The Interledger Community 🌱: Sustainable Funding

Sustainable Funding Series — MozFest 2022 Web Monetization Action Plan

Erica Hargreave — Mon, 28 Feb 2022 14:10:02 +0000

With MozFest fast approaching and a few of our projects (Naturally Ours, Creating Wellness Breaks, and the Sustainable Funding Series) at the festival, I thought it time that I begin to create a Web Monetization Action Plan for each of them at the festival, starting with the Sustainable Funding Series. Given that here is my first plan to begin to explore and experiment in what promises to be an interesting incubator experiment with the Grand MozFest Web Monetization Experiment!

The Sustainable Funding Series

The Sustainable Funding Series is a vlogcast / podcast that that explores the Creator and Start Up Economies. Join us as we interview creatives, technologists, and educators to discover their pathways forward as they work to develop sustainable funding models around their projects and start ups.

Accompanying the podcast, festival goers will also find a variety of case studies and open educational courses (including one on the Web Monetization Standard) aimed helping other creatives find their pathways forward in building sustainable funding models

This series is funded in part, thanks to generous support of Grant for the Web, BCIT, and the AMTEC Trust Award and the Canadian Network for Innovation in Education (CNIE).

Web Monetized Resources at MozFest

Just for MozFest, my team and I are creating a MozFest Exclusive Gallery for the Sustainable Funding Series with all videos from the series, case studies, online courses, the Web Monetization Libraries we've been creating, and links to the Web Monetized works of collaborators in the project.

MozFest attendees will be able access this gallery, provided they have added the Coil browser extension to their desktop browser or are using the Puma browser.

During the Post MozFest Festival, this gallery will be added to with audio files embedded from Free Music Archive and Hyperaudio.

Within the MozFest Spatial Chat for the Sustainable Funding Series, while not all of the above items will be there, there will be a link to the full gallery, and all the items within the Spatial Chat will be individually Web Monetized.

Ways in Which We Are Web Monetizing These Resources

The Sustainable Funding Series is currently Web Monetized through the Coil Web Monetization Plugin for WordPress on the StoryToGo and StoryToGo Classroom sites, connecting StoryToGo's YouTube Channel to our Coil account, and uploading our video files to Cinnamon Video.

During our Post MozFest Festival adds, we will be uploading audio files to Free Music Archive to Web Monetize and experimenting with translation and remixing features from Hyperaudio.

Copy for a Tweet About My Web Monetized Resources at MozFest

We'd love your help sharing these resources. The tweet below will be ready to share after Wednesday March 2nd:

Need to explore new pathways to #sustainablyfunding your projects? @EricHargreave did so the team at @AhimsaMedia began to interview creators about their solutions. Tune into a podcast, dive into a course & indulge in a case study in this #MozFest Gallery. https://storytogo.ca/2022/02/sustainable-funding-series-mozfest-exclusive-gallery/

Supporting a Healthier, More Equitable Creator's Economy

Our payment pointer support on this project supports the continued production of the Sustainable Funding Series to help shape a healthier, more equitable digital economy, in which creators can find sustainable pathways forward, and work their way around the barriers constructed by gatekeepers. These means:

more interviews
more case studies
new additions to the Sustainable Funding Course
new additions to the Web Monetization Course
new additions to the Web Monetization Libraries

I'd Love the Community Support with this Project By ...

Aside from sharing the resources that we are building with anyone that your feel could benefit from them, we are always looking for new people to interview for the series and would love your suggestions - whether you or someone you know. We'd also love any recommended additions to the resources as we know that we have not captured it all, and would love your help in identifying what we are missing.

Let's Stay Connected

I'd love to stay connected!

Join our StoryToGo Community Group
Tweet with me at @EricaHargreave
Connect with me on LinkedIn
Nerd out with us on StoryToGo's YouTube and Cinnamon Channels
Dive into our prose and musings on StoryToGo.ca
Indulge in a course in the StoryToGo Classroom

Thanks so much for taking the time to read!

