I like to collect (desultorily) items about science-themed music and Marian Call’s recently completed (very successful) Kickstarter campaign (she received $63,0000 in pledges having asked for $11,000 originally) fits that bill, more or less. Here’s an excerpt from Mike Masnick’s, July 24, 2012 posting on Techdirt describing Call’s campaign approach,
… she created Marian Call’s European Adventure Quest, in which she effectively “gamified” Kickstarter, such that the more she earned, the more levels would be “unlocked.” The main idea was that she would tour Europe and record a live album, but the more she raised, the more places she would visit and the more cover songs she would do (she usually does originals, but people have requested covers, and she was worried about the licensing fees if she didn’t raise money in support).
At the $55,000 level, she offered a cover of ‘Particle Man’ by They Might Be Giants to be recorded live at CERN (European Particle Physics Laboratory).
Here’s Particle Man by They Might Be Giants as found on YouTube,
By the way, at $44,000 level she offered ‘The Elements Song’ by Tom Lehrer. Even though the campaign has ended, it’s well worth checking out.
Crowdfunding (raising funds by posting a project, on a website designed for the purpose, and asking for money in return for rewards you will give to the funders) seems to be everywhere at the moment. I tried it last year for one of my projects and had one failure and one partial success. It’s certainly an interesting process to go through and I’m fascinated with the current interest from scientists. According to an April 25, 2012 posting by Michael Ho on Techdirt, there are at least four crowdfunding websites for science projects.
In addition to the ones Ho cites, I found the #SciFund Challenge, which is being held from May 1 – May 31, 2012. From their home page,
Last fall, scientists raised $76,230 for their research in the first round of the #SciFund Challenge. The second round launches on May 1, 2012!
What? The #SciFund Challenge is a grand experiment in science funding. Can scientists raise money for their research by convincing the general public to open their wallets for small-amount donations? In more and more fields – from music to dance to journalism – people are raising lots of money for projects in precisely this way. The process is called crowdfunding. The first round of the #SciFund Challenge showed that this model can work for funding scientific research. Now, let’s take it to the next level!
Who? Well over 140 scientists, from across the globe, have signed for the second round of the #SciFund Challenge.
When? From May 1- May 31, 2012, scientists participating in the #SciFund Challenge will each conduct their own crowdfunding campaigns for their own research. But even though each scientist will be fundraising for their own research, participants won’t be on their own. In the month of April, #SciFund scientists will be trained how to run a crowdfunding campaign. And, through the Challenge, participants will be connected together to increase the chances that everyone succeeds.
How do I learn more?Read the blog! You can also contact one of the #SciFund Challenge organizers with any questions: Jai Ranganathan (jai.ranganathan@gmail.com). If you would like to be informed about future rounds of the #SciFund Challenge, please sign up for our mailing list.
From the About page (I have removed several links),
The #SciFund Challenge is an experiment – can scientists use crowdfunding to fund their research? The current rate of funding for science proposals in the U.S. is ~20%. The current rate for crowdfunding statues of RoboCop in Detroit is 135% – to the tune of $67,436. Perhaps Scientists can do better by tapping this reservoir of funds from an interested public. …
The #SciFund Challenge is also a way to get scientists to directly engage with the public. Crowdfunding forces scientists to build public interaction and outreach into their research from day one. It’s a new mechanism to couple science and society, and one that we think has a lot of promise. …
Founders
The founders of the #SciFund Challenge are Dr. Jai Ranganathan and Dr. Jarrett Byrnes. We are biologists – ecologists, actually – and each spends too much time in the science online scene. Jai ran a weekly science podcast, called Curiouser and Curiouser for Miller-McCune magazine, and Jarrett is the big boss over at the science blog I’m a Chordata! Urochordata! On Twitter, you can find Jai at @jranganathan and jai.ranganathan@gmail.com and Jarrett at @jebyrnes.
