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[suncloudbel]

A story has no beginning or end

Hello everyone!

It is the end of the module which means the end of projectcommunity :,( but i shouldn't start saying farewell already as me and our group are leaving a 'never forgetting solution'. 

Our group's theme was both crowdfunding ad crowdsourcing but at the end we decided taking into account CoM's needs that crowdsourcing will be most ideal for them however we still have some solution in terms of crowdfunding for them. 

The main issue

The main issue our NGO had was the amount of volunteers or the board members as there were only 5 people. The problem is that none of them do their jobs seriously, theirs only one person who almost does everything because the other people aren't serious. After a lot of hangouts the solution we came up with was that they need a lot of volunteers so they need to have as many volunteers they can for various things such as updating their website, organizing events, helping in any other way. Also taking into account that these volunteers also includes students from universities and schools.

But first they need to advertise them not only through social media but also differently. And also they first need to target people in Holland to join the NGO.                                                                                          

As a solution our group found an ideal website for solving this problem, we contacted these people and got all the information and it is a very good way of promoting as a NGO in Holland and also getting volunteers.As to get the best volunteers you need to advertise you NGO in a way that even students would want to volunteers. Also this website has a time period for how long one can volunteer for a particular event which is also very essential.

Corwdfunding

The other issue that the NGO has is they aren't getting enough funds. So after a lot research we found a website where again the NGO can promote and advertise themselves by putting up a video which can be done after they have enough volunteers so it can be seen as a 'after result' of crowdsourcing.

Final Video

Our video is actually structured as metaphor of a growing tree and it is divided as the 'Me,We and Many' network which is done in the presentation software Prezi. So the video starts with the roots which is where the NGO is with its problems and it moves up to the stems to the solution and then at the end towards the leaves and the fruits to the after effects or what happens next. 

The End

This experience has been amazing because I remember i started off with knowing nothing i had a slight idea of crowdfunding and crowdsourcing but now i actually learned a lot of things and to be honest I felt like everything was going to fast but I learned a lot of things not only about NGOs and how to approach them but also how to write blogs and how to make people actually read your stuff. How to say promote yourself and the things you want the other person to see.

Also most important group work, decision making, listening to others, tolerating each other, coming up with different ideas and putting it up together and meeting up even during holidays yes that was a big challenge for me but you have to play your part as well because everyone is doing it!

WISH US LUCK!

Peace!

Sunbel 

[suncloudbel]

Let out and Let in!

Hello!

Not knowing much about marketing. Its hard to believe that i actually know things related to this now and also feel kind of interested towards it.

Moving towards what the topic of the last class, online communities, networks and marketing. We watched a video like always, the video didn't really move me but the second video about 4ps was very interesting and useful. 

Online Communities and Networks in Innovative design:

On what i have researched so far there are a lot platforms and the online community is increasing and increasing. An online community can be based on a specific topic or reason or just something completely vague. Having a bit knowledge about this as I am part of a video game online community. As an innovator designer what i have learnt about online communities and networks that when you are promoting your company or product it is cost-less and also your get exposure to different communities worldwide and hence create more and more networks.

Also I think for our NGO that joining in online communities and building up networks is very important for the NGO to make its voice reach people in every corner of the world. Also talking about crowdsourcing and crowdfunding they need volunteers and also networks.

Principles for designing and fostering online communities or networks:

 According to my experience so far in this course and this project the main principles i think:

Its all about the client!

Marketing approach. Set up target group: what kind of target do you want? Would they be useful?

 User feedback & answer support: Dare to ask people for feedback, learn from other people! Let Our and Let in!

Value proposition (promise efficiency to client/NGO) Formulate the value proposition of your client. How to work for client? What can you learn from the user feedback and customer support? What si what your client wants or what can they handle? What is needed to do all of this?

Its all about researching!

This is all about how to approach client and for me these principles are very essential and also what I have learned so far.

  What I want to learn?

Finally something what I want! In relation to this topic I would like to learn more about promoting, advertising. How would you promote yourself or you r project to the world? How would you make yourself known around the world? We have done a bit about this but not too much in depth. The reason why I want to this is because looking at our NGO i have realized the thing they are lacking the most is promotion, they aren't selling themselves much and learning from that I think it is very essential for me if i ever become and innovative designer or even an entrepreneur. 

"Let people hear you!" Zain Sarfaraz (my brother)

Source: http://trek-it.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/self-promotion2.jpg

We are towards the end of our course and I hope we succeed with our goal in helping the NGO now that we have had our meeting with Henning again we know more about what are the needs of the NGO what can be done to fulfill the needs.

That's All Folks!

Peace! 

Sunbel

[suncloudbel]

Surround Yourself with People Who Believe in Your Dreams

Hello again Everyone!

