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Code Quest Campaign: A Success Story

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* March 8th, 2018
* Press Releases

 \* Francesco Siddi
A software project is a living thing, and every few years it
needs to take a leap. A leap for survival, for innovation, to respond
and adapt to new trends and technologies, to lay the foundation for
future trends. This is a risky endeavour. Ambitious targets tend to
significantly slow down development momentum due to complex engineering
decisions, disagreements between team members or lack of outwards
communication to the user community.

Blender has achieved this feat once before during its existence –the
well known 2.5 project in 2010– thanks to the relentless leadership of
Ton Roosendaal and a tight-knit team of developers and power users.
After nearly 8 years of gradual improvements, during which Blender’s
user base more than quadrupled, it was time for another jump. Enter
Blender 2.8.

## Blender 2.8

The main goal of Blender 2.8 is to further improve support for
diverse workflows, complemented by features such as a high quality PBR
viewport, 2D animation tools, advanced asset management and a powerful
animation system. While Blender is often regarded as an oddity, its
flexibility is being discovered and appreciated by a growing audience.

After over one year of work, the project needed a final sprint to
deliver the first beta of Blender 2.8. To achieve this, the idea of a
“Code Quest” was proposed: to bring together nearly all of the core
developers for three months in one location, in the Blender Institute in
 Amsterdam.

This period would enable the team to tackle fundamental engineering
issues, as well as to more efficiently focus on interface design and
usability.

## How to successfully fund an Open Source project

The funding of the Code Quest, which was estimated 200K USD, has been divided between four parties.

The first was the Blender Foundation, the non-profit entity which is
coordinating worldwide developers outreach and runs the official online
platforms for the project. The Blender Foundation, via the Blender
Development Fund is awarding grants to independent developers.

The second was Blender Institute, the Amsterdam-based Open Content
powerhouse, who provided the initial funding for the campaign, public
relations, communications and logistics. Blender Institute is hiring
several of the Blender core developers and is funding part of the Code
Quest costs via the Blender Cloud, the open production and training platform.

The remaining two parties were industry sponsors and the Blender user
 community, together targeted to cover nearly half of the total budget
via a crowdfunding campaign.

## A rocket ride

With the animation studio Tangent Animation and the makers of Lulzbot 3D printer
 Aleph Objects signing up as sponsors, industry support started well,
and continued for the better with several other Blender-based businesses
 joining the effort.

However, the biggest challenge was to involve the user community.
After reviewing several strategies (including using popular crowdfunding
 platforms) the Blender Institute team decided to focus the entire
campaign on selling a memorable reward token – a space rocket shaped USB
 drive. Each rocket would cost 39 USD, with its price raising 10 USD
within 3 weeks. Rockets would be produced right after the campaign, to
give the immediate reward of having supported an ongoing project. Target
 was set to sell a 1000 rockets minimally.

And then the user community pulled off something truly outstanding.
The goal was achieved in just 4 days, which resulted in confirming the
official start in April and a new target of 2500 rockets. This stretch
goal was set to expand the Code Quest team. The new target was achieved
in less than 3 weeks.

Thanks to this additional support, almost 100K USD were raised, an
amount comparable to the historic campaign that made Blender become Open
 Source back in 2002.

Announcing Blender 2.8 Code Quest

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