I was just browsing through this forum and i noticed something interessting. Badges. Something inside me made click and i said to myself:“Liebeg, you wan’t to have all badges”. So here i am looking at all the badges wich can be seen here: Cuperino Apps Forum. And after just a few minutes i already managed to acquire a badge that only two people have.
The forums has low activity because people usually come with a question, get their answer from me and then move on… It could get more traction if the forum wasn’t just for the software I’ve written (those being QPrompt and Imaginary Teleprompter), but for other open source apps as well.
I invited another open source teleprompter app developer to join the community, but I don’t know if the message ever reached them. Given that I’ve been shifting my life’s priority over the past few years, I don’t think I will write as many other apps as I was initially planning to, so maybe the forum should be expanded, but on which direction, I don’t know…
If it’s open source teleprompters in general, I could change the domain name to something more generic and invite all the other developers to join, but I don’t think the number of developers and users out there is big enough to make a significant difference.
If it’s open source media creation, that would make it more difficult for me to provide value, since I wouldn’t be as involved or involved at all depending on the software and kind of software. We’d want to do networking first, to find people who could also benefit from a community like this. But for the move to be effective it would have to happen swiftly, which is difficult without some kind of pull or recognition, both of which I don’t have.
In the end, the forum’s goal is to provide a space where I can help people using my software and they can help each other as well; while maintaining a public record of conversations, so people looking for an answer that has already been given don’t have the need to ask the same questions others might have gotten answered.
I wonder if i can anweser the mail i got. Maybe expending more in the broadcast region would be an option. Or giving advice on voice recorders and voice recording software. Since reading of a prompter and recording are fairly close together.
PS: replying to the mail doesnt anweser on the forum. Thats not that great.
Promoting the software, in general, is what will help out here. I only did self promotion very early on, when 1.0 released and 1.1 after that. The promotion was talking to content creators I follow, to let know about the releases. I didn’t even write to people in the media space, only people within the open source community. People in media arrived on their own and some migrated from Imaginary Teleprompter which had been around for longer.
If I switch to a faster development cycle, there would be more releases and hence reason to promote it, which would lead to more users. That’s something I’d like to do, but can be done after the packaging/installer issues are fixed.
As for expanding directions, there are two ways to go:
Teleprompter operators working in newsrooms. These primarily need remote control via the MOS protocol, and support for the NDI protocol.
Content creators using tablet teleprompters. These account for most independent’s hardware out there, but they’re not as popular between professionals prompter operators. These users primarily need remote control features.
I don’t really know about the Ndi And mos protocol. But remote control is proberly one of the most requested features out there.
For the second point i agree mostly. I do still wonder how many creators just make theier contend without a script. A little bit of promotion in a yt video about useful software for creators could defintly help.