Today's blog is going to be all about crowdfunding and crowdsourcing, I might have already talked about it in my previous blogs because it is also our main theme but I will go more in depth of it as I have gained more knowledge about it!

Like every project community class we watched a video in which they were many points which I found essential to have success in terms of crowdfunding and crowdsourcing:

Reach media

Join social media to help with funding

Create ways to promote the NGO by creating a video to get more volunteers

Always move forward, think beforehand what you want to do.

I thought these points are really necessary for our NGO. As our NGO really needs more volunteers to move forward and they can only get volunteers by promoting their NGO through various ways.

Crowdfunding, its benefits and limitations:

To begin, when talking about crowdfunding the first thing you need is a platform like for instance 'kickstarter' then you want as much people you can to donate money to your organization. Taking into account that By crowdfunding you are basically allowing the 'crowd' to come in and support you, for some people this 'support' is seen as an interference as they want to establish their organization/company without anyone's help. 

According to the research I have done and what I have heard from my uncle (who started his company by crowfunding) I think crowdfunding is a very helpful thing,

It can allow your company to grow even further

It reduces risks when trying  to build a new company by the money you get

However the limitations of crowdfunding would be that it consumes a lot of time when trying to obtain as much funds as possible and also you always have to prove you're company is real and its not some fraud especially if you want to provoke people like me to donate. *Sometimes its really hard to build people's trust for something.

Crowdsourcing, its benefits and limitations

Similar to crowdfunding, when talking about crowdsourcing you are basically inviting the crowd/people to take part in whatever you are doing but its more than crowdfunding. Based on my research crowdsourcing is all about allowing people to guide you or give you ideas over a particular thing. This particular thing could be very specific like designing a logo, where a group of people together will come up with a design.

Crowdsourcing is very beneficial as:

Something better can be created as there will be more ideas by each person put together as one

It saves time 

The limitations of crowdsourcing would be that it can only be done if the company has a lot of volunteers. Along with that the volunteers might be unreliable so you have to dig in and find the right people for your organization/company which can be hard and time consuming.

For our NGO

For our NGO both crowdfunding and sourcing are very beneficial and important to allow the NGO to grow. The NGO needs a lot of funds from people to establish, but what we as a group have thought that it first needs a firm platform and permanent donators which is also where the part 'promotion' come is. As said in my previous posts that the NGO has very few people working for it so it needs many volunteers and this can only be done by promoting themselves, and so far our NGO has in no way done any effort in promoting so they really need to work on this. When they will have a lot of volunteers like students or people they will be able to carry out to say 'crowdsourcing' in a proper way.

As a designer

When I think of myself as a designer I think that there are times when you want to work individually without anyone bringing in their own ideas but you have to realize as i did, that there is always one thing that someone does better than you then why not allowing him to do it and together you can create something magnificent! As said before when you want to start from scratch and you have no single penny on you, you need crowdfunding as a first step to grow.

Sometimes you need more people with different ideas to complete your puzzle piece!

(Source: http://www.com-unity.nl/images/puzzle-people-cover.gif)

So I prove my point that as designer both crowdfunding and crowdsourcing are very essential!

Moving towards what more we did in our previous class, we played a game in which every group had a person with all the questions and a crowdfunding/sourcing expert who would answer them. There were many questions which I found very interesting such as

How do people make sure that the there is no fraud when funding on  crowdfunding site?

And what if crowdfunding was replaced for some governmental issues?

We had a discussion over this in class that in Finland they raised money for a hospital by crowdfunding.

A question which I thought of was that 'Should a campaign be placed on more than one platform at a time? Wouldn't this result in more views & therefore more contributions?'

After a lot of thought the answer i came up with was that it wont have the same impact on the mind of the donors. According to me people tend to donate more when they see the numbers going up they will support it as they want you to reach your goal.

After i researched more i found a person who said exactly the same thing what I had thought of, proving my point :)  

“When you do a crowdfunding campaign, momentum is really important. So if during your first week you collected $2,000 but divided in 2-3 sites it doesn’t have the same impact on the mind of the donors…." by Karl Pineault

Do you agree? What is your opinion about this? 

Last but not the least:

(http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/236x/07/8a/5d/078a5d495c3c8993762ff33bd7fabc90.jpg)

Peace!

Sunbel

[suncloudbel]

There is no 'I' in "TEAMWORK"

Hello Everyone,

Im happy to say that we have made quite some progress and ourgoal is becoming clearer and clearer. We came up with some rought spot on ideas and presented them too our NGO in our second meeting an he was actually quite interested and is curious of what more we present him.

The topic of the last class was all based upon teamwork and we watched a video in class which was quite interesting. After hearing that the size of groups really matter I actually had this quick thought in my mind that 'Yes that is right' that odd numbered groups are creative while even numbered groups ahev more stability. That was also something I was discussing before class with this person from group 12. And he said that it is really hard to work with so many people because sometimes there are less tasks and ore people and it becomes more chaotic.

