AwesomeWiki - User contributions [en]

Submission quality

2012-07-22T18:19:33Z

Ellenchisa:

{{TOC right}}

We've all hit that slump before. How do you break it?

====How do you get more gems?====

People have an easier time coming up with ideas if they see something else.

Stickers are great. Give them to everyone.
Reach out to the groups you want to apply, or people already doing the type of projects you want to fund.
Doing PR to get in all the local weekly news and mainstream press. NPR story helped.
The projects you fund get the word out, so you get more of those.
Actively soliciting grants from people in the past who seem creative.
Business cards to give out to people who seem special.
If you've talked to people ahead of time, a trustee knows someone, they can champion the idea. Making friends and actively pushing people to apply.
Telling your friends.
Going back to people who were on the short list.
Some chapters allow trustees to re-nominate an app from a couple months.
How can we leverage our trustees existing relationships better?
Adding "how do you find out about us?" to the application in the optional questions.

In direct ways of sharing "What Awesome Is" - Awesome Camp (inspire/give examples/other people to interact with), individual blog posts from different trustees.
Toronto wanted to have a weekend long camp to bring together all the people and short list, and then it got to processy so they stopped.

Awesome Hours.

Our form doesn't help people express their ideas clearly. We could ask different questions to get different results - "who are you trying to impact?" Might also be able to add copy explaining what types of things would be helpful to include in the project text box.
Sample application of someone who is wrong.

====How do you leverage past winners to spread the word?====
Is it okay to ask grantees for this? Where is the line?
What's the line for inserting yourself? Don't guide the applications.

====How does press impact your apps?====
Affects quantity, not quality (but more apps means more better apps).
Do we have analytics on the website?

====asdfasdf====
Do we have a list of all applicants?
Telling the alumni about the grant deadline.
Collaborating and cross promoting with other groups.
If you have to repeatedly push someone to submit, will they really follow through on doing it once they have the funding?
We could make a list of all the awesome projects we like (giant hammock) so people can replicate them in other places.
Natural ebb and flow of applications.
Do people pitch to universities?
Another possible org to partner with: Dorkbot
Another possible org to talk at: TEDX
Idea: If each trustee had a page of my favorite kinds of projects.
Continually reach out to different audiences and different partners.
Keeping projects diverse.
"If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've already got."
Different types of press reaches different people.
Neighborhood organizations.
General discussion around "coaching."
Awesome Food does constant rolling of applications.

What could we do that would be weird?
How could we work with media to do a regular column about Awesome? We'll supply you about one item of Awesome per week.
We have tumblr "found awesome."
How do we segment our media? Media is important to get people we wouldn't talk to.

Awesome is inspiring.

iffft as a tool.

Giving people an Awesome badge to put on their page.

Creating aggregation of what trustees are already doing.

Sharing "wrap up" email.

Newsletter committee

====Chapters having issues====
How do you break out work to keep sustained interest?
Reverse grant - "we'll give $1000 to do THIS" (i.e. copying balloonacy from SF). Debate around if this is "strings attached."

[[category:Sunday]]
[[category:Operations]]

Event ideas

2012-07-22T15:49:32Z

Ellenchisa:

{{TOC right}}

Overarching themes:

It's more work to do events that are only for the Awesome Foundation. It's easier to do events that are co-branded (especially people who already have an audience and a format).

Give yourself enough time to promote things.

Why do you have events? Publicizing the Awesome Foundation or publicizing the grantee? Or replicating by having ideas at the event? Getting more applications.

Doing things to drag people out. Very pro free beer.

Recruiting trustees who have resources like connections to press/event space.

Ideas: Art Galleries, farmers markets, museums,

What's the personality of an event?

Talk to Keith about awesome camp.

Documenting events wiki - a wiki with event ideas, a page per event, collateral (posters), who came, where it was held.

International Awesome Day
City Day

Promoting other awesome events, so when you do have an event everyone else promotes yours.

If moving venues, you can do promotion beforehand. Partnering with vendors to get free frozen yogurt.

What if you pay one of the trustees to plan?

Boston doubled because there was enough to support.