On another note and in response to my April 18, 2012 posting about Lego robots being used to grow bones, I received a notice about a project to raise funds on Kickstarter. As I’m not a Lego afficionado, it took a little digging to figure out the project.
In my April 18, 2012 posting the scientists used a robot that they built with a Lego Mindstorms kit. The beams used to create a base for the robots limit builders and a team from Denmark (Lasse Mogensen and Soren Jensen), which is the home of Lego, have developed a base (a rectangular plate, 21 x 30 holes), which would allow scientists and others to create larger, more robust and complex robots. They call their project, MinuteBot Base,
There are ways to combine the MinuteBot Base plates, which are fully compatible with Lego products, in case a single base does not suffice.
Here’s the MinuteBot Base Kickstarter page where you can find more information and diagrams. The group has raised almost 1/2 of the funds they’ve requested with some 20 days left in their campaign. The group has contacted Michelle Oyen, who’s one of the scientists cited in my April 18, 2012 posting (from their April 25, 2012 email to me),
We are in contact with Michelle Oyen who expressed interest in our products:
“Please let me know if I can be of use in the future, and if you are interested in collaborating on more ideas regarding using Lego Mindstorms for biomedical/bioengineering research!”
The group also has a second project, a MinuteBot Bearing, which they (represented by team member, Dorota Sauer) have entered in a contest for a prize of $10,000. From the MinuteBot Bearing page on the Boca Bearing contest website,
What was your goal in building this project?
To design a turntable with a perfect interface with LEGO Mindstorms and with improved mechanical properties. The broader vision is to make a kit consisting of robust elements designed for higher precision and durability using industrial components. Robotics made in minutes. That’s MinuteBot.
Does your project help to solve a problem? If so what problem?
LEGO Mindstorms is very easy to program but as it is a toy the precision, durability and mechanical integrity is limited. The MinuteBot Bearing is based on industry-grade ball bearings providing the needed mechanical performance of the turntable.
What makes your idea unique?
The combination of user friendliness, the interface with LEGO Mindstorms and the good mechanical performance makes MinuteBot Bearing unique.
You can find out more information about the team and the products at the MinuteBot website.
Getting back to Michael Ho and his posting about the science-specific crowdfunding sites, here are two listings I’ve excerpted from his April 25, 2012 posting,
I gather it’s the most successful crowdfunding project Kickstarter has hosted yet. The Pebble team asked for $100,000 to realize their e-paper/ smartwatch project and have raised over $3M while they still have 30 days left in their campaign. In the kind of twist that makes one smirk, they posted the project on Kickstarter as they were unable to raise sufficient funds in Silicon Valley. From the April 16, 2012 Q&A with Alexandra Chung at Wired,
Wired: Are you surprised by the reception to Pebble? What were you hoping for when you launched on Kickstarter?
Migicovsky [Eric Migicovsky, Pebble founder and lead designer]: We were expecting $100,000 over a month, so when it came in two hours, it was a surprise. On Thursday, we were earning $80,000 an hour. By Sunday morning, we passed the Wasteland 2, which was the second most popular Kickstarter after Double Fine Adventures.
…
Wired: Has the influx of funding affected your production plans? Are you changing your strategy at all?
Migicovsky: We’re basically leveling up. We had a variety of paths we could have followed. We were originally aiming for $100,000, so we had a production path that we could have followed to meet that $100,000. Now we’re following a path that is several levels higher than that.
Right now, we don’t have any specifics for where the product is being made. There are various levels of contract manufacturers, and we’re going to use a contract manufacturer. We’re moving to a one-stop shop, so we come with X amount of orders.
On the one hand, six months is not very long to bring a product to market. But we have this huge backer community that will help us get there. They are providing the funding that’s helping us make quality decisions, like spending money now on making a more aesthetically pleasing product. We’re making those decisions now.
We had a design plan with several different levels. It’s not like we are drastically altering the design. We just had “gotta haves,” like 7-day battery life, and then the “nice to haves” like more water-resistance, which are the features we’re moving into now.
