Behind the Code II: Additional Funding for more episodes of Web3 Thinkers/Builders and Top-up on treasury #604 payout

This is to request additional funds of 9928 DOT (58558USD @ 5.898 7dEMA on July 28) to do post production on a further 4 episodes for Web3Thinkers + 4 more episodes of Web3Builders. And also a top-up to correct the small discrepancy in the funding we received for our initial proposal (treasury proposal #604).

We delayed requesting this top-up request until we published our 6 month report so the community could see for themselves the results we are delivering before making a decision.

Please see the detailed 6 month report on our work so far, and the discussion page around this here.

Headlines metrics from that report are that the content produced as a result of the Behind the Code funding so far has received:

1.25million+ views - growing by the 10ks each week.
And as of July 17 over 61, 144 watch hours (that's over 2500 watch hours)

The series and its spin-offs is clearly helping focus a significant amount of people's attention on the Polkadot ecosystem.

We are requesting the additional 9928 DOT for the following:

We have now conducted 50 interviews (as of end of July 2024) that have provided the main source material for Behind the Code / Web3 Thinkers/Builders. A full log of these is available here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HTh4eBuG7tzc4XcaSvF3Jg9OxLSG1812lNmVwdnddcU/edit?usp=sharing

Due the quantity of high quality interviews in there, we would like to request a modest amount of additional funding for the post production of:

A further 4 x Web3 Thinkers episodes for release on The Kusamarian in Oct 2024

A further 4 x Web3 Builders episodes for release on The Kusamarian in Nov 2024

In line with the previous funding of 28800 USD for the 16 episodes already produced/in post-production (1800 USD per video - see https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/referenda/668) we will be requesting 14,400 USD for the post production of these further 8 episodes which will bring the total episodes produced to 24 by the end of 2024.

You can watch the current episodes here which The Kusamarian have been doing an amazing job at distributing and promoting.

As of July 17 for this series had 61,144 watch hours (that's 2548 days of continuous viewing).
With over 1.2million+ views with 10ks new views each day.

At this time we will also request a top-up in funding to correct the small discrepancy in the funding we received for our initial proposal (treasury proposal #604/OpenGov #415) . Our proposal #604 was costed at 389,899USD (51.574k in DOT at EMA30 price on the day of submission 7.56 USD@14/01/2024) but we actually received 351,064USD (51.574k in DOT at the price on the day of payout 6.807 USD@05/02/2024) leaving a shortfall of 38,835USD.

To avoid this happening again we will add a buffer of 10% to the request and return any excess in DOT we receive that goes over the value of the missing 38,835USD to the treasury on the day of pay out.

Please see the budget for both aspects of this request, a breakdown of additional post-production funding for the new episodes of Web3 Thinkers / Builders and a calculation of how any excess DOT will be returned to the treasury here.

Thanks for your consideration and please reach out if you have any questions.

Simon and the Behind the Code Team, Key Pictures