Final Video

Last week – Almost done!

Guess what? This is the last week before the exam! Nervous, excited? Of course we are!

As far as you know until now, we tried to have an agreement with the other group about the final video. In order to combine both ideas (animation and story) we came up with the idea of making an animate story!

Furthermore, our big desire is to have a final video which would look professional, graceful and diffluent. The main point is to keep the same style through the whole video and trying to combine the ideas as one.

We have researched about what kind of software should we use for the animation and we have considered that the one which is filling all the requirements that we need is GoAnimate (http://goanimate.com/).

GoAnimate is a cloud-based platform for making animated business videos. It allows users to develop both narrative videos, in which characters speak with lip-sync and move around, and video presentations, in which a voice-over narrator speaks over images and props, which may also move around. (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoAnimate)

In order to use that we propose to the other groupmates to pay €6/person to buy the software. One of the advantages is that everyone can change slides from his/her place and you can create your own characters/props/backgrounds.

We already started to combine the scripts and we all agreed to have a main character who will be speaking over all the slides. The main character will present everything as a 3^rd person and it will point in the video to the main things that we consider important to emphasize.

UPDATE: we are making everything as a hand-drawn animation!!

source: http://www.pinterest.com

Our main goal is to finish the video until the weekend (Halloween is coming! Hihi, joking, we just want to get as much feedback as we can, and to get the chance to change anything if it’s wrong or misunderstood) and post a preview as soon as possible. In addition, after the disscusion with our NGO, Shorty, we agreed to show her first the final video after it is posted on youtube.

Stay tuned and feel free to comment to our weekly post!

Tiny Innovators

PS: I attached some pictures from Monday class to see how it’s going to look like!

Interesting things about tiny houses :)

A new vision about how tiny houses would look in the future!

We also did some further research to develop the presentation and we found some useful information. You can find below more information about how can a Tiny House become more sustainable:

1. Renewable Power Generation:

• Locate solar and wind on lower portion of pasture; siting is critical
• Consider phasing the installation to reduce initial costs
• Study site-specific shading devices and plantings
• Monitor wind patterns with anemometer to determine site possibilities for power generation
• Consider the production of power as a revenue source
• Net metering option:

1. one meter for all homes could be advantageous
2. submeter each home to track usage and help homeowners conserve
3. provide financial incentives for using less power

• Encourage conservation by specifying efficient appliances and lighting
• Incorporate daylighting and natural ventilation in homes

2. Ambient Heating:

• Passive solar as primary source
• Glazing: amount, location and type important
• Shape of buildings should be rectangular and oriented correctly east to west
• Incorporate shading to avoid overheating: overhangs, trees and/or vines
• Ventilation; use natural convection with a study of prevailing winds
• Heat storage and retention: use thermal mass and insulation
• Secondary heat source options
• Biodiesel
• Wind and biomass (from forest windfall) to generate electricity for small demands
• Consider district or centralized heating as secondary source, combined with hot water heating and solar water heating in slab heat coils
• Solar air heating (TROMBE concept) for domestic heating, with boiler

3. Water Heating:

• Primary source: solar collectors (summers and some winters)
• Supplementary source: biomass, district heating, and/or electricity

4. Cooking:

• Electric- high loads but possibly from renewable source generated on site
• Propane- a possibility, but is not consistent with goal of zero net energy
• Solar ovens- could be a supplementary source, especially if located in accessible space (on a nearby deck, shared)

5. Other possible secondary heat sources:

• Heat exchange system considerations include:
• Type, air-to-air versus ground-tothermal combining with solar heating
• Solar units – consider maintenance
• Hydrogen fuel cells – storage for hydrogen is problem
• Woodstoves – efficient burning reduces particulates and health risks
• Micro-hydro power generation

Week 6/ The Storyboard: Ready, set, go!

This weekend we got introduced to idea of a storyboard, which is based on a script we did. It explains all activities we do to suit the NGO’s needs and we will make a final product (video). You will find below the text for the final presentation matching our team’s storyboard (that you will also find it as a picture).

The Presentation

Intro:

The intro part explains the NGO problem, which is crowd founding and making the organization financially sustainable. We did brainstorm and came up to lots of ideas on how to make the organization financially sustainable, our NGO loved what we believed was our strongest idea, which is using tiny houses as a rental, movable offices. To give this project a kick-start we advise the organization to ask the government for a grant which will give them a possibility to prepare tiny houses and advertise themselves.

• The NGO & NGO’s problems (short): Our NGO (TinyHouse Community) wants to reach financial sustainability. As well they would appreciate a community space/ house which can be used for bigger groups, since the space in a Tiny House is quite limited. As they are private people, they don’t want to and can’t invest too much money. We don´t believe it is necessary for our NGO to get a fund, but we think it would definitely be easy to realize the solution if they would get one.
• Crowdfunding + Sourcing: We further researching into this though Micro Ventures which is an equity crowd funding website offering investment in the early stages of companies. Micro Venturesconnects accredited investors with start up companies and is the only major equity crowdfunding website that is broker dealer registered by the Financial Industry Regulation Authority.[1]
• Final solution using all above: The Final solution we came up with is a mobile office service that provides rural working space. Our Idea was about creating ‘offices’ as part of the community which can be rented out by businesses or individuals as a unique working space presented in nature and a tiny house. There is already an existing business in the Netherlands which uses this concept very successfully. The caravan-style offices are made from vintage mobile homes and come equipped with WIFI, composting toilets, couches made from recycled jeans and solar-powered coffee machines.