Membership program? "Patron of Awesome" - Awesome Tax? Awesome member card. Awesome businesses that give a discount.

Sydney- Awesome Soup (partnered with Pausible) and sold tickets to an ideas festival and selected grants and served soup. Sunday soup network.

awesome bank accounts?

More notes from Greg!

Should we create international awesome day?

= event structure =
* Team up with partners always
* Piggyback on bigger events
* get a bar next to the bigger event, even if you don't officially partner
* Highlight several grant winners at once
* Nerd nite partnership? Awesome Boston is doing that.
* awesome hours in Boston
* public venue is easier, more sustainable
* having trustees with connections and resources can help a lot
* getting a speaker slash personality can be a draw
* sign up sheets at events: I want to be a trustee, I want to know
more, I want to volunteer

Many goals for events
* publicize awesome foundation, get more apps
* publicize grant winners
* live award granting
* community building

= event types =
* trustees and past grant winners chillaxing
* who are you trying to engage? What's the audience?

= publicizing =
* if you promote other orgs, they'll promote you back

= socializing =
* pittsburgh does sheets with three sections that people have to each
fill out section of with two other strangers to instantly pitch an
awesome idea and compete for the instant win prize
* live pitch events and live finalist pitches bring along the pitchers
friends, getting you a lot more people

= Greg's thoughts =
* what if you did a booth at a county fair? Awesome becomes civic society.

[[category:Sunday]]
[[category:Operations]]

IHAS

2012-07-21T17:27:38Z

Ellenchisa:

{{TOC right}}

What the heck is IHAS anyway?

It's a backend for the Awesome Foundation. It means we have a heard of kittens. It's incredibly difficult to figure things out.
The point of IHAS is to create kitten voltron. Kittens that are cute, but can work together and share information!

Objectives!
Incubating the new Awesome Foundation chapters, especially in areas of need.
Developing infrastructure to enable faster & stronger growth.
Organizing events for our community.
Serving as an ambassador for the micro-granting movement.

Questions

What should the relationship between IHAS & Awesome Foundation be going forward?
Should IHAS protect the Awesome brand?
How can we help you better?o

[[category:Saturday]]
[[category:About the AF]]
[[category:IHAS]]

State of the Awesome

2012-07-21T17:15:52Z

Ellenchisa:

{{TOC right}}
== The current state of the Awesome ==
Goal: Better aggregate all of the information available. This was explicitly called out as an issue. Seriously, we don't even know how many chapters are there (definitively between 30 and 47. we think.)

1. Here is the big picture.

2. How chapters are different,how they are similar.

3. This is what an Awesome project is.

AF Founded, hits 100 application month.

Three months later, second/third chapter.

1000 application mark.

Gave away $10,000 by mid-2010.

International presence/ first European chapter (London).

IHAS (2011).

first Australian chapter (Melbourne).

$100,000 mark

10,00 apps received

Dollars funded over time continues going up over time- exponentially. If we keep going at the current rate, we'll give away $1,000,000 by Aug. 2013.
We like funding: cost specifics, materials, food.

What data to we collect? Organizational, chapter, trustee, attempted chapters, application/applicant -- what our project completion rate is / and timeline for projects finishing.

Definitive short term goals: Definitive list of chapters w/ founding dates, clean the data we have and fill in holes, launch a survey of trustees, begin work on capturing AF impact beyond $.

How can I help? We're having a working session from 2-4. Join our team, volunteer to help with qualitative work, become a point-person for chapter data questions, encourage your chapter to submit to IHAS.

== Moving forward ==
What is awesome from the grants?

[[category:Saturday]]
[[category:About the AF]]
[[category:Meta]]

AF origins

2012-07-21T16:50:49Z

Ellenchisa: Orphans vs. Flamethrowers

{{TOC right}}

[[category:Saturday]]
[[category:About the AF]]

The origin story of the Awesome Foundation. There were 11 or 12 original trustees, including Alexis, the spirit animal. In attendance: Tim Hwang, Jon Pierce, Reed Sturtevant, Evan B., Erhardt, Dave Fisher, Keith Hopper. Not in attendance: David Nunez, Emily Daniels (now part of Awesome Food), Matt Blake, and Mac Cowell.

