Open-source hardware

3 Lessons from my first Kickstarter Campaign

Maureen Carruthers 14 Comments

Late last month the rest of the Mach 30 board and I launched our first Kickstarter campaign.

Since the goal of the campaign is  to create a SourceForge for Open Source Hardware and I don’t expect there are a ton of open source hardware folks hanging out here* I’m going to skip the “give us money part.”

On the other hand, almost all of you are interested in how to fund the work that drives you, so I’ll focus on the three big lessons we learned from our first attempt at a Kickstarter campaign–as well as a bonus lesson that applies to successful projects of all kinds. Continue reading →

There Should be More Than One!

Maureen Carruthers Leave a comment
Duncan MacLeod

Image via Wikipedia

This week’s summer of small voices guest post comes from someone you already know–me!  Instead of writing as a social media and marketing consultant I’m writing as the board member of Mach 30, a brand new nonprofit dedicated to applying the philosophy behind open source software to the development of human rated space vehicles. 

For Duncan MacLeod, eliminating the competition was the only option.  The same holds true for reality television stars.  The current crop of politicians in Washington DC  even seem to believe highlander-style negotiations are appropriate in government.

For the rest of us, competition is not so dangerous.  In fact, if your goal is to create something completely new, or solve a problem that has never been solved, competition, or perhaps more appropriately, coopitition,  isn’t even just a necessary evil– it’s a requirement for true innovation. Continue reading →