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on November 6, 2009
elle ko
backed a project
Bring Medical Care and Supplies to Ayacucho, Peru!! by Caitlin Carr
The project will help bring supplies and medical care to Ayacucho, Peru
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110% funded $1,875 pledged
- 22 backers
- Funded Nov 08, 2009
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on November 1, 2009
elle ko
commented on a projecti guess not.
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on October 24, 2009
elle ko
Posted project update #10another letter from the editor and my response
Yancey-
That's to be expected.
Thanks again for writing me and reading over the information.Getting back to the project itself:
Before posting the project, I considered writing someone at Kickstarter, mainly because of how my project differs from the highlighted projects on the site. Any comments you have about this will help me in the future.
The current fundraising effort will not be successful, but as always, mistakes have the most to be learned from.I've gained quite a bit of perspective from doing the fundraiser, since raising funds to build the site is not my role on the Farmer Power project. I am now a lot more sensitive to my work associate's concerns, and can advise and strategize with more precision.
Also, my associate can now use the project as an example in the pitch to the European Council and Fiat, as he has said he would do. It's so much more fruitful to illustrate actual humans participating in an event via the internet rather than just showing a cosmetic dummy site.So hopefully, I will be paid for my work soon enough. =))
best,
-elle ko
442 shotwell st.
san francisco, ca 94109
+1 (415)680-3738
+33 0637331866
twitter: ellekoOn Oct 22, 2009, at 3:11 PM, Yancey Strickler wrote:
Hi Elle --
I wrote you because I got an email from someone who had their doubts about your project. And I took into account the possibility that that person could have compromised intentions, so I came to you directly.
Yancey
Post Comment -
on October 21, 2009
elle ko
commented on a project updatethe project on Kickstarter is working! if money was not involved, he would not have taken notice. if the fundraiser was not entitled Farmer Power, my contact would not have understood why i am showing him this page. my contact is now aware of and showing interest in approaches he has not previously considered. innovation is inherently eye-opening.
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on October 20, 2009
elle ko
Posted project update #9letter from my contact
Hi Elle
i'm in Paris,hard period...but,when i ask to you a an idea about this project www.farmer-power.com i cannot imagine this kickstarter...
i'm really happy about your positive & creative draft.-
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elle ko on October 21, 2009
the project on Kickstarter is working!
if money was not involved, he would not have taken notice. if the fundraiser was not entitled Farmer Power, my contact would not have understood why i am showing him this page.
my contact is now aware of and showing interest in approaches he has not previously considered.
innovation is inherently eye-opening.
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Post Comment -
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on October 20, 2009
elle ko
Posted project update #8letter from the editor
Post Commenthi elle --
my name is yancey and i'm one of the kickstarter founders. i wanted to talk to you a bit about your project. i was looking for more about the Ministry of Alternative Energy of the European Union and had trouble finding it. i saw the earlier incarnation of your project as well: http://74.125.155.132/search...
can you explain your project to me? that would be a big help.
thanks elle.
yancey
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yancey strickler | http://www.kickstarter.com -
on October 20, 2009
elle ko
Posted project update #7part 1 of my response to the editor
Post CommentHi Yancey,
I understand the concerns and I am glad that you contacted me. I had wanted to contact someone at kickstarter earlier but did not know how to approach you guys with such a long spiel.
First, I must clarify that there is currently no Ministry of Alternative Energy for the EU.
I learned about the initiative 1 year ago from a man I met at fashion week name Pier Giorgio Iberti. He had been one of the founders of Camper Shoes and is the editor of Intersection Magazine. Mr. Iberti's English is not very good, and my Italian is very poor, so he established his creditability to me through his work credentials. I was struck by how little he spoke of fashion and publishing and how much he spoke about Farmer Power, which he could not articulate the nature of. He spoke about it in conjunction with Slow Food and Terra Madre. At the time, I knew nothing about Slow Food beyond their promoting traditional cooking and farming methods. To absorb all this information from a non-native English speaker in 1 single conversation was confusing to say the least. One thing was clear: while he had someone working on the project already, he wanted me to work on Farmer Power.
