Sharing is Gaining - Knowledge Flow Acceleration by Crowdfunding

Since mid-June 80 participants are learning about exponential technologies. The group is not just diverse in terms of languages, or places of origin (from Germany to Italy, Israel, Brazil, and others) but also their educational, and work background. From PhD students to serial entrepreneurs all can be found.

What bounds them together is the PASSION to apply exponential technologies to address humanity's GREAT CHALLENGES.

The place where all this happens is far away for most of us, in Silicon Valley, at NASA Ames Research Center (NASA research outreaches right where new technologies are applied early on in their development), founded in 2008 by philanthropist Peter H. Diamandis, and inventor & futurist Ray Kurzweil.

Question stays, " Can we participate even though we haven't paid $25K+, and are not amongst the 80 lucky ones?"

YES WE CAN DO THAT

Back in early 2009, we had just started to conceptualize a similar project for Europe's semiconductor, nano and life science tech hub Dresden, LockSchuppen - FutureLab2056 - SingularAcademy - CollabSpace, we crowdsourced the translation into German of Ray Kurzweil's TED Talk "A University for the Coming Singularity. Now German speaking audience can follow Ray's speech with translated subtitles.

Five years, and four applications for the Graduate Studies Program later there appeared, more by serendipity than planned search, an opportunity to bring the insightful Twitter conversations from Sinuglarity University to a broader public. A year ago, Angela Incampo and myself got invited to become the social media team for the 26th International Cartographic Conference by the main organizer, Prof. Manfred Buchroithner. As conference proceeded, and the hashtag #iccDD2013 circled in the networks, we became aware of an event entry on Eventifier, a social media news aggregator and a startup themselves.

With the start of this year's #GSP14 the question arose, "Can we crowdfund the Basic Version of Eventifier to enable a possible future conversation with interested stakeholders who'd be interested to help to establish something similar as Singularity University in Silicon Saxony?"

Certainly a project well under the "waterline" of any serious investor, $99 sounding like everybody could pay it personally not needing a crowd (actually these were some of the comments I received from foreign, and local contacts who are active in entrepreneurship, and technology).

It started small with an initial post on this GSP-dedicated blog, now the first level ($99) has been reached with some overshooting funds.

Next level you can read about HERE, and with an achievable goal for #GSP15.

Green Tech Boost ...

... for your house, the car, the smart grid, ....

The possibilities are huge, yet we get our power still through mostly big power plants, often run by coal, nuclear power, or other.

Why not do it differently?

Scott and Julie Brusaw, co-founders of Solar Roadways had another idea: "paving" the roads (which are in there country in rather bad shape) with solar panels.

It was in 2007 when Scott Brusaw found his way into the summer edition of Penn State's "Material Research Institute Bulletin". Back then it sounded even more like a "crazy idea" than today. Nobody back than had a clue about new materials such as graphene, or other that play a major role in improving the efficiency of solar panels (not only for the roof). A Dresden-based spin-off of the Technical University Dresden, Heliatek, is taking the concept of solar panels from the roof into the window, currently ramping up from prototyping to full-production in 2015. Scott also presented at TED

7 years later, Julie and Scott Brusaw, started an even bolder experiment: crowdfunding for ramping up to bring their first full-scale prototype out from the lab into production.

The goal: 1$ Million USD within 6 weeks (from April 21, 2014 - May 31, 2014)

Mission completed (and extended till June 30, 2014 as Scott has recently shared on the Indiegogo page of the campaign).

What looks like an easy path to success wasn't clear five weeks ago, when funds only reached some 25k (May 5, 2014) and nothing much seemed to happen. But then an article appeared in Wired Maganzine (May 8, 2014), and things got into motion (FIRST LEARNING: a major respected and international magazine (online preferably) should capture and write about the project, drawing like-minded people into the crowdfunding process, either by contributing, or spreading the word). Just after a few days funds sprang up quite dramatically (SECOND LEARNING: once the campaign gets

traction other potential supporters join the crowd, and do want to be amongst the early movers). Of course the campaign is still some 95% short of the final goal and time is clearly running out - there is not doubt about that.

Over the days various supporters, especially ones who had the capability, and boldness not just to write once but several times about the up-dates, news about the campaign itself, or upcoming articles in magazines, and newspapers and to connect these across various social networks the "famous" Twitter hashtag came to use: #SolarRoadways (THIRD LEARNING: never stop telling about the advancements, and share in various networks, staying authentic and passionate what you share).

And then happened something which accelerated the process by no imaginable means: a video by some supporters from Canada "hit the road" or better Youtube.

(FOURTH LEARNING: two is news, three is a crowd, and dedicated, and passionate supporters around the globe is really what's fueling a visionary cause to bring into reality).

Per today, May 30, 2014  more than 1.6$ Mio have come together, and certainly closer ties to possible

collaborators, and companies bringing the pure vision of the two founders of Solar Roadways to a success (which will be certainly a step by step process, and will make most sense where need, and visibility of the new technology will be highest to bring forward the technology).

The learning lesson in one sentence for all entrepreneurs of different age, from teenager to senior is:

It's (a) never to late to go for a bold vision, (b) success may take time (in this case more than seven years), (c) don't stop bringing your dream into reality until you have finished.

Future of Science & Research Funding

Due to the current turbulent discussions, activities, and movements around the globe it becomes evident that the present forms of financing are outdated in times that are accelerating so fast that as soon as the funding is right, the business model has changed already.

A year back in time, a dear FB friend from California, Michael Herrler, initiated a crowdfunding approach for scientific research, NextGenCrowd. An interesting project, even though it by now has not managed to get either larger attractiveness by the stakeholders, or real impact on the scientific research (worldwide).  At present times lots of scientific research is financed by public funding via grants. These arrangements are time consuming, and often take quite a chunk of researcher's daily work, which certainly could be more effectively used in their main work domain. 

Especially constrained are efforts of research-based spin-offs that on one hand depend on their main enabler, the education institution their makers come from, and the public domain of funding. In Germany, and especially the Eastern parts (formerly GDR) quite a thriving science community could be built up over the past 20 years. Now with the European Community extending towards even more Eastern countries the current funding will go down significantly, and funding will be mostly given in the future to technology-related work.

Which future paths may come when the questions are on the table, "How do we monetarize our research findings by getting a viable startup up, and going?"- "Will the efforts of networking across disciplinary boundaries be supported, and which ways?"

What are the possible future funding schemes currently hidden by our "blind spot" (individually and collectively)?

Some examples of new ways of funding are (and more on Crowdnavigator itself):

Crowdnavigator - a quite new crowdfunding matchmaking platform - seems to open new paths of collaboration to give new answers to the questions above.

Seedmatch (currently in German only) - a Dresden-based crowdfunding platform could also be a valuable source for technology-based startups to check out for funding

Credits go to Philippe Greier making the connection on Facebook (a case of serendipity)