Sometime overnight, the Hello World educational video project, which has been trying to raise a little money through an Indiegogo campaign, reached its goal — with twelve full days still to go in the campaign. The funds will be used to purchase new equipment.
As of 11 a.m. EDT, the organization’s Indiegogo webpage is showing that it’s so far received donations totaling $2,145, nearly $100 over the goal of $2,048. The organization had chosen to take an “in for a penny, in for a pound” approach to this fundraising effort by choosing the “fixed funding” option. This means that if the goal hadn’t been met, no funds would be received and all donations would be returned to the contributors.
Since this article was published at 12:41 p.m. EDT, the campaign has received an additional $1,000 donation, bringing the total to $3,145.
The Hello World project is basically the work of two brothers, Jared and JR Nielsen, who’ve been making short educational videos that teach computer tech to children. The videos commonly utilize hand puppets and animation and are designed to be entertaining as well as informative.
In an interview shortly before the fundraising campaign began, Jared told me, “Our target age group is nine to thirteen, though our videos were created to appeal to all kids of all ages. Toddlers too young to understand the concepts being taught in the show still like watching the puppets and animations, while on the opposite end of the spectrum, adults appreciate the subtle humor and numerous references to popular culture scattered throughout each episode.”
So far, the brothers have produced fifty videos, all available for viewing on the Hello World webpage. There are videos under the subject headings Computer Science, Linux, Web Development and Python.
The money raised will mostly be used to purchase new equiptment, which is explained on the Indiegogo page: “We don’t have a proper studio to shoot video, the bulbs in our light kit are burned out, our cameras and lenses are dirty because we’ve been shooting in basements and (very cold) garages for the last year, our backdrop needs replacing, and our highly intelligent robot host requires an upgrade.”
Now that the needed money has been raised, the brothers Nielsen can get to work evolving the quality of their product. As Jared said back in September, “Our production value continues to improve with each video and tutorial we create. ‘Superusers: The Legendary GNU/LINUX Show’ is leagues ahead of our first episode, ‘What is a Robot?’ The ten computer science videos proposed in our Indiegogo campaign will only be better. We will focus on improving our script writing, fine-tuning the balance of education and entertainment, incorporating more animations, and refining our audio/visual production techniques.”
Just because the Hello World project has reached it’s funding goal doesn’t mean it’s too late to make a donation, as the campaign will continue to be active for the next twelve days. Personally, I’m hoping that the brothers collect more than a few extra dollars — to give them some breathing room if for no other reason. As I said last week, you could do much worse than put $20 or so into this project.
Note: Article updated on 10/9/14 at 1:25 p.m. to include information about additional donation.
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
