Crowdfunding a CSS Course? Our experiment

Community
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During Triple Time at SitePoint, we give our employees 3 days to pursue projects of their choice, much like Google’s 20%. This project is an innovation born out of this… Please share your feedback and get in behind it!

Would you want to learn CSS Animation from our CSS Guru, Alex Walker? If so, would you be prepared to crowdfund to help make it happen?
There’s heaps of people out there who want to create an online course, or write a book, but never find the time – mostly as there’s no way to know what your ROI will be.

What if you could find out exactly how worthwhile it would be, before you record a single thing? We think this would be a super useful service. That’s why we created and are testing Launchable with one pilot pitch. It’s not just a test. Alex will actually make and deliver this course if the project receives $2000 in pledges. If this does well, we’ll look at making the platform open for more instructors to apply.

Big picture; we’re exploring whether a Kickstarter like marketplace for publishers would fly - a place where publishers can pitch and sell learning resources they’ve always wanted to develop, before they have written them. We’ve seen successful projects launched on Kickstarter and believe there’s room in the market for a more targeted funding platform for the industry.

Visit Launchable today if you like this idea or to pledge to if you think Alex’s course should be produced. Share your feedback if you think this concept rocks or we should go back to the drawing board. It’s early adopters like you who can help shape this into a reality!

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Seems like a great idea, Claire. Learnable/Launchable … hehe, love it. :slight_smile:

PS: on the Success! landing page—

If this course reaches it’s funding goal

should be

If this course reaches its funding goal

There. I had to say it. Now I feel better. [Minces off to annoy someone else …]

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Thanks Ralph! Nice spotting. We’ll get that fixed right away :slight_smile:

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I think I read this at the sitepoint main page. I thought it was a fanstastic idea and the course indeed very intersting… I’m in :slight_smile:

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I think that crowdsourcing is a fad. there will come a time when it becomes to universal, or obvious that institutional lenders are too big a part of it. However…all the best of luck with your mission. get plenty of people on your side from day 1 to help promote it, and give to it themselves.

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Well, it seems to work pretty darned well, and seems like a great idea to me. :slight_smile:

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Ralph, not every mission make it - in fact, metrics show that only sertain types and target figures work. And every fad works well while it is hot!
I hope that claire’s project does well, but check into the whole current Rob Ford siuation and ask if this is the kind of thing we want crowdsourcing to achieve - even if it’s possible to do. Have a great Friday.

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Funding/investing is an important way to make new things possible, but there’s never a guarantee that the project will work out. That’s why investors need to exercise good judgement and look carefully at a project and consider its viability.