From July – October this year I was working on taking a Brazilian open-source crowd funding (or “crowd sourcing”) application and tailoring it for a specific niche for a group out in Denver CO. Among many of the changes, we also added a non-monetized way of “funding” a project, namely skills or resources, the idea being, if you have some skill (like website design, graphic design, got a tractor for plowing some earth? — stuff like that) you could participate in the project as well. And being localized to Denver, the idea is to connect people directly to the projects in their neighborhoods.
We started with 3 seed projects, and one of them has exceeded its funding request! The interesting thing for me is, I’ve worked in this industry for 30+ years, and while I’ve done some really cool things, pretty much everything I’ve ever done has been “a job.” So it was with this project as well until this one project got its funding. It got me to sit back and I had this “wow, I’ve done something that allows people to come together and do something for others” feeling. It’s quite an interesting feeling, to work on something that facilitates other people’s activities and dreams, rather than just working on an “end product.”
The project that got funded is here if you want to take a look. I know this yet one more crowd sourcing site of several (kickstarter and indiegogo are probably the most well known) but it has been really amazing to put this together and see something fruitful actually come of it. I can only imagine how neat it will be when there are (potentially) hundreds of these local projects going on in Denver.
–Marc
Marc Clifton 