The site offers up a series of projects that have are more or less great ideas that have not been fully developed, and then lists out all the specific people and skill sets that would be needed in order to make the project come to life. Where would these ideas come from you ask? Well, there are many great ideas floating around the 12th floor and in other graduate design and art schools that students build out in a few weeks or half a semester. Most of these projects end up by the wayside due to a technical encounter, or lack of resources. Despite there being a great idea, projects like these are not fully realized.
However, on some occasions these initial ideas end up as thesis projects, where students have the opportunity to build out working prototypes and collaborate with others. Under the right conditions, these projects end up becoming businesses, but most do not. What if there was a place for graduate students to take their thesis projects, or any project for that matter, to the next level and fully build out? This could be looked at like the Kickstarter before Kickstarter.
There would have to be incentives of course for others outside of the academic community with technical skills sets or years of working experience to take part in someone’s project. There should be constraints on the project timeliness, like must be able to submit to Kickstarter in “X” amount of days. There are many logistical issues that need to be explored in this area.
In the next steps I would begin searching for precedence and get a feel from others if this is a reasonable concept that people would take part in. I would need to interview current students (not only in DT but at other schools) and also go to some coffee shops and ask people what they think. I need to discover the motivating factors in order to begin pushing this concept out.
Blog Comments!