Here’s a description of the pr0ject and the product from the April 17, 2012 news item on the BBC News website,
The Pebble watch reached the $1m mark in 28 hours. The firm behind the device, which has been designing smartwatches for three years, said that it was “blown away” by the support.
The watch has an electronic paper screen and connects via Bluetooth with iPhones or Android powered devices to allow users to customise the watch face and download apps.
The display stays on at all times and is backlit for night viewing. The firm says that the rechargeable battery will last a week.
It can display distance and speed for runners and cyclists, control a smartphone’s music, and show emails, messages and reminders.
The watch will go head to head with an Android-compatible device released in April by electronic giant Sony Corp. The Sony Smartwatch costs $149.99.
This video should answer a few more questions about the watch,
Migicovsky is Canadian. Originally from Vancouver, he graduated from the University of Waterloo and made his way to California. From the April 17, 2012 article by Chuck Howitt for the Record.com,
The Pebble smartwatch is a “natural evolution” of the inPulse smartwatch that Migicovsky started working on while a student at UW [University of Waterloo] in 2008.
Released in 2009, the inPulse connected wirelessly with BlackBerry smartphones to indicate when the user had an email, message or call.
Sold through a company he called Allerta Inc., sales of the inPulse have been rather modest, about 1,500 to date, admits Migicovsky.
So the 26-year-old Vancouver native set his sights on the booming iPhone and Android markets.
To crack the California market and raise funds at the same time, he applied for admission to Y Combinator, a technology incubator based in Silicon Valley, in early 2011.
Successful applicants are guaranteed about $20,000 on admission plus more funding at the end of an intense three-month internship. Migicovsky was able to raise about $375,000 by the time he left Y Combinator, which he used to start working on the Pebble.
…
When he hit the venture capital market, he got a lukewarm response for the Pebble.
Most venture capitalists “have an aversion to hardware,” he said. “The general feeling is it costs more money. There is a little bit more risk.”
You can find out more about Pebble at the company website and, if you were wondering what SDK (as mentioned in the video) means, it’s Software Development Kit.
I recently wrote about e-paper in my April 3, 2012 posting titled, Folding screens at University of Toronto and EPD (electronic paper display) with LG.
It was the term ‘focused ion beam’ that caught my attention when I read the description that Sameer Walavalkar gives for his project on the Kickstarter website. From the Nano Art: Reloaded Kickstarter project page,
One day it occurred to me to use the Focused Ion Beam for something other than Science…”Nano-Art!” A gallium atom would be the pencil or paint, and a minuscule chip of silicon the canvas. On a whim, I replicated 3 of Monet’s “Water Lillies”, side by side on a silicon chip about 75 microns wide, (or about the width of a hair.) I presented the etched chip mounted on a print of the three images, in a frame, as a gift. The response to my first attempt at Nano-Art was: “HOW COOL!”
I’d like to fund a project that would let me expand the artistic potential of the scientific technology I have at hand. Honestly, a grain of salt or an eyelash looks totally different at the nano-scale. Consider this: an object you normally see as tiny (a hair, a grain of salt, or sand,) is HUGE compared to things made in the nano-world. It can completely change the way you look at things around you, I know it did for me. Why do we care about the nano-world, you ask? Well… every bit of the technology so essential for functioning, including the computer that you’re using now, is made with electronic devices that are the size of the etchings in this project!
Here are two images of the etchings you’ll find on Walavalker’s Kickstarter fundraising project page (art lovers may recognize Georges Seurat’s “La Grande Jatte” which has been reproduced on an eyelash),
People are unaware of the science that goes into making a device like a touchscreen smartphone that fits into a pocket, but Sameer Walavalkar is looking to change that.
…
In the project, Sameer, a physicist at Caltech, is using a scanning electron microscope to take pictures of artwork he has carved into silicon using a Focused Ion Beam.
He can carve any image, or text message, a person wants into the silicon, then take a photo of the image next to a grain of salt, an eyelash or a grain of sand.