Sustainable Funding Series — Final Grant Report

Erica Hargreave — Fri, 03 Sep 2021 17:24:55 +0000

Despite this being our Final Grant Report this just feels like a beginning for us, as when my team and I start to build around an idea, concept, and something we believe in, we are invested for the long haul. Part of my taking so long to get to this final grant report in is that there is so much more that we are planning to build. Finally, however, in looking at everything, I decided like with my Masters Directed Studies Project a few months ago, I was better to submit the paperwork and then continue with our building the way that we would do regardless.

Image courtesy of Jan Tinneberg

Project Update

My team and I have really loved this journey with Grant for the Web and with the Web Monetization Community, and as I said, this is just a beginning for us. We are not going anywhere and have much, much more that we are in the process of building.

I think the big win for us in this whole process was discovering and becoming a part of a community that was trying to solve the same problems that Lori Yearwood and I had been seeing for years around broken funding pathways for creatives that were fraught with inequities. We were trying to find different pathways around this problem for our own projects, our media students, and the broader media and storytelling community that we've been building.

It has been wonderful to be able to explore and address those problems and solutions that we've been finding with actual funding that has allowed us to invest more time in this and build the base to some resources that we hope will help others in funding their projects. As we tend to build projects with heart, that promote cultural understanding, and provoke thought, it gets a little disheartening after awhile when we were approaching the usual broadcast pathways in Canada to hear that our ideas were too smart, that rather than building hope we needed to be sharing train wrecks, and that I as a host either needed to show more skin, was too vanilla (yes, a jury member actually wrote this in the notes of our CMF application for our nature series), or after I hit the ripe old age of 35 was too old as a woman to be a host. This community and seeing some of the things that others here have been building has breathed new hope in us that we can and will find those pathways to building projects of hope, social good, and cultural understanding, and that we will be able to help others to find their pathways to do the same.

So thank you, thank you, thank you!

Progress on Objectives & Key Activities

This video reflection that I created in June, as I wrapped up my directed studies project for my Masters shares much of this journey.

As we immersed ourselves in this Web Monetization Journey, while our objectives did not change, our approach to meeting those objectives has. This has been particularly true around our Web Monetization Experiments, the Resources we are building, and on the Need to Educate in Niche Communities. I go into greater detail on this below.

Web Monetization Experiments

At first we planned to do our experimentation into Web Monetization across our media outlets with a focus on Roamancing, as our digital magazine with the largest viewership. We changed that approach however, for two reasons:

During the pandemic, numbers were dropping to travel media entities, and some social media platforms were actually burying such content in their algorithms.
We found that rather than spreading our focus between media entities, we were better to do a more focused build to our media entity whose audience is focused on the questions that we are addressing in this work, which is StoryToGo.

Having said that, we have Web Monetized the following sites:

In addition, we have been building on the following Web Monetized Platforms:

As travel opens up again and we shift some more of our attention once again to Roamancing, we will be building the open educational, web monetized subdomain for Naturally Ours (our nature series) with lesson plans and parks guides. There is an opportunity right now with this series, so it's a good time to build this, as outdoor adventures and nature destinations are hot right now with tourism. The series was picked up by both Seeka.TV and Tom Skerritt's new network EVRGRN during the pandemic, and as we are now in negotiations on it with two other networks. We are also planning a launch for it to Cinnamon, which we will likely time to correspond with the launch of the new subdomain for Naturally Ours.

The eye opener with our broadcast relationships is that we are earning MUCH more in Web Monetized earnings than through broadcast royalties.

Our findings from these experiments so far have resulted in the following earnings from January 25th - August 29th, 2021:

Web Monetized Earnings: 40.8689741 XRP + 2.46 CA + 0.08 US = 48.89 US
Cinnamon Boosts: 609.774563 XRP + 124.02 CA + 147 US = 944.34 US
XUMM Tips: 1,262 MGS + 220.5 XRP = 229 XRP = 262.55 US

We've seen a substantial increase in our Web Monetization earnings with all the Web Monetization resources that we've been building on StoryToGo.

Sustainable Funding Series

In researching the different pathways that creators use to begin to build Sustainable Funding Models behind their projects, we have begun a Sustainable Funding Series of Vlogcast / Podcasts and accompanying Case Studies.

These are quite time consuming to edit and put together. As a result, we so far have 3 published vlogcasts and case studies:

Nicole Kang on Elementari

Focus on Freemium Models, EdTech, and Interactive Storytelling for Youth.

