1. Is the caption text actually going to be verbalized or just revealed at a reading pace? We assumed the latter…
2. A Portfolio Approach: Recalling our discussion last week, is there to be any visual or other treatment of this video to place it in the context of a GEMS portfolio of videos? For example, here Phil suggested each of these videos start with a statement that poses a question which GEMS is helping to solve. For this video, the suggestion was to opening the video with the question: “How do you cost-effectively clean up agricultural pollution?” Not wedded to the idea, but the thought was piecing together a puzzle might indicate GEMS is tackling issues from a portfolio perspective, such that solving each puzzle piece adds up to solving the bigger picture. Also recall our overall messaging, as per Matogen recommendations, on our web site is “Sowing Solutions; Growing Confidence.” So, does that messaging get reinforced in the videos, or not (even subliminally like solving each piece of a “bigger picture” puzzle)?

1. In the slide comments below we suggest replacing some of the videos that don’t look too Minnesotan (in terms of landscape (e.g., largish hills—MN is pretty flat!), crops etc). Others in that same regard (last 3 digits of files names) are:

• Suggested new caption for slide 7 (new 6): “Partnering with UMN’s Leif Olmanson, GEMS monitors water quality via satellites and a supercomputer”
• Suggested new caption for slide 6 (new 7): “Monthly averaged satellite signals on water quality enable measurements across nearly all Minnesota lakes – even those that rarely see sunshine”.
• Slide 8 caption: “Machine Learning algorithms to identify farmer BMPs require satellite signals at each pixel at regular time intervals. GEMS impute cloud-obscured missing values using pixels adjacent in time and space.”

Revised Storyboard:

GEMS Storyboard – Reducing water pollution from fertilizer runoff.pdf 14.6 MB • Download

1. Feedback: 
   I just met with Kris and she reports that Haley and Lori both got back with an enthusiastic thumbs up, and no suggested changes. No response from Leah yet, but I think we are close to, if not a go, on the next stage. We are conscious of trying to get this in front of state legislatures as soon as possible.
   
   
2. Video creation process:
   As I recall, you are going to develop an initial version, or parts thereof for us to review, before a final version is produced, correct?
   
   
3. Storyboard slides 1-3:
   I like the general idea, but not sure about the hexagonals (slides 2 & 3) for two reasons. One, it’s not clear that folks will see this as a jigsaw puzzle being pieced together. Secondly, and I think importantly, GEMS was going to use a hexagon to spatially standardize data, but we rejected that and have settled on equi-area hierarchical squares we call the GEMS Grid. Given that, why not shift the conception of slides 2 & 3 from putting together a jigsaw puzzle to one of filling in blank (informatics) squares on a grid, i.e., filling in the informational voids in ways that build out scalable (and integrated, square by square) solutions to reveal the big picture, or something like that? This could also have the notion of going from local to global, so maybe the bottom squares can be smaller vis a vis the top squares (as per our hierarchical grid that stacks the planet up from 1 sq meter, to 10 to 100 etc, see here and here). The latter hierarchical idea may be overthinking things……….(but maybe not). Good to have the video imagery go to the root of some of our distinctive ways of dealing with spatial data.