of google docs and google sheets, we should start making it better as soon as possible. We have the goal of getting the recording and uploading dialed in by end of Season 4/early Season 5. We hope to get the website and CMS up and running early in Season 5. We are targeting the end of March as the end of this project.