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 3rd 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!!100dcdc73ed24424cf81ca17f4c5513a

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!

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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)

story

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. 🙂

Tiny Blog

            So we are the Tiny Innovators and this is out first blog! We are going to give you a little bit of information about our NGO for our Project Communities assignment.

            To start things off – The Tiny House movement, also known as the small house movement, which is now spreading worldwide, is a trend where people choose to live their lives in smaller houses. A tiny house is generally supposed to be between 65 to 400 square feet, compared to a small house which, in most cases is between 400 to 1700 square feet. This trend is spread around by the Tiny House Intentional Communities, our NGO.

            The Tiny House Intentional Community consists of a group of ten acquaintances who are in the process of either building tiny houses or being in the process of doing so. “The real message behind the tiny house movement and simple living for me is being more conscious about how we live. This includes the purchasing and consumption decisions that we make but it also includes even deeper things like making goals for our lives and getting rid of the necessary ‘baggage’ to get what we want.”[1]

The Tiny House community in Florida now has over 1000 members in the Florida Tiny House Enthusiast Facebook group and is still expanding! If you’re looking for other tiny house communities, a list of communities from the USA is constantly being updating here: http://tinyhousetalk.com/communities.

            People who already accepted this challenge gave feedback in regards to the many benefits of living in a tiny house. Some examples of these are: living with nature, having a better environment, cleaning/maintaining the house takes less time, bills are cheaper, having freedom and independence, easy and manageable living space. Tiny houses best suit someone who is looking for a “space to be near a body of water, close enough to a big city and shopping, but not on a main high
way or train line.”[2]

            Furthermore, it is possible to finance a tiny house by getting a RV (Recreational Vehicle) certification for it. Financing is easier to get if you have good credit. If you wanted to build your own house, the costs would be around $25,000 to $30,000 in materials. If you wanted to buy a tiny house that has already been built then you can expect to pay from $27,000 to $68,000 for a home sized between 64 sq. ft. to 400 sq. ft.[3]

Of course challenges are always going to be present. Currently the challenges that our NGO is now being confronted with in 2015 are with getting funding from investors, creating starter homes and planning for an off-grid and self-sustaining tiny house community with this last challenge having the most emphasis and being the main goal.

Our contact for this project is Shorty Robbins, who is part of the Golden Teacup: A Tiny Victorian Community. This society which is interested in the portrayal of women from 1860-1865 – the American civil war period, began in 1997. This organization is recognized for its dedicated portrayals with attention to historic details. The Golden Teacup Society sets up camp with tents in dedicated civilian areas and recreates the homes, to portray the lives of women left behind during the war. When doing this they asked visitors to imagine the tents were homes, and this is where the Tiny House Community came into the picture. Not only did it create the solution to no longer needing to imagine the tents were homes, but also the many laboring hours they put into setting up the tents at every new area. [4]

To conclude the tiny house movement is in their own words: “about taking a stand on our human rights while creating and spreading freedom for ourselves and others because we deserve it. You deserve it. We’re here to end homelessness for good by inspiring and creating affordable homes to help all beings on this planet live happy and free.”[5] Now we have gathered some information about our NGO, and figured out what their accomplishments have been and what their aims and goals are for the future. This is something we can not wait to get involved in, and look forward to working with them and kick starting our project!

Keep your eyes open for more posts from us…we will be adding frequently and soon!

Tiny Innovators

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[1] http://tinyhousetalk.com/

[2] http://2015.projectcommunity.info/ngo-partners/tiny-house/

[3] https://padtinyhouses.com/how-much-does-a-tiny-house-cost/

[4] http://www.goldteacup.com

[5] http://tinyhousetalk.com/tiny-house-movement/