Kickstarter: funding platform for creative projects
"Kickstarter is the world's largest funding platform for creative projects. Every week, tens of thousands of amazing people pledge millions of dollars to projects from the worlds of music, film, art, technology, design, food, publishing and other creative fields.
A new form of commerce and patronage. This is not about investment or lending. Project creators keep 100% ownership and control over their work. Instead, they offer products and experiences that are unique to each project.
All or nothing funding.On Kickstarter, a project must reach its funding goal before time runs out or no money changes hands. Why? It protects everyone involved. Creators aren’t expected to develop their project without necessary funds, and it allows anyone to test concepts without risk.
Each and every project is the independent creation of someone like you.Projects are big and small, serious and whimsical, traditional and experimental. They’re inspiring, entertaining and unbelievably diverse. We hope you agree... Welcome to Kickstarter!"
(Kickstarter, Inc.)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Nottingham Creative Network: providing professional and business support for Nottingham's creative industries since 2006
"Nottingham Creative Network launched in October 2006 and is a project designed to provide smart-targeted professional and business support for Nottingham’s creative industries. ...
Our 6 themes are as follows:
--Selling Your Soul? – What are the tensions between pursuing your creative inspiration and making compromises to make your business work? Are there any? If so, how do you negotiate them?
--How to Make Friends and Influence People – The importance of networks and network development. How do you get good at networking and why?
--Who Do I Get Into Bed With – Having recognised the value of networks and collaborations for creative business, how do you use these relationship to their best advantage?
--Don’t Get Ripped Off – What do you need to know and do protect yourself and get paid properly?
--More Than Just Beer Money? – What are the opportunities, issues and added pressures associated with going from creative business as a ‘lifestyle’ choice, to growing your business into something bigger?
--Soul Food – How do you ‘refresh’ the creativity bit of your business to prevent stagnation?
Nottingham Creative Network aims to address all these issues in a way that connects tangible advice for business growth and development with discussions of these issues that are relevant for the specific of the creative industries. We realise that sometimes the creative industries operate in quite distinctive ways. We come from the creative industries ourselves. We will be holding regular expert seminars and workshops, offering 1-to-1 surgeries and responding to the needs of the creative community in other flexible ways when opportunities arise."
(Nottingham Creative Network)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
UKFunders: online database of sources of funding and finance
"UKFunders is an online database of sources of funding and finance for businesses and commercialisation projects. It incorporates almost a thousand sources of funding from both public and private sector [UK] funders and covers grants, equity investment and loans from £100 - £10m."
(UKFunders Ltd.)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
LeNS: The Learning Network on Sustainability
"Asian-European multi-polar network for curricula development on Design for Sustainability focused on product-service system innovation.
LeNs is a 3 years project (15/12/2007 - 15/12/2010) funded by the Asia Link Programme, EuropAid, European Commission, involving 7 design schools in Europe and Asia.
LeNS aims at contributing to human resources and curriculum development, in a reciprocal understanding of cultures, by promoting a new generation of designers (and design educators) capable to effectively contribute to a transition towards a sustainable society.
LeNS ambitions to promote a new shared disciplinary ground on Design for Sustainability trough a series of exchange activities among the partner institutions. LeNS consortium will jointly produce an open e-learning package (a modular and adaptable package for curriculum development with teaching materials and tools for design educators and guidelines for courses design and implementation In diverse contexts). It will also promote a series of diffusion activities targeting the design community worldwide."
(The Learning Network on Sustainability)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
The Waterfall Versus Whirlpool Project Management Methods
"'Whirlpool' projects embrace the fact that requirements are volatile. Instead of trying to deliver a system that satisfies 100% of the requirements in one go, the focus is on delivering an agreed subset of the requirements at intervals. Use cases are the building blocks of requirements and provide a convenient basis for risk assessment and prioritising. The riskiest and most significant use cases are tackled first, within the context of a clearly understood architectural vision. Tackling risk early identifies problems before they become too expensive or threatening, and helps lead to more stable architectures. The system evolves as a sequence of increments, each one an enhancement to the already-delivered functionality.
The development process for each increment is founded on the idea of a workflow, consisting of activities. For example. instead of having an analysis stage followed by a design stage, a worker might be engaged in analysis activities and design activities, depending on the job in hand. It is important to recognise that analysis activities focus on the problem space, while design activities focus on the solution space. A good understanding of one part of the problem may well lead to faster progress to design in that area. It is also possible that design activities highlight shortcoming in the analysis or even the requirements, in which case these are amended to reflect the newer (and hopefully better) understanding.
Successive iterations converge on a more complete, correct and consistent model, leading ultimately to implementation and delivery."
(Tecademy)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