Maria Grazia Suriano on the Animals in the Great War eBook

Focus on Crowdfunding, Match Fund Grants, and Open Education.

Adam on gFam

Focus on Web Monetization and Photo Networking.

In addition, we have 6 video shorts from the interviews, in addition to vlogcast teaser videos.

We also have interviews recorded with:

Briana Stuart on Creative Living for Dancers
Mathew Safford on mg.social
Casey Herd on Ballet Rising
Kate Hackett on Classic Alice
Aape Pohjavirta on Funzi
Maggie Berti on the Italian Open Education: Virtual Reality Immersions for the Language Classroom
Saeed Dyanatkar on the Stanley Park Virtual Field Trip

We will be continuing to release these interviews and case studies in the coming months, and once those are published will line up more interviews to make this an on-going series. Truth be told, we are already fantasying about those interviews every time we learn about new-to-us projects in this community.

One question we will be asking with future interviews though, is do we transfer the Sustainable Funding Series to being a podcast recorded on Fireside, as Fireside is making our other podcasts much easier to edit, as well as adding more interactivity into our shows and producing live transcripts. Plus as I was one of the early creators in the space, I am growing our audience there quickly with minimal effort on my part.

Education via Talks, Conferences and Podcasts

Education has taken up a fair bit of our focus with the realization that in order for Web Monetization to grow and thrive, more people need to understand what it is. In this endeavour, I have been submitting talks on Web Monetization to conferences, talking about it on different podcasts on Fireside, bringing it up in other people's sessions where appropriate at conferences, and taking meetings with people to share my insights on submitting proposals to Grant for the Web. So far these talks and discussion have been mainly with open educational, creative media, gaming, and podcasting communities.

In terms of the formal talks on Web Monetization that I have given or been involved in, they include:

Business models on the web are broken! Let's fix them. Round Table at MozFest
Creating Sustainable Funding Solution for Innovations in Education, Technology and Storytelling at CNIE 2021
Exploring the Web Monetization Standard as a Solution for Sustainability in the Creation of Open Educational Resources at OERxDomains 2021
Sustainable Funding Series Demo at the Web Monetization Workshop
Sustainable Funding Models Course for Creatives and Educators at OE Global 2021
Sustainable Funding Solutions in Open Education with the Web Monetization Standard at OE Global 2021
Web Monetization Course at OE Global 2021

I will continue speaking on and sharing Web Monetization in the various niche communities that I am a part from open education, to media arts, to technology, to travel, to disability, and others.

Finally, I have also started to incorporate teachings on Web Monetization into two of the post-secondary courses that I teach at BCIT - BCST 1193 : Social Media Storytelling and BCST 3073 : Building Your Digital Media Presence.

Open Educational Resources

Initially our plan had been to create an open educational course in Web Monetization, as we began to explore and grow in the community, however, we decided that what needed to be built first was a way of navigating the ecosystem, as well as resources to troubleshoot problems we encountered within the ecosystem.

This initially started with a post troubleshooting an early issue with the Coil WordPress Plugin thats now been fixed, and then expanded to building both a Web Monetization Resource Library and a Web Monetized Content Library.

The intent with both of these Libraries is to make them dynamic and add to them as the community grows. To do that, we will need the community's help. Please let us know of things we should add to these libraries over time. Our thanks to those of you that have already begun to help with this. It should also be noted here that there are a number of shelves in the Web Monetized Content Library that we are still getting up.

I am glad that we paused and decided to build the Web Monetization Resource Library and a Web Monetized Content Library first, before starting work on the Web Monetization Course, as this has given us a better idea of what everyone else has been building and creating. This allows us to bring in the work and examples of others in the community as we build the Web Monetization Course. I think this is important as it sets a tone on the importance of community and the richness of our community as other people begin to explore Web Monetization, and rather than building in another silo, it builds upon the work of others by building upon and weaving in the rich works they have already crafted.

The Web Monetization Course, like the Library will be dynamic in nature - a living beast that grows, evolves and adapts, as the Web Monetization Community grows, evolves and adapts.

Unit 1 of the Course on Web Monetization is now live! This Unit includes the following lessons:

Future Units that we are planning include: Web Monetizing a Website, Web Monetizing Digital Videos, Web Monetizing Digital Games, Web Monetizing an Event, Web Monetizing Your Podcast, Web Monetized Social Networking Platforms, and NFTs.