It is through my own research that I learned how Slow Food came to be, and what Terra Madre is to Slow Food.
Slow Food is explained quite articulately and painlessly by Woody Tasch in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch…Terra Madre is an organization for Food Producers growing out of Slow Food. They hold large conferences in Turin (apparently not at regular intervals.)
I concluded that Farmer Power is an initiative that grew out of Slow Food as a publishing initiative: Terra Madre attracts rural producers to Slow Food in order that their needs can be discerned, then they would formulate ideas and broadcast them to the public (beyond the Slow Food community) through Farmer Power. But I am learning now that this is not all.
At a later meeting (also during last autumn) with Mr. Iberti, he showed me videos of Terra Madre. He was still unable to give me a clear idea about what Farmer Power is suppose to accomplish. At the time, I did not understand why this is. I do now.
I have to run, but I will continue with explaining my project later today. I apologize but my responsibilities are many; I didn't want to put off replying to you.
Thanks very much for contacting me.
-elle ko
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on October 20, 2009
elle ko
Posted project update #6part 2 of my response to the editor
Post CommentYancey-
After meeting with Mr. Iberti several times while I lived in Paris last year, I was still unable to discern what Farmer Power was despite of his initial enthusiasm. At the time, farmerpower.net had nothing but a placeholder image.
I left Europe in January of this year without having committed myself to the project because no more information was forthcoming.In August this year, I visited farmerpower.net again and found that there is not even a placeholder image anymore.
I wanted to find out why, after a year, not only has the website not gone forward, but even taken a step back. I contacted Pier through e-mail; after waiting and not receiving a response, I tried to reach him through someone in the marketing department of Camper whom I met through Pier. Finally, he replied to me and we had a long Skype conversation about the project.Attached is notes form that conversation.
[attachment]
Pier had told me that Farmer Power is the publishing platform for the "Ministry of Alternative Energy". After the conversation, like you, I researched the term on the internet. According to Google, the only country that has a "ministry of alternative energy" is India. This made some sense to me, because I recall Pier showing me aTerra Madre speech by an Indian woman. The speaker was being highlighted because the Indian delegation was showing that it was making tangible progress to Terra Madre. Europe may be taking a cue from India because Terra Madre highlighted those successes.
Now remember that his English is not very good and we are from different cultures, with different implied information embedded in speech, so some nuance or important detail is lost. We were both aware of this miscommunication.
I did note that Pier gave Farmer Power no tangible form a year ago, and now, when he speaks about it, it takes on an official tone (like using the word "ministry".)So I can now conclude that:
- Farmer Power, like Terra Madre, is an initiative that grew out of Slow Food;
- Given that (1)Slow Food has been successfully pushing for a trend is to shift away from mass producing agricultural products, and (2) Italy being the home of Slow Food, (3) Terra Madre actively convenes to find out what exactly small farmers need:: those involved in the movement are influential enough and have every incentive to push for Turin to be the seat of the new Ministry of Alternative Energy. Their main concern is agricultural policy: I've written about CAP as well and I'm sure you can do you own research. Long story short (oh, the irony,) the Ministry of Agriculture cannot be removed, energy is a good in for agricultural policy.He explicitly said that he wanted to show funders (he named Fiat, the EU, and Camper.) what the website will look like.
While I am not an accredited interactive theorist, I do know that existing websites made under those conditions often end up not doing their jobs and waste a lot of time and money. A website is not just a front, it's a chance to create a simulacrum and can perform many more functions. The information is not separate from the presentation.I felt that to approach funders at the beginning of the project with that attitude is not desirable; I wanted to make that known.
He did not articulate what was happening to create the impasse, but he said something to the effect of "Americans do a lot and talk little. Europeans talk a lot but do not do very much, and they are not transparent (like you.)"
From that statement, I inferred that there had been bureaucratic procedures which slowed down the process, and there was probably some unfruitful negotiations with the people previously working on the website which led to its current state.Also, to give you an idea how little this man knows about online publishing: while Intersection Magazine has a wide circulation in Europe and can be found in some news stands in larger American cities like SF, it's not listed on Amazon, and there is not even a Wikipedia entry. To even small American magazines, that would be unthinkable. To Pier, it's something he's never thought about. He has said to me before that he is simply "the guy who buys the paper."
