NodeGrant

Node Grant Request For Proposals

WE are Baltimore Node, a member run hackerspace, and we have up to $250 ready to give away, every month, to support an awesome project. Your project.

YOU are a member of Baltimore Node or a citizen of Baltimore who likes to do interesting work and has a project in mind.

What is a fundable project?

1) It's interesting. Take a look at our blog, the Event_Proposals page, or the Project_Proposals page to get an idea of the kind of things we think are interesting. Also take a look at [1], [2], [3], [4], or [5] for more interesting things.

2) You've got a plan. We're giving the money based on budget and need, so you have an idea of what it's going to require in terms of parts, tools, people, and time. We want to support people doing things, not thinking about doing things or just throwing out interesting ideas for things (although brainstorming is an important part of the ideation process).

3) It's open. We're interested in how it works out, so tell us about it! Ideally this will look like an Instructable, some blog posts, a whole bunch of pictures in our Flickr pool, and a presentation at an OpenHack or a workshop to help other people do what you did (or maybe the project is a workshop, whatever).

At the very least you'll tell us what you did so we can talk about it. The easiest way to make sure your work is documented would be to...

4) Use the workshop. We've got tools, benches and space for you to keep your stuff. If you're a member with a key, you're all set. If you aren't, get in touch with the members on the mailing list to figure out when people will be in the space and stop by then.

5) Get other people interested. The best and most popular projects (i.e., the one's that get funding) will be those that get the most people involved or are simply so awesome that we can't not support them. Show some passion, tell a compelling story, come to an Open Hack and get people so excited about it they beg you to let them help you.

How We Choose Projects

We're a member run organization, so the membership will decide by vote which project is going to get funding. For the first few rounds, projects will be chosen from among the membership, based on the Project_Proposals page. The decision making criteria will be:

• Awesomeness
• Preparation
• Participation

Preparation and Participation are kind of objective. That is, eligible projects will tend to be obvious. Awesomeness is totally subjective and totally at the whim of the folks picking projects. Rock.

In the end it'll come down to what project the members can get behind in a given month.

Things to Consider / Discussion

It might be interesting to split the grant and offer $150 for members' projects and $100 specifically for non-member. This would provide a stream of non-members through the space and could fire up twice as much awesomeness. It's like this: $250 for a single project is not much more than $150, so if that project would get off the ground on a $250 starting budget, it'd probably go for $150, too. On the non-member side, $100 is way more than $0, and would mean the difference between awesome project and no awesome project at all. Further, the more projects we can fund, the better. So splitting every month's budget in two is better than a single large grant.

Maybe.

This is a big fat experiment right now, so the best bet, no matter what, is to just try something and see what comes of it.

Abachman 04:37, 19 February 2010 (UTC)