[off-topic-ish] do you prefer LC-related content as books or video courses?

Prothero@earthlearning prothero at earthlearningsolutions.org
Fri Jul 10 10:58:07 EDT 2020


Andre,
This hits my “sweet spot”. Excellent plan! I’m looking forward to your products.
Best,
Bill

William Prothero
http://es.earthednet.org

> On Jul 10, 2020, at 3:15 AM, Andre Garzia via use-livecode <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
> 
> Folks,
> 
> Thanks a lot for your detailed responses. Since you have all been quite
> awesome in giving me all these great replies and feedback, let me tell you,
> in probably more details than you'd ever want, where I am coming from and
> what I plan to do going forward.
> 
> Many here know that I have graduated from a film school. Doing videos feel
> like going home for me and I believe in the potential of multimedia to be
> an effective learning tool. Still, I have always been in love with books
> and like many here I favour books over video any time. I was considering
> doing more video related content because other people I know are having a
> better return on video courses than on books. Of course this depends on the
> community and here books appear to rule, which is good for me because I
> enjoy writing books and that is the direction I want to shift my career to
> anyway.
> 
> I have just completed a major JavaScript book for a famous publishing house
> in the U.S. and am ready to go back to self-publishing and work on my own
> titles on my own time. The book I made about LiveCode best practices and
> code organisation was well received and even though I have issued some
> updates, I haven't updated as often as I wanted to. The reason behind not
> updating often is because of some of the worst aspects of capitalism:
> updating the book didn't really add to the sales figures and I live in a
> very expensive city (I live in London now). Every time I updated the book
> there would be some extra sales, but not as many as to justify working on
> it. The alternative would be to raise the prices so that each sale would be
> more valuable to me but I'm against it because I think the price should
> reflect the value of the object being sold. That book has been done without
> an editor and in a hurry, I can't charge as much for it as I'd charge for a
> book that involved more professionals and more care. I think the price for
> that specific book is right.
> 
> So, going forward I think I am going to write more books but also shorter
> books. There is a problem with trying to create comprehensive references or
> bible-like books. They are harder to do and you sell them only once. Our
> community is small, there is a limited amount of sales to be done inside
> it. What I will do is create shorter books focused on a single topic and
> sell them individually for a low price so that people can acquire them all
> without actually having to worry. This way I can produce books faster
> (which lowers the cost of producing them for me) and you get to have fresh
> content, which is something that we all know a healthy ecosystem needs. I
> might make some short videos, but mostly for engagement and highlighting
> cool stuff. Video takes longer to produce and unfortunately my current
> daily driver machine doesn't support any decent video editor.
> 
> As for using stacks as interactive learning material, that reminds me of
> Director. I think it is a great idea. The problem is that I am writing
> about other technologies as well and I can't build a pipeline and tools to
> deliver stacks (even as standalones) to the other communities at the
> moment. I might explore that in the future but for now doing ebooks is the
> best way forward. It is easy, I know how to do it, and I can focus on doing
> content instead of building new tools.
> 
> For those that haven't been exposed to my best practices book, you can find
> it at:
> 
> http://andregarzia.com/books/livecode-advanced-application-architecture.html
> 
> I have also created a Ko-fi. This is a website like Patreon that helps
> connect audiences with creators by allowing people to donate money as a one
> time donation or as a recurring donation depending on how much they want to
> support the creator. My plan is to engage with those supporting me on
> ko-fi, and let them see advanced copies of the books, help decide what the
> next topics to tackle and so on. Another thing I like about ko-fi is that
> they style the whole process as "buy me a coffee", so you're basically
> sending creator small donations so they can afford caffeine. Something I
> really need to write books. I will price the books low, so if you think
> about sending more money or making this more sustainable, my Ko-fi is at:
> 
> https://ko-fi.com/andregarzia
> 
> From what I have been reading on the list, I think there is a need for a
> small book on "launchers" or as we used to call them "splash stacks". They
> are a fantastic way to deploy tools to the enterprise and clients, they
> unite the easy deployability of the web with the powerful feature set of
> Desktop apps. More seasoned LC developers, especially those that worked as
> ISV before the App Store, are probably familiar with them but this is
> probably a new subject to many of the people who came to LC more recently.
> I think this is will be the first new small book. I'm thinking about 45
> pages. I hope you'll like it.
> 
> Best
> A
> 
> 
>> On Wed, 8 Jul 2020 at 20:20, William Prothero via use-livecode <
>> use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
>> 
>> FYI, I’ve found some of the MovAvi <https://www.movavi.com/mac.html> apps
>> to be good and very inexpensive. That said, I’m not doing a lot of video
>> editing these days, but found the video editing app to be easier to use
>> than iMovie. I used Final Cut Pro, but didn’t renew when Apple went to
>> 64bit only.
>> 
>> Best,
>> Bill
>> 
>> William A. Prothero
>> https://earthlearningsolutions.org
>> 
>>> On Jul 8, 2020, at 11:13 AM, Stephen Barncard via use-livecode <
>> use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> I prefer video, but I feel demonstrations should have some production
>> value
>>> other that just a screen share.
>>> Indicators, motion graphics, etc and not just a guy and his desktop.  And
>>> EDITING!!!
>>> I'm a Final Cut Pro video guy these days and have ALL the groovy plugins
>>> so I'm not being fair I guess.
>>> 
>>> iMovie is far better these days that it used to be, but strangely very
>>> difficult to upgrade an iMovie package to Final Cut, once one is there.
>>> Roadblocks everywhere. Typical Apple %$#%#%#$%#$.
>>> 
>>> sqb
>>> --
>>> Stephen Barncard - Sebastopol Ca. USA -
>>> mixstream.org
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Wed, Jul 8, 2020 at 10:36 AM Jim Lambert via use-livecode <
>>> use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Hi André,
>>>> 
>>>> I previously always favored printed books.
>>>> 
>>>> But now I prefer digital materials that are a combination of text (with
>>>> copiable code!), interactive elements, and supplementary video.
>>>> As Richard pointed out LC itself provides "the many learning benefits of
>>>> direct engagement with interactive media.”
>>>> 
>>>> IMO, Video is most appropriate when used to convey visual, spatial and
>>>> temporal examples. It’s can also provide a bit of a human touch to the
>>>> instruction, even though it’s utterly mechanical.
>>>> 
>>>> So, yeah, I like a combo.
>>>> 
>>>> Hope this helps!
>>>> 
>>>> Jim Lambert
>>>> 
>>>> 
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> 
> 
> -- 
> http://www.andregarzia.com
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