We are also building a broader open educational Sustainable Funding Course that Web Monetization will be a part of, and that will be ready for the OE Global Conference at the end of September.

Communications and Marketing

Aside from giving talks on Web Monetization and Sustainable Funding at conferences, we have been sharing our various vlogcasts, case studies, and open educational resources on Twitter and LinkedIn with the #WebMonetization and #CreatorsEconomy hashtags, to Ahimsa Media and StoryToGo on Facebook, to YouTube and Cinnamon, to mg.social and gFam, here, and to the Web Monetization and Coil subreddits. In addition, we've been sharing with our students, the MozFest Ambassadors, the travel media community, and the Fireside podcasting community.

Over time, we plan to do more niche community sharing of this content in appropriate Facebook and LinkedIn Groups, forums, and subreddits. In addition, we are going to do some more experimenting with sharing this content utilizing short video teases to TikTok and Instagram.

What’s Next?

As we've noted above, we still have so much more that we wish to build and share around both the Sustainable Funding Series and our course materials. Rather than this being an ending, this is a beginning.

In the next month, as we prep for the OE Global Conference, we will add additional Units to the Web Monetization Course and launch the first few Units of the Sustainable Funding Course.

Following that we shall getting up the remaining book shelves in the Web Monetized Content Library, and continue to edit and share vlogcasts and case studies from the Sustainable Funding Series. In this endeavour, we will start with the interviews we've already recorded and then begin conducting new interviews.

Concurrently to the continued release of the Sustainable Funding Series, we shall build a Web Monetized subdomain for Naturally Ours with parks guides and open access lesson plans built around each Season of the Series and each Episode.

What Community Support Would Benefit Your Project?

More than anything we could use your help in keeping the Web Monetization Resource Library, Web Monetized Content Library, and Web Monetized Content Library current and up-to-date, by letting us know when we are missing something or should be adding something. Thank you!

We'd also appreciate any sharing of our content and resources with communities that you think would enjoy it or could benefit from it. Thank you!

Additional Comments

Thank you all for making this such a wonderfully supportive and inspiring community to be a part of. And thank you Grant for the Web (and Coil, Mozilla, and Creative Commons) for believing in us and supporting us - this means you, @ayeshaware, @erikad, and @chrislarry! I've really enjoyed getting to know the three of you through this process, and appreciate all your kindness and support.

Relevant Links / Resources

Unit 1 of the Web Monetization Course is Live!

Erica Hargreave — Sun, 29 Aug 2021 18:52:51 +0000

Hello Everyone,

I've been working on developing a Web Monetization Course utilizing resources that we've built through StoryToGo, along with other community built resources. My goal with this course is to help grow and foster our community and draw eyes to what we are all developing.

Unit 1 of the Course on Web Monetization is now live! This Unit includes the following lessons:

Let me know if there are things that I have missed or things that you would add or change.

Future Units that I am planning include: Web Monetizing a Website, Web Monetizing Digital Videos, Web Monetizing Digital Games, Web Monetizing an Event, Web Monetizing Your Podcast, Web Monetized Social Networking Platforms, and NFTs.

Again, please let me know if you have suggestions of other Units I should be building into the course.

My goal with this course is for it to be a dynamic, adapting, and evolving beast - meaning that it will grow, change, and evolve with the community. So please tell me what I should be adding in or changing as our community itself grows, adapts, and evolves. I am by no means aware of all that is being built so if I've missed something my apologies, and just let me know so I can add it.

Thank you!

Sustainable Funding Series — Grant Report #2

Erica Hargreave — Wed, 12 May 2021 00:41:19 +0000

Project Update

The past month or so for us has been focused on the education world, both in wrapping up a College Course that we were teaching and beginning to teach a new course. In both courses, which are focused on digital storytelling, we have been adding in teases to the world of web monetization. And then the lion's share of our time this past month has gone to preparing and delivering a series of talks and workshops - 7 in total - 2 of which were targeted to sustainable funding for creators and the web monetization standard, and in the others we added in mention to this where it made sense.

