Life is full of these moments when different things and paths seem to converge. When the convergence is reached, it then seems obvious it could not have been different, and still, there’s some magic in this.
I’m launching a crowdfunding campaign in France, on KissKissBankBank, to attend the innovation festival SXSW in Austin, Texas, thus making converge
- my last position as the head of marketing & social for a Singapore crowdfunding startup
- my theories about the rise of communities in our century, our economics, and more broadly our daily interactions
- my old love for journalism, which is waking up after a few years working in communication (its “evil” brother)
- my interest for the United States as a political, cultural and social system which enhances communities and provides a dream for many entrepreneurs and go-getters
Why is that important to attend SXSW? What is the purpose of a crowd funded campaign? What’s our added value in France, and, we hope, as an editorial and event management offer ? I hope you’ll find some answers in our campaign clip, but also in your reactions and support to this expedition.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7GGaG-LKCo]
I’m in a team with Knowtex, another curious object which tries in France to explore the meaning of communities, with a speciality in event coverage. This makes sense: there’s no online communities, there’s only communities with their local contexts, live events, which in turn can fuel online interactions.
We hope to be able to explore the meaning of the community thanks both a shape with our contents (an online dashboard, live events in Paris, and a final trend report) and a direction with our main question (how come did Austin create such a successful ecosystem of creativity and innovation in a deeply conservative Texas ?).
This is research & development, community-based, and that’s why it makes sense to raise funds through the crowd. We need not only the means to go there and product what we’re thinking of, but also a proof of concept, a community of people interested in innovation and the way we can make stories about it.
I hope we’ll make it as it’s a very exciting project. We’re not even done with the campaign that we already hope there’s a market and communities for an event coverage of this type.
You can check my previous coverage of SXSW ’12 on this blog, but this year, we’re offering something bigger 🙂
Martin Pasquier