
Awesome Foundation gives no-strings cash to great ideas [video] - schrofer
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23469438
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paraschopra
This is FANTASTIC! I am quite excited about the whole proposition. Wish it
were there when I was in college...

So I quickly contacted several of my friends here in Delhi, India and got them
many of them interested. Now we have:
[http://awesomefoundation.in/](http://awesomefoundation.in/)

Anyone in India/Delhi, who is interested in joining this, hit me up at
paras1987@gmail.com

~~~
bencollier49
Are you related to the original Awesome Foundation, or have you just taken the
same name?

~~~
paraschopra
Not related, but keen on becoming a chapter. Not sure if there are official
requirements or it is organic such as BarCamp. (Hoping and assuming it is the
latter)

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tibbon
Please do get in touch via the website. We're super flexible on chapters
running themselves largely as they'd like (quite similar to Barcamp), but we'd
like to officially have you in the loop to be able to provide you with
resources and connections to the rest of us.

\- David Fisher (AF-trustee & co-founder)

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fpp
To learn more about projects funded and the ideas behind the foundation have a
look at their web site - community funding / support at its finest -
[http://www.awesomefoundation.org/](http://www.awesomefoundation.org/)

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jtchang
One of the events they funded was called Balloonacy:
[https://www.facebook.com/events/277093279051184/](https://www.facebook.com/events/277093279051184/)

I helped solder like a bazillion motion sensor LEDs to a board to stick in all
the balloons.

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juretriglav
This is great! How come I have not heard of this before? I have so many
awesome side projects that would need a bit of help in order to pay for
servers/continue development.

But seriously, I applied to the Knowledge chapter with
[http://sciencegist.com](http://sciencegist.com). Fingers crossed :)

It's also quite inspiring to see the different kinds of projects being funded
by this foundation. It helps with the feeling of being alone in the world of
projects which "will help people, but can't make money".

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zacmartin
I was lucky enough to receive the Melbourne Grant a few months back. It
allowed me to prototype a product I eventually tried to get up on crowd-
funding. Sadly no luck there, but great initiative and meant I could at least
give it a go and learn something.

~~~
X4
What was it about? Why did you have no success?

~~~
zacmartin
* Here was my crowd-funding campaign: [http://www.pozible.com/project/11432](http://www.pozible.com/project/11432)

And here's a blog post I wrote about why I think it didn't work:
[http://www.pigsdontfly.com/2013/05/7-things-i-learned-
from-u...](http://www.pigsdontfly.com/2013/05/7-things-i-learned-from-
unsuccessful.html)

~~~
X4
Did you consider using alternative materials?

If you switched to 3D Printed materials, I think the costs would be much less
and you could have funded it with the amount of money you already collected.

~~~
zacmartin
I used 3D printing during the prototyping stage, and even using a friend of a
friend's printer it still worked out to be roughly $60 AUD a print.

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cing
I've given 3 oral pitches to my local Awesome Foundation over the years and
wasn't selected each time. Not sure if that says something about my ideas,
pitch skills, or what, but it's a bit of a bummer. FYI: The ideas were a
completely solar/bike-powered LAN party, an electronics recycling drive where
you get to smash computers with sledgehammers, and a student conference where
all the research posters are wheatpasted onto the walls of a graffiti-filled
alleyway and presented with paint markers.

~~~
samstave
Sorry, I just don't see the appeal of any of those ideas -- though clearly I
am not your target interest group.

The smashing of computers as a recycling effort seems ridiculous to me in that
computers are filled with tons of toxic materials.

I don't see how smashing them with hammers is good for anything...

~~~
cing
Smashed computers can still be recycled, I had a partnership with a local
e-waste recycling company. The idea was to give people incentive to recycle
with a fun event. With regards to the toxic materials, it was my understanding
that only monitors offered some risk. I could be wrong though.

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melling
Another interesting method for crowd funding. While cool, I'm still hopeful
that we'll soon have the crowd funding/crowd sourcing sites that tackle bigger
problems.

A site that funds the next Mars Lunar Rover in an X-Prize manner, for
instance. Another site that provides crowd-funded medical grants like the
Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Perhaps another to help fund some of Bill Gates' ambitious projects. He's got
big ideas and even he's gonna need a little more cash. :-)

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karcass
Venture communism?

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jfarmer
I'd say it's more like "venture anarchy" or "venture lololololol".

There's no central organization and each chapter is self-organizing. I was a
trustee of the SF chapter for about two years. :)

~~~
X4
This woman has balls, totally awesome, luv her idea to embetter ones
surrounding just by empowering people to DO it. There's a lot
Mill-/Billionaires can learn from her.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE the concept of self-organization! Writing a thesis+project on
it :)

~~~
goatforce5
I know some Awesome trustees, and they're not millionaires or even close to
it. Just regular Joes who think it's worth $100 a month to meet some
interesting people and to be part of something cool.

$100 is not 'nothing', but plenty of people would spend that on other hobbies.

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rpicard
This looks wonderful! I went ahead and applied for my Thread Hero project:
[http://threadhero.com](http://threadhero.com)

~~~
paigalhaes
seems interesting... but there's no detail info about how it works - neither
for charity side or shirt buyers side... you force me to have another sign up
not knowing the details...

Edit: and after entering the e-mail already you ask to share!? I'm not going
to share until I know more about it!

~~~
rpicard
It's just a "coming soon" page right now. I'm currently talking with some
organizations to figure out the details.

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lo_fye
We have a chapter in London Ontario Canada, too!
[http://awesomelondon.ca](http://awesomelondon.ca)