Progress on Objectives

Our objectives with this project are to learn from others about their successes and challenges in utilizing the web monetization standard, conduct our own experiments in utilizing the web monetization standard, demonstrate different pathways forward with sustainable funding models and the web monetization standard, and create resources for creators to learn about the web monetization standard from in the form of vlogcast interviews, case studies, and online open educational resources.

The video below, which was filmed a year ago when we were first applying to Grant for the Web as a thank you for an educational bursary from the AMTEC Trust, gives you a taste to platforms that we are sharing our Sustainable Funding Interviews and Case Studies with Creatives to on StoryToGo.ca. While we are still sharing these interviews to YouTube to reach a broader audience, Cinnamon has become our beloved video platform for the interviews, and where we are now releasing our content to first.

Partly with intent and partly due to circumstance, we've been working through our project in stages.

Stage 1 (which you can read about below) was focused on community building and experimentation.

Sustainable Funding Series — Grant Report #1

Erica Hargreave for Sustainable Funding ・ Mar 19 '21 ・ 6 min read

#grantreports

Stage 2 (which we've just wrapped up)involved early alpha design of educational materials on web monetization for our college courses, talks, and workshops.
Stage 3 (which we are currently entering at present) will be focused on new interviews and case study creation.
Stage 4 will involve the production of open educational resources around the web monetization standard and sustainable funding for creatives.

As we are very much enjoying doing all of this, the above cycle will continue after we complete our Grant for the Web deliverables.

Key Activities

Our key activities since our last report have been to:

Develop some teaser content in BCST 3073 - Building Your Digital Media Presence to the web monetization standard on the course home feed and in the feedback to students on their assignments and in a closing email on the course. More formal content on the web monetization standard will be added to the main body of the course in the Autumn offering of the course.

Adding web monetized social media platforms to the main course material in BCST 1193 - Social Media Storytelling. To date, gFam has been added to the Unit on Photo Networking, mg.social to the Unit on Microblogging, and Cinnamon will be added to the upcoming Unit on Digital Storytelling with Video / Sound. I'd also like to add some web monetized podcasting platforms to that Digital Storytelling with Video / Sound Unit and need to explore as to whether Tribe of Noise or Free Music Archives would make sense there too.
Gave talks on Sustainable Funding Solutions for Creatives and Educators at the Canadian Network for Innovation in Education Conference and on the Web Monetization Standard as a Solution for Sustainable Funding of Open Educational Resources at the OERxDomains21 Conference. You can watch a recording of that talk below. Thanks to my talks at the CNIE Conference, I was awarded an AMTEC Trust Award for a second year in a row to go towards the completion of my Master of Educational Technology studies.

Informally shared on the web monetization standard in other talks at the conferences and in other creative and educational gatherings, including to the MET Zoom Cafe, which was featured in their newsletter.
Informally pitched the idea of talks / featured shows on the web monetization standard to the BC / Yukon Chapter of Travel Media Association of Canada and The Creative Farm on Fireside Chat. For the latter this was sparked by a discussion which I took part in on their live studio audience taping of the show this week on the future of music. You can listen to it here: https://firesidechat.com/ralphtalmont/01F5BVXCBWJ6QB1H3ZB6WHABXT We get into the web monetization standard and micropayments in the last 20-minutes of the show.
Finally, I also wrote up a Case Study on the Sustainable Funding Model for the eBook 'Animals in the Great War' on StoryToGo.ca and shared a tease to my interview with Adam from gFam on What the Heck is Web Monetization, which you can watch below.

Communications and Marketing

We are publicly sharing our talks and experiments in web monetization, as well as content from the broader community focused on web monetization, in the following ways:

on social media - predominantly Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn; and
in niche communities, including the Conference Forums, StoryToGo Community Group, UBC MET Community Group, and journalism and media communities we are a part of.

What’s Next?

As I mentioned above, our focus in the coming weeks will be on new interviews and case study creation for the Sustainable Funding Series, along with further adding web monetized social media option to BCST 1193 - Social Media Storytelling. Once that's done, we will be developing more open educational resources around web monetization, as we build towards the development of open courses on web monetization and sustainable funding.