The project is a way to bring the reality of just how small nanotechnology is, into the consumer’s hands.
The focused ion beam, which Walavalkar uses for his etchings, reminded me of a publishing project ‘Teeny Ted in Turnip Town’, which also featured a focused ion beam and nanoscale reproduction. Teeny Ted is mentioned in my May 21, 2009 posting.
Good luck to Sameer Walavalkar! Here again is the link to Nano Art: Reloaded.
I’m not a big fan of the ‘science journalism is vital/better than blogging, etc.’ discussion. I tend to think that science communication is important whether it’s written or spoken or found in a newspaper/magazine or in a blog or in a video on YouTube. As far I’m concerned the most important thing is the source of the information, i.e., the individual who’s supplying it must have integrity and that’s something that can be observed over time. I don’t expect perfection but I do expect that mistakes are quickly acknowledged and corrected.
A recent (at the AAAS 2012 annual meeting in Vancouver in mid-February) encounter with a science journalist who proudly proclaimed that he never read science blogs because they are filled with inaccuracies and other forms of ‘poor’ reporting left me with more than usually mixed feelings about science journalism. We exchanged words he and I, in a civil fashion, where he explained that I ‘had the problem’ despite my comment that there are myriad examples of lousy science journalism and I was reminded of a debate that as far as I’m concerned is over but continues vigourously elsewhere.
One area of discussion does interest me and that’s long form vs. short form writing. In the area of science and technology, I like to read longer form pieces. Unfortunately, long form for a lot of magazines and newspapers and blogs means 500 words, not nearly enough for complex topics. There is a movement afoot, according to David Bruggeman at his Pasco Phronesis blog in a Feb. 26, 2012 posting, to address this issue,
Friday [Feb. 24, 2012] I mentioned MATTER, a longform journalism project focusing on science and technology (H/T Jack Stilgoe). It’s currently four days into a 30-day Kickstarter push [crowdfunding campaign], and has already raised over $76,000 (U.S.). The two minds behind the project are Bobbie Johnson and Jim Giles, two reporters with a fair amount of ink spilled on issues involved with science and technology.
Unfortunately, I’m not familiar with either of the journalists or their work but I do like their ideas. From the MATTER Kickstarter page,
We’ve developed a way to support independent, global, in-depth reporting about science and technology, two subjects that are close to our hearts. We’re going to use it to build MATTER, the new home for the best journalism about the future. And we need you to help us make it happen.
…
MATTER will focus on doing one thing, and doing it exceptionally well. Every week, we will publish a single piece of top-tier long-form journalism about big issues in technology and science. That means no cheap reviews, no snarky opinion pieces, no top ten lists. Just one unmissable story.
MATTER is about brilliant ideas from all around the world, whether they come from professors at MIT or the minds of mad people. But most of all, it’s about getting amazing investigative reporters to tell compelling stories.
We’re building MATTER for readers, not advertisers. So however you access our stories — whether it’s on our website, via the Kindle store, or on your Apple and Android devices — you will get a beautifully designed experience that puts you first.
Good journalism isn’t cheap: it takes time and money for great reporters to do their best work. That means we’re going to have to charge. But not much: we’re aiming for around 99 cents per story. It’s an experiment to see if independent journalism, done right, can fill the gap left by mainstream media.
They put together a video pitch,
They must be doing something right because they met their funding goal within days of opening the campaign. They then doubled their funding goal and they’ve raised that money too. Here’s how they’re dealing with the ‘problem’ of getting more than they expected,
The way we designed the project is simple: the higher our total goes, the better we can make everything. Every dollar gives us more room to run, allows us to commission more stories straight off the bat, lets us deliver to more platforms and helps make MATTER nicer to use.
If you wish to contribute, there are still several days left in the campaign.
ETA: A March 8, 2012 posting by Leigh Bedon on the MATTER project for Techdirt emphasizes some of the issues with the business model. How do you get people to pay $.99 per article and will they keep doing it?
