On Friday, I launched a kickstarter campaign to turn my book, Writing Idiomatic Python, into a series of instructional videos. How would that work? I would find real-world code in need of some love and narrate the process of refactoring it using principles from the book.

After launching the campaign, I threw up a quick blog post, sent out an email and a tweet, and went home. When I woke up the next morning, over $1000 had already been raised. As of this morning, over $2,400 has been raised of the $5,000 goal. With 27 days left, we're almost half way there.

But there's another, perhaps more important, goal: if I raise $10,000, I'll make the videos free to view for everyone, forever. I'll release the videos under the Creative Commons license, allowing them to be used for just about anything. Heck, you could use them to run your own course if you wanted to. That's why the $10,000 goal is the one I really hope we hit.

Make no mistake, I am amazed at the generosity of you guys and the entire Python community. $2,400 in a weekend is jaw-dropping. I want to keep the momentum up, though, to ensure we hit $10,000 so that these videos will be free to view. How awesome a resource would they be?

If you've already contributed: Thanks a ton! You can still help by getting the word out to friends and colleagues. All of the funding is raised through word-of-mouth, so spreading the word is akin to backing the project. Ditto for those who would like to contribute but aren't in the financial situation to do so. You can still help by spreading the word!

While I encourage everyone to get the word out, I want to briefly caution against spamming any communication channel. It's quite easy to find yourself flooding Twitter, Reddit, etc with messages for a cause you support. Ultimately, however, it does more harm than good as people turn resentful for being spammed. And if you ever feel like I'm spamming you, please let me know! I'd rather the campaign fail than lose whatever goodwill I've built up with all of you.

Thanks again for being amazing, and thanks in advance for helping spread the word. When it comes to human nature, I tend to be optimistic almost to the point of naivete. Thanks for proving me right ;)

Here's a link to the campaign: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1219760486/a-writing-idiomatic-python-video-series-watch-and.