

 Help rebuild Christchurch - dhotson
http://99designs.com/christchurch

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NZ_Matt
Thank you 99designs! Very generous.

I live 20km west of Christchurch city and was fortunate to escape largely
unaffected. My heart goes out to those that have lost Family, Friends, Homes
and Businesses. The last week has been a surreal experience for myself and
everyone here.

It is a case of the haves and the have nots at the moment. There are still
20,000 homes without electricity tonight and 30% of the city remains without
water and sewer. It's an incredibly weird and helpless feeling with many
suburbs getting back to (relative) normality while other suburbs towards the
east have been devastated. Everyone is on edge, each aftershock brings back
memories of Tuesdays quake and for a split second everyone wonders if it could
be another big one.

From my perspective it has been fascinating watching the web and social media
play a key role following the disaster. Immediately after the earthquake the
news spread fast via twitter as you would expect. Photos and youtube videos of
the carnage were being broadcast around the world within minutes. It has been
described as one of the most documented disasters in history. You can look
back at the first tweets using google realtime search <http://goo.gl/40djD>

Txt messages and Facebook were the two best ways to immediately check on
family and friends, I can't imagine what it would have been like before these
services. Knowing that your loved ones are ok within minutes is incredibly
relieving. I could instantly inform my friends from all around the world that
I was ok with a quick status update. And for those without internet access,
their Friends who had made contact could post on that persons wall letting
everyone know that they were ok.

Facebook Groups have been a great tool to inform and mobilise various
volunteer groups. Canterbury universities student volunteer army is the best
example. Thousands of students were mobilsed through facebook and they have
been helping to clear silt away from properties. Silt is a fine sand that
bubbles out of the ground as a result of liquefaction.
<http://www.facebook.com/StudentVolunteerArmy>

New Zealand developers have also volunteered their support with a number of
excellent websites popping up in the days following the quake.

<http://www.quakeescape.org.nz> <http://www.trademe.co.nz/christchurch-
earthquake-support> <http://eq.org.nz>
[http://www.google.com/crisisresponse/christchurch_earthquake...](http://www.google.com/crisisresponse/christchurch_earthquake.html)

Also worth mentioning, a group of New Zealand developers have launched
<http://www.appappeal.co.nz> to raise funds. I'm sure your support and tweets
would be greatly appreciated.

It's late here, Hopefully I'll do a more comprehensive (and edited) blog post
at a later date. Thanks for your support.

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dhotson
Hey guys, I just wanted to let you know that we're doing a fundraiser at
99designs to help those affected by the earthquake in Christchurch.

We'll be donating 100% of our profits from today to the Christchurch
Earthquake Appeal.

~~~
paolomaffei
that's pretty smart of you :)

economics of a fundraising, random numbers but you can scale them up or down
easily.

assuming you usually have $10k daily profits, and today you got even only $15k
that's still 5.000$ / 50$ (average profit for you on a $500 project or
whatever is an average project) = 100 new people that'll try you out. So total
cost = $10k with no other costs (a part from fixed ones: hosting & support)

If just half of these 100 people will do another project on average in their
lifetime cycle you already have covered your costs and make some good profits
(100 / 2 * 500$ = $25k)

Without even counting all the free press! let's say $10 CPM and 200k people
reached, that's a nice $2k of bonus

~~~
dhotson
This isn't about that.

A few of the guys on the 99 team are from New Zealand and their friends and
family have been affected by this. It's a pretty big deal for us.

~~~
Peroni
For the record, I think what your company is doing is outstanding. It's going
to cost an absolute fortune to help rebuild the city and every single last
dollar counts. I think you deserve every ounce of publicity you get from this
regardless of your motivations for lauching this fundraiser.

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joelackner
while i applaud your charity efforts, i want to let all those non-designers
understand how design contest driven sites like 99designs hurt the design
industry as a whole.

to put it in perspective for programmers, it's like submitting a completed
project (or at least a functional beta) with no guarantee of payment. it's up
to the client to pick the best "code" and all the others lose their
time/money.

for more info on how this is hurting designers: <http://www.no-spec.com/>

~~~
jerguismi
Nobody forces anyone to enter those contents. Get over with it.

~~~
joelackner
i'm only here to educate others on the business model and to stick up for the
health of my industry.

~~~
watty
I don't think you're educating anyone. It's a free market, what's the problem
with buying a Corolla over a BMW? Everyone and their mother (including mine)
have a website now. 95% of those people don't need a professional design which
is why sites like 99designs work.

~~~
joelackner
i don't feel your analogy works at all. if only 1 out of 20 designers (i'm
just guessing at the average number of submitted concepts per contest) are
getting paid for their work they are submitting, then 19 are losing out: it's
called spec work.

cheap is not spec.

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taabi
great initiative !