In addition to this, we are building a catalogue of StoryToGo.ca of Web Monetization Resources, and as we've been invited to host live studio audience podcasts on Fireside Chat, we are contemplating the idea of such a podcast featuring members of the web monetization community and the various projects that we are all building. Currently in that space, I am part of Ralph Talmont's Social Cooking Club (which is just plain fun) and a regular guest on The Creative Farm. To learn more about that space, visit Ralph's channel as he's hosting three shows there.

What Community Support Would Benefit Your Project?

The Sustainable Funding Series is a series my team and I would love to extend beyond the Grant for the Web portion of the series. In that bent:

Please let me know if you wish to partake in the Sustainable Funding Series by taking part in an interview on your project and having your interview and a case study on it shared to the StoryToGo.

As I continue to experiment with web monetization, are there:

Other avenues web monetization and platforms that you recommend that my team and I experiment with?
Examples of exemplary or creative web monetized projects that you think we should check out?

As I continue to add to BCST 1193 - Social Media Storytelling:

What other web monetized social media platforms should I be adding, aside from gFam, mg.social, and Cinnamon (which have already been added)?
Are there any web monetized podcasting platforms, as I have a number of students interested in podcast?
What web monetized solutions would you suggest to gamers, as I often get gamers in my courses too?

As my team and I begin to build an online library of web monetized resources, we'd love your input.

If you have or know of resources that should add to the library, please share a link to them in the comments below.

As we begin to build open educational courses around web monetization and sustainable funding, we'd love your input.

What things do you think are important to include in an open course on web monetization?
What things do you think are important to include in an open course on sustainable funding?
Have you created or are you aware of resources on web monetization and / or sustainable funding that I should include in the open courses?

Finally, if you like the idea of a podcast featuring the web monetization community on Fireside Chat, and would like to be a part of it, either in the planning or as a guest on the show, an episode host, part of the live audience, or are just curious, please let me know.

Thanks so much for any ideas and resources you share, and for all the wonderful supportive people that we've been discovering in this web monetization community. We are loving being a part of this community and enjoying getting to know the people here and interesting work that everyone is up to.

Sustainable Funding Series — Grant Report #1

Erica Hargreave — Fri, 19 Mar 2021 04:14:42 +0000

Project Update

During the early stages of our project, we have been taking the time to get to know the web monetization community, experiment with the platforms and tools to begin to monetize our various storyworlds, identify glitches that need a fix or work around, find people and project to include in our vlogcast and case study series, share our initial findings on the web monetization standard with our community and our students, and begin to build educational resources around web monetization.

Progress on objectives

As we got started on these objectives, with our initial focus on setting up our own web monetization experiments and getting to know the community and identify projects to feature on the Sustainable Funding Series, we kept identifying glitches that needed fixes or work arounds (which is to be expected with newer platforms and tools), and recognized the need for public outreach and education in order to grow the communities on each of the platforms to help make them sustainable.

In this bent, we have spent a fair chunk of our initial time on these endeavours:

Identifying glitches and finding fixes or workarounds - these have included:
- An issue with the excerpts displaying from the Coil Web Monetization Plugin for WordPress, which the Coil team fixed: https://wordpress.org/support/topic/no-excerpts-and-how-to-test-if-its-working/

Searching for a Solution : Coil's Web Monetization Plugin Excerpts Not Displaying on WordPress sites

Erica Hargreave ・ Feb 7 '21 ・ 1 min read

#wordpress #troubleshooting #plugin

An issue with larger file size uploads on Cinnamon, which while we are hoping is fixed in the future, we are currently using a workaround of downsizing our video quality before uploading to Cinnamon; and
An issue sending money out of our Uphold account, which Mateo from mg.social and Adam from gfam both created a fix for our immediate need on.
- Sharing content from Cinnamon and on web monetization created by ourselves and others in the community, with our broader community in our various social spaces;
- Helping others in the web monetization community tackle their challenges where we can, like lending Adam at gfam some of our digital strategy and community building experience and advice: https://mg.social/post/view/2890, https://lifebe.com.au/digital/instagram-influencers-are-they-useful/

Reimagining social media — gFam.live

gFam for gFam.live ・ Feb 26 '21 ・ 4 min read

#mozfest

Key activities

Our key activities to date have been to:

Set up and begin to experiment with web monetization on a number of our websites. Our original plan had been to just do this on StoryToGo and Roamancing, but as we discovered that there is no downside to web monetizing more of our sites, we've set this up on StoryToGo, StoryToGo Classroom, Roamancing, Being Emme, and my personal speaking site.
Built StoryToGo and Roamancing on Cinnamon. In addition to this, we have web monetized the associated YouTube Channels through Coil.

