UK Crowdfunding Platform Offers Creatives Opportunity to Win Grant

One of the newest UK crowdfunding platforms, PleaseFund.us is  offering creatives the opportunity submit a project and be in with a chance of being award a further funding grant. Creatives with the most popular creative project can win a grant of up to £1,000 to help make their dream a reality.

PleaseFund.us was established this year by Tarkan Ahmet and James Bailey, to offer creatives a hub through which to obtain funding for their dream projects and offering potential investors the opportunity to be part of something exciting that fits their passions. Projects currently seeking funding include novels, magazines, films & documentaries, and and even a live web streaming channel featuring live coverage of tennis matches and other racket based sports.

The opportunity to receive an extra funding grant is not only aiming to encourage more people to post their projects and/or invest but also to encourage support from the platform's Facebook fans and Twitter followers. Taking part is simple enough. First it is important to register with PleaseFund.us as only projects submitted through them will be considered. When registering it is import to ensure that full information is featured on the profile including a profile picture. Once the project is submitted it will then be considered for the grant.

Grants will be awarded on 25th November 2011, so it is important that projects be submitted at the earliest opportunity. A panel made up of the PleaseFund.us team and industry experts, along with Facebook fans and Twitter followers will review which projects should be considered. Feedback by way of "likes" on Facebook as well tweets and general comments will be reviewed, based on the most creative, novel and original concept. The most popular project will be declared the winner and awarded a grant of £1,000 with a runner up receiving £500.

If you have a winning idea and would like to participate then register your profile at PleaseFund.us website making sure to read the terms and conditions.

Image Credit; Comedy Nose

CrowdConf 2011 - The World's Biggest Crowdsourcing Conference

Guest Blogger, Mollie Allick

The Mission Bay Conference Centre San Francisco will play host to CrowdConf 2011, the world’s largest crowdsourcing conference.  Starting on 1^st November, this second annual event will feature a series of workshops, seminars, and talks providing insights into the widespread use of crowdsourcing. If you missed last year’s conference or not sure what CrowdConf is all about then here is an indication of what will be featured.

The first day will include two great workshops focusing on research and industry specific tutorials. These workshops offer conference attendees a head start as they engage in a more intimate tutorial, with limited space, with other thought leaders and crowdsourcing experts. Workshops will be taught by Omar Alonso, Technical Lead for Team Bing at Microsoft and Matt Lease, Assistant Professor at the University of Texas who will focus on topics in the Research and Engineering Track. Also featured is author and Associate Professor David Alan Grier who will examine how to integrate crowdsourcing into existing organisations in the Business and Industry Track.

The main conference will take place on Wednesday, November 2 (click here for the full agenda) and is scheduled to run all day. The agenda focuses on practical tips and tools for understanding crowdsourcing through a range of perspectives including investing, philanthropy, community building, and creativity. The day will feature keynotes, debates, and interactive breakout sessions, and concluding with a networking poster reception. Some of the sessions include Charles Festa from Threadless speaking about community building in his talk "Moonwalk to Market: The Illusion of Moving Forward." and Hitendra Patel and Benjamin Sywulka from IXL Center who will do a plenary talk on innovation titled "Crowdsourcing Innovation: Seven keys to getting breakthrough results every time."



CrowdConf will feature many prominent guest speakers including: Jeff Howe, author and journalist who coined the term “crowdsourcing,” Philip Rosedale, Founder of Second Life, Mark Gerson, Chairman of Gerson Lehrman Group, Charlie Cheever, Founder of Quora, Sharon Chiarella, Vice President of Amazon Mechanical Turk, and more than fifty other incredible speakers representing the most influential and fastest growing crowdsourcing companies. For more information about the speakers visit the CrowdConf website.

Tickets for the event are on sale now so if you fancy learning all about crowdsourcing from some its most influential figures then see below for details of how to register. Crowdsourcing Gazette readers can get a $75 discount by entering the code CSGZT when registering.

Event: CrowdConf 2011

Website: www.crowdconf.com

When: Workshops: Tuesday, November 1 (10am-3pm); Conference: Wednesday, November 2 (8:30am-6:30pm)

Where: Mission Bay Conference Center, 1675 Owens Street, San Francisco

Cost: $75 for workshops, including tutorial, notes and lunch. $450 for conference, including entry to the full-day program and networking reception, plus lunch and snacks throughout the day.

Register: http://crowdconf2011.eventbrite.com/

Acknowledgements; Thank you to Mollie Allick for her blog contribution. Mollie is the Conference Director for CrowdConf and the Events & PR Director for CrowdFlower. She can be reached at mollie@crowdflower.com.

Image Credit; CrowdConf

Crowdsourcing The Patent Process

Over the last decade the number of patents filed every has risen to over 6 million, making it increasingly difficult to research an idea before filing a patent application. Given there are so many patent applications on record this looks like a job for crowdsourcing, a mantle that CrowdIPR has been quick to take up.

CrowdIPR is an Estonian startup platform that looks to take the burden of the patent research for prior art off the shoulders of the designer/innovator by tapping into the wisdom of the crowd. Before submitting a patent application it is necessary to carry out extensive research of the intended product. This involves meticulously reviewing everything that has been published relating to the idea. This task can be costly as you would need the services of patent lawyer or industry expert as well as time consuming and must be thorough to ensure nothing is missed. Patent attorney Mikk Putk had the idea for CrowdIPR when he was faced the vast amount of information encountered in prior art searches for new patents. 

There are of course other platforms available that are designed to make research easier and cost effective, such as Google Patents. However it lacks the depth and quality of results that you would get from a patent lawyer. CrowdIPR provides a combination of both cost effective easily obtained results with the high quality of a patent lawyer by crowdsourcing technology experts, designers etc from all over the world.

I have spent thousands of hours on priror art and patents studies over the past several years. While the process is often very interesting and occasionally even fun, it has not been without serious headaches. If you have ever dealt with such searches yourself, you are most likely nodding in agreement. Finding the right information is like looking for a needle in a haystack. -Mikk Putk, 3 Reasons for Crowdsourcing Patent Research

CrowdIPR offers benefits to both innovators looking to file their patents, and industry experts. For those looking to file patents, there is the cost advantage whereby a fixed fee can be negotiated with the experts rather than hiring someone on an hourly basis. CrowdIPR also offers its clients wider access to a broad range of knowledge, skills and language requirements. Industry experts and those with the right knowledge can earn additional income joining CrowdIPR's global community of service providers and calling on their wealth of knowledge and experience advising clients on potential patents and assisting them in their search for prior art.

Although founded in Estonia, CrowdIPR is now operating from an incubator in Newcastle provided by ignite100, an accelerator program that provides office space, seed capital, and mentoring to new startups. CrowdIPR is currently operating as a private beta platform however with the number of new patents emerging, the demand for quality research and results which crowdsourcing can provide could soon propel the fledgling platform into a leading service provider.

Source; Arctic Startup
Image Credit; Mr T in DC