I felt it was important for me to explain this, and for him to give me feedback. Doing this in person would help a lot. This requires money.
Now I want to break this long tirade up again so I don't lose you. When I said it was a long spiel, I meant it.
-elle ko -
on October 20, 2009
elle ko
Posted project update #5second letter from the editor
Post CommentHi Elle --
Thanks for the response. I'm still thrown by what you are raising funds for exactly.
Yancey
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on October 20, 2009
elle ko
Posted project update #4part 3 of my response to the editor
Post CommentHi Yancey-
Before I directly address your question:
Given which version of the my Kickstarter page you saw, I'm fairly certain that someone alerted you while I was trolling a design forum for attention. It worked to some degree, evidenced by your contacting me. (Is this true?)
I did that because people will much sooner respond to emotions than use their mental facilities, and respond much more vigorously. This maximizes my exposure in a limited amount of time.Explaining this project to the pedestrian observer is like trying to explain to someone who has never used the internet what the internet is. It's complex, not all the pieces are there, and it takes time to understand. But the more people that see it the better.
so far, of my 13 backers, most of them are the grant writers, geniuses, and children of diplomats in my life. they are the only ones who have had the patience and mental capacity to wade through all the information to understand what is going on.
the rest are friends that want to be closer to me.
This is exactly what I am trying to steer Farmer Power away from.
What I am raising money forI've gotten this far, I need an income to continue. My backers are funding me to work, not my project. The project itself will be funded by the EU and Fiat, etc.
No, Kickstarter isn't funding the ministry, Kickstarter is funding me to keep working for the cause I've described over the looooong e-mails.In the original write up for my Kickstarter page, I've outlined what I need to do in the next 2 months. The following is from the original write up:
the first step in my contribution to Farmer Power is to generate visuals, craft some words, and construct a presentation which explains, to the completely novice, the current state of people’s relationship to information on the internet. i project this phase to be 2 months long. this phase requires:
1. maintaining my studio
2. money for going to the pool 3-4 times a week — i spend almost all of my time in my workspace working. there is no shower, and unfortunately, dustbaths are not pragmatic in san francisco;
3. maintaining communication tools — phones, internet when i am out of the studio;
4. local mobility: public transit, car share;
5. reliable web hosting services so i can store and transmit information safely. i maintain my own domains at gandi.net;
6. living costs (food, shelter, maintaining a face of social normalcy like i’m not regularly crashing at my workspace and replacing showers with public pool visits.)the second step is to take that presentation, physically go to Europe to meet with my contacts, show it to them, work with them to develop the final presentation, and actually do the presentation and get the real funding. this is one step ahead and i do not yet have a tangible idea of how it will come together. i do know that i will need:
1. round trip plane tickets with flexible travel dates that will allow me to stay up to 3 months in Europe.
2. ground travel costs
3. lodging: with infrastructure that allows me to work e.g. electricity, good internet connection (cheap of course, i will also locate friends i can stay with, i know France but i don’t have that many friends in Italy except in Milan and Genoa.)
4. telecommunication tools and services (a sim card/ skype).
5. time and energy to seek out talent in order to put together a competent team.
6. for this fundraising effort to work in order to show the major funders the power of crowd sourcing.
i hope to be paid by Farmer Power directly by step 2.
I know that it's much easier to understand if I was selling something or cutting an album.A respected friend sent me an invite to Kickstarter. He probably didn't expect me to not be selling something either. I took a cue from the website's name
So now I'd like to find out why you wrote me. I have some idea why, but I'd like to find out from you.
-elle ko
elle ko
San Francisco, CA
First, I'd like to encourage everyone to google me/ look me up. I have made a conscious effort to put every aspect of my life on display for all to see for the past several years. look! i am Elle Ko from San Francisco. i wrote 50% of the bugs on The Sim... view more
ATITUDE POSITIVE...SUCCESS.