Began to experiment on mg.social and gfam.
Engaged with the web monetization community to better understand the space, see what different people are up to, begin to compile a list of projects we'd like to interview for the sustainable funding series, better understand the current challenges and possible solutions in web monetization, and get to know the community. Thus far, we've been doing this on Cinnamon, mg.social, gfam, twitter, and reddit.
Started shaping a plan for the content to include in an open course on the web monetization standard, as well as in the current courses that we teach at BCIT.
Pitched and had accepted two talks on the web monetization at educational conferences in April - CNIE and OERxDomains.
Informally pitched (as I missed seeing the call for proposals) a talk on web monetization to TMAC, either for a professional development session or their travel media conference in June. Awaiting to hear back from them.
Conducted my first sustainable funding interview including web monetization with Adam from gfam.

Took part in the Grant for the Web round table discussion at MozFest on 'Business models on the web are broken! Let's fix them.' You can watch the recorded copy of it here: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/FTCNBS-1

Communications and marketing

To date, we are publicly sharing our own experiments in web monetization, as well as content from the broader community focused on web monetization, in the following ways:

on social media - predominantly Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn;

in niche communities, including the StoryToGo Community Group, UBC MET Community Group, and journalism and media communities we are a part of;
by beginning to write up our experiences and tutorials around on my speaking site, with the idea that some of the resources created around can later be repurposed into the open course on web monetization, including this post on setting up the Coil Web Monetization Plugin on your WordPress.org site: https://ericahargreave.com/2021/02/coil-web-monetization-plugin-for-wordpress-set-up/;
informally discussed the web monetization standard in our own sessions and that of others at the OE Global Conference in November (and at MozFest this past week);
as well as through one-on-one meetings in places like LunchClub and with our current BCIT students on our course news feed

What’s next?

While we will continue with web monetization experiments with our own storyworlds and community building and sharing, our focus in leading up to April's talks at the CNIE and OERxDomains Conferences needs to be on:

conducting more interviews on different projects for the Sustainable Funding Series;
editing and publishing those interviews, and building case studies from them; and
developing more educational resources around web monetization, as we build towards the development of open courses on web monetization and sustainable funding.

What community support would benefit your project?

The Sustainable Funding Series is a series my team and I would love to extend beyond the Grant for the Web portion of the series. In that bent:

Please let me know if you wish to partake in the Sustainable Funding Series by taking part in an interview on your project and having your interview and a case study on it shared to the StoryToGo.

As I continue to experiment with web monetization, are there:

Other avenues web monetization and platforms that you recommend that my team and I experiment with?
Examples of exemplary or creative web monetized projects that you think we should check out?

Long term, I'd like to compile a list of resources for creators in building sustainably.

If you have or know of resources that should be on that list, please share a link to them in the comments below.

As I begin to build open educational courses around web monetization and sustainable funding, I'd love your input.

What things do you think are important to include in an open course on web monetization?
What things do you think are important to include in an open course on sustainable funding?
Have you created or are you aware of resources on web monetization and / or sustainable funding that I should include in the open courses?

Episode 1 of our Sustainable Funding Series, featuring Elementari

Erica Hargreave — Sun, 21 Feb 2021 16:33:57 +0000

Finally got the first episode from the Sustainable Funding Vlogcast Series for Creators, Technologists and Educators up on Cinnamon. Just had to upload a downgraded version of the video to get around the video size issue that I was running into.

This episode features Nicole Kang on Elementari - a really cool animated storytelling platform for the creation of interactive books and games, by remixing animated art and sounds in their vast library.

You can also read the full case study on StoryToGo.ca: https://storytogo.ca/2021/01/elementari-a-sustainable-funding-case-study/

This part of the series is funding by BCIT and deals with other areas of sustainable funding (other than the web monetization standard). We will be adding a number of new episodes to the series that feature interviews with creators utilizing the web monetization standard, thanks to support from Grant for the Web.