The original premise was "How to make Boston more awesome" - all of the awesome was there, but atomized around the area. We were coming up with really complicated ideas originally. Flamethrowers vs. Orphans.

'''Tim's Favorite:''' A project to have a device that pokes you in the back of the head to remind you to keep being happy.

'''Jon's Favorite:''' Hacker type projects. DIY kit to put up a balloon and map geography, and open source software to stitch stuff together. This kit was also used in the gulf oil spill.

'''Reed's Favorite:''' Ripley from Idaho had recently retired and was gardening on 1000'. He said if he had gear he had enough land to cultivate 10,000' to give away more food. Ripley's Garden for others.

'''Evan's Favorite:''' Danger Dinner. Wanted to go have dinner on the top of a mountain with custom made dishware that would break at low temperatures to see if it would kill them. Not funded, but reminder of weird.

'''Erhardt's Favorite:''' Eco-pod Armada. These plants that could clean water. Water mediation plants towed by remote control boats as a community event to clean up the East River.

'''Dave's Favorite:''' He wanted to hang glide in a bear suit and shoot at cars, or dress up as a monster and hide near the highway in upstate New York and try to cross the road when cars were coming, and see how many newspapers he'd get in before getting caught or hit by a car. He was very specific and wanted to make the arms long. We unfortunately didn't fund it.

The first (EVER!) grant: The first one we funded was a giant hammock in a park that held 15-20 people at a time. Was installed at a park for about two weeks during certain hours. It took about 14 months from the time of the grant to when it was constructed. The other applicant had greater legal risk (lightning gauntlet). Legal questions about liability come up frequently. The grantee was a textile artist and professor at RISD. The project ended up costing about $20,000, and part of it required lots of legal insurance and obligation. She kept going in part of because of the grant, despite the chalenges. Involved something giant, involved the community, making something from scratch, what does it mean when we say no strings attached? We just let it go if/when it gets done?
Hansy (?) comes back to speak and talks about the obligation she felt after the money. It became about an entire community- it takes a village to raise a giant hammock.

Budget: Is it feasible to do something with about a thousand dollars? What if there's a million dollar thing to do? We were being the initial funding, and this would help projects raise additional funding.

Orphans vs. Flamethrowers: (Erhardt) I'd go home every month and tell my girlfriend what we funded. This was the litmus test of if we were helping people or not. So, Erhardt felt compelled to bring in a voice of what was doing something good for the world. We're always battling between wanting to fund flamethrowers, or wanting to fund something for orphans. The flamethrower-orphan paradox.

Your chapter is trying to find it's identity/soul. How much do we control the process of chapter formation/impose the structure of Boston on other chapters? Shared interests and what you can feel passionate about together.

Don't try to fix problems before you have them. This has interesting repercussions- we still haven't decided what happens when people do things/speak on behalf of the organization.

Radically different viewpoints helps drive discussion/grants. In Boston it was mostly tech people. When the group started, there were awesome tech projects that were not funded because they didn't want to signal they were only for tech. They wanted to signal to other groups. It's important to shake things up every so often to keep the whimsical aspect. Funding things there was nothing else in the world for-like a cotton candy gun. There are a lot of things that fund social good, but not as many people funding flamethrowers. There are some that are both, like lasers space heaters. Another one- a guerrilla stickering project. She designed semi-transparent handicapped layover stickers. Shows an active disabled person rather than a chair with a head. Another was a community project to crochet basketball nets and hang them up on the backboards that were empty all over Boston.

Another signal thing was giving grants to places that weren't in Boston, for instance the grant to a peer to peer network in Australia, and now there are more chapters in Australia. Granting other places helps plant the seed that grows.

We've talked about featuring other things that we couldn't give $1000 but we give a stamp of approval. Signaling to the community about awesome projects. We've given some Kickstarter invites. Another one was Awesome hours. Sometimes we just help people come up with better ideas that they go out and do.

We also have a trend where there are champions that emerge. If an idea doesn't get funded, a person who champions an idea goes back and helps them in some way.