Middle:

The NGO liked our final idea, so the next step is analyzing our final idea, as I’ve already mentioned it is using tiny houses as rental offices for anyone who may need them. This idea was originally invented by Dutch company Kantoor  Karavaan (http://www.kantoorkaravaan.nl/ ) they offer fully equipped offices which are completely movable. Basically this organization gives you a great opportunity to work in nature, which is what we liked about the idea. They have 3 offices available which are rented 2-3 times each a week, therefore they have a constant income, that’s why we found our final idea suitable for our NGO.

We believe that building a tiny office wouldn’t cost as much as a tiny house itself, however to give the organization the kick-start we would advise them to ask the government for a grant for this project. They can use websites like https://www.sharedesk.net/ or https://www.airbnb.com/ to promote their offers.

The thing we decided to do is to make an advertisement for tiny house offices to make it more known and to tell possible customers about the great opportunity which they offer.

• NGO liked it – unique – reflect Tiny House movement + principles: Shorty liked the idea that the offices will reflect the principles of a Tiny House (freedom, connection with nature, simplicity) and the fact that this idea is unique and successful in Netherlands.
• How much land does it need? Costs?
• Grants:preferably from the Government: still an open opportunity: USDA Grand does not work, rather for poor communities
• + the other groups idea – how to build the Tiny Houses cheaper 
• The connection between the solution and the people: purpose: The customer would be companies of any/people searching for unique working spaces/people that like nature/people that like tiny houses 
• Advertise through the internetà show websites: http://sharedesk.net/, https://www.airbnb.com/

Final:

To sum up, we would like to say that the idea is unique, there are only a few companies that offer this possibility. Florida is famous for its nature that’s why we believe that there are a lot of customers who would prefer to combine working and staying in nature, therefore the organization will have a stable income.

• Conclusions
• Final word(about the team and project)

click here for a better quality of the image

Video production planning

Our video will be like a stop motion cartoon, explaining our idea about using tiny houses as rental offices. We use stop motion video because it is the easiest type of video to make and also it is the funniest animation technique. We will use Lego figures or just drawn pictures to show the action and recorded voice as an audio and also add some music/audio effects. Click on the link below to see an example.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pyCTPQZUXc

Moreover, we described what do we think about success/failure and the impact of our advice:

• How can we measure success or failure of our advice?

We get to know whether it is success or failure though the reactions of our NGO because our purpose is to find a solution for a certain problem, that meets the needs of our NGO. They get to decide whether they like the idea or if it’s possible. First of all we need to go through a lot of failure finding different solution to find the perfect one that’ll meet our NGO’s needs.

We get feedback, whether our effort was a failure or not. But I would rather say that even failure is a success, at least for us, due to the fact that we learn from our failures and take the knowledge we gained to move on and find better solutions. The final success will be pleasing the NGO’s needs and finally making them financially sustainable.

• Where will be the most impact on our client?

The Impact on The NGO is preset because we have a certain problem to fix. We help them create financial sustainability for their community. Without financial sustainability there will be no community. So we have a huge impact and we need to be aware of that.

In conclusion, we think that we have shown great progress this week that we are very satisfied! Thank you for reading and don’t forget to write down your opinion in the “Leave a Reply” section. 🙂

Week 3/Work Teams

This week, our workshops resulted in a thorough introspection that led to the conclusion that our interests and passions are shared and our gifts complete one another. We discovered that our common natural gifts consist of creativity, detail attention, being open minded and analysing human behaviour. Moreover, the less popular ones were mathematics and orientation in space.

Our common passions are the capacity to improvise, of being organised and being sociable, being open to exchange ideas, spending time in nature (which leads to eco-friendly behaviour for a sustainable life-style). All of these are interconnected to our passion for urban arts and outdoors activities.

We realised that people need an innovative and useful design and we wish to invest in this unusual art. With this purpose in mind, we add our passion to interview and have contact with people.

In conclusion, our sweet spot is creating products that come as a solution for the problems that people have at an universal level, avoiding boredom, investing in the unusual, the creative, valuing details. (see the diagram)

Furthermore, we found out in our group meetings that we work very efficently as a team because we organised ours tasks correctly leeding that everybody is doing his job well and we take our tasks in serious. Monday (13.09) we presented in the front of our class the review of what we did last week and we talked about the needs of our NGO.

 As a matter of fact our groups sweet spot is creating products as a solution for problems, preferably in a creative way. In this case we’re being confronted with a community in need of sustainability and a financial foundation. One of the final ideas would be creating an online platform f.ex. a blog we could use for advertisements and donations to gain financial stability and sustainability.