To make it work you have to find a way to work together, acknowledging one another and listen to each other's ideas.

    Our Group:

Our group is actually working good we are making progress every week everone is following his or her task properly. I think there are two things that helps us move forward as a group:

1. We are a group of five people so as I mentioned before we are creative

2. We have different cultural backgrounds so this always allows each one of us to present ideas in different ways and maybe related to our experiences in the past.

*We had some problems such as we were too focused on our final video while we didn't have proper ideas/suggestions for our NGO which is when we realized as a group that we have to work on that and we are on track.

  Me Individually:

Since I was small I preferred working alone than with a group of people.I always felt that in a group if I present any idea nobody will acknowledge it or take it  into account. I wasn't confident enough. So since the beginning of Project Communities it has been a really big challenge for me and I have been pushing myself forward, and I feel that I have improved a lot as I do present any idea I have, even if it is wrong. And I give my opinion on things a lot. I feel more confident now working in a group.

    As a Whole:

  In the long run, I would say that as a group everyone is working on their task properly and we have set new tasks,

finding the target groups (students in schools/ universities) who would like to do volunteer work for the NGO,

Doing research on companies who would be willing to collaborate or sponsor. And researching on other NGOs what they do that could be useful to our NGO.

Doing a survey by making a questionnaire and making students from university and schools do it to get more ideas.

 My task is to do the survey and because I have never done this before it is going to be a new expere and I am looking forward to it.

  A thing I would like to add is that always think positive even when you fail at something because you'll get there someday. That's how I see our group. Also reminds me of a dialogue in a movie:

"When are you going to get it in your head? We're in this together!" By Hermione Granger in Harry Potter

      TOGETHER WE ARE ONE! GO GROUP 11!!

Source: cheezburger.com

  Peace!

Sunbel

[suncloudbel]

Networks**

Hello Everyone!

As time is passing everything is becoming clearer and clearer. And our group had their first meeting with the NGO. Our NGO has had no experience with crowdfunding or crowdsourcing so they are happy to get ideas from us which also allows us to come p with any idea. 

The last class was all about networks, our own individual networks and of our NGOs. In the case of the networks I have, i'm more of an individual person I don't really express myself or reveal my identity easily. I prefer staying 'in a closed Facebook group'. I also hesitate posting any photos of myself online. I join online fan-based groups on Facebook, Line and whatsapp but i never post because interacting with people i don't know is not my thing even if I have a lot of similarities with the people in the group. That's because I believe that a person is not as he or she seems online and when I asked my mother what she thinks about this she said:

"You can't facially express yourself through chat messages, so don't trust anyone because people are not how they seem online" By Mom

Do you agree?

*Everyone has different preferences when it comes to interacting with other people*

Furthermore, we discussed in class the Me,We and Many networks. Me networks are basically more related to one's own individual self, one's own personal identity. For instance, personal diary or journals. We networks are community bounded networks such as groups on Facebook. On the other hand, the Many networks would be for example Facebook or Twitter. Later we discussed these networks in terms of our NGO and we came up with this:   

This chart shows the Me,We and Many networks of the NGO

image source: http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/word-network-isolated-white-20573751.jpg

Gabriela told us something very useful, that we have to come up with networks for the NGO that'll work both online and offline and can be beneficial for them. Create something efficient for them with the resources they have!

Lastly, we are going to meet with our NGO next week where we will offer them with ideas of crowdsourcing and crowdfunding. 

An advice for the other teams is that it is the fourth week already we should really get cracking!

PEACE!

Sunbel 

[suncloudbel]

LEARN!!

[suncloudbel]

Hello fellow blog writers and readers! I'll start off very simple as I am not much of a explainer. Project communities, according to me is one of the things that makes us or will make us designers. Working with NGOs, how to negotiate with them, knowing about the problems they're facing etc.

The first thing that comes to my mind when talking about communities is engaging with people around the world. So the question is how can we engage with people which in this case would be the NGO we're helping. That is one of the key things I learned today that you have to ask yourself "why do people care about this?" to answer this you need to "imagine future" (as said by Nancy White) in simple words you need to come up with a goal, discover something new and unique and then you are able to say to them "hey have a look here". Its more like a step by step thing first research about their likes then 'offer' then they will talk about the problems they have and then one can think of how to solve this problem.

*Learning point of the day : (for me that is)

HELPing = Mechanism To Learn (something I will never forget in my life). -Experience

  *I feel that I have climbed the first step (of the ladder) as a learner still so much to go aahh!!* 

  Also communities need us students to form a future and we need them to create a better future because we are the FUTURE!!

(And also never think that being confused is a bad thing because confusion brings questions and questions bring answers and answers allow you to learn)

  PEACE!