reallybigroadtrip needs a bus!

Aaaaaaand so it begins…

reallybigroadtrip needs a bus, and so today, on Friday 13th, I’m launching my first ever crowdsourced funding campaign. I need $25,000 to get the bus and do some basic modifications in order to get going. Anything I can raise above that means I can kit it out with better facilities and equipment, and invite more people to join me as my Nomads in Residence.

So here’s my first campaign video. Be nice, now…

If you tweet, please use this (or something like it, with the hashtag):

Help @feesable crowdfund toward a bus for #rbrtOZ: http://reallybigroadtrip.pozible.com

Noise

From this moment on my friends, family, colleagues, social media network, strangers on streets and anyone who basically has anything to do with me physically or digitally will either learn more about me than they ever needed (or wanted) to know, or will hate me more than they ever thought possible. So I’ll say it now because i have promised myself it’s the one time I’m going to say this:

I. am. truly. truly. sorry!

• I’m sorry that I’m going to be very very noisy in the coming weeks.
• I’m sorry that I’m going to be pounding down your doors begging you to give me money and asking for you to help me spread the word.
• I’m sorry that I’m going to embarrass myself (and maybe therefore you by association) in order to create more noise that results in more begging.
• I really truly am so very incredibly sorry. I have never done anything like this before. I am fiercely independent, I never ask for help or money from anyone, ever. Until now. But now I need your help.

In my defence, it’s really important that i say this now and don’t say it again; it’s vital that I’m not ashamed about the begging side of this. I’m not even vaguely ashamed about what will be created by going through this process. After all, a grant application is still begging, it’s just much more quiet, restrained and polite.

The noise I make and the confidence that I display (regardless of how I feel at the time) are all part of this process. The more noise I make the more attention I’ll receive. The more attention I receive the more people hear about my call and therefore can choose to contribute to my begging bowl. But more importantly, the more attention I receive the more likely I will be able to attract ‘other’ types of attention – the stuff that only celebrities get, things like sponsorship and radio interviews/newspaper articles, and other people wanting to make noise about the noise that I make. A huge amount of my ‘success’ here depends on the kind of other people who help me shout out about it all. And that means YOU.

Stats

So here, for the record, are how things stand at the moment. I’m not doing this to show off (um, clearly!). I’m doing this to publicly take account of the ‘return on investment’ from generating all this noise. When I’m consulting I advise that people do this when they’re developing their digital strategies & trying new things. It’s worth doing so that you can see what strategies work or don’t & can realign your efforts accordingly. Most people (if they do this at all) do it quietly. But I’ve promised to try and fail loudly, so here y’go.

As of Friday 13th April 2012, I have:
– 3946 Twitter followers.
– 877 Facebook friends (which I keep to people I’ve actually met and/or would call at least ‘an acquaintance’ so please forgive me if I don’t add you until we have at least had a significant conversation).
– 146 Facebook Page ‘likes’ (something I’ve been careful to build slowly and gently rather than pimp myself out… until now).
– 431 Google+ … what, friends? followers? (I’m not even sure what to *do* with the people I’ve never met/heard of /spoken to on my G+ account but I was curious to see what would happen if I opened the floodgates and said ‘yeah, sure, come on in’. and besides, hangout is cool…).
– 122 Foursquare followers – something I’m careful with since I will say ‘yes’ to most people but I don’t always check in so frequently and when I do, honestly, it tends to be after i’ve left. Just in case.
– 397 was my biggest blog post audience in one day (5,199 views all-time).
– 35 average daily views for my blog.
– 12 newsletter subscribers (another thing I’m growing slowly).
– $1200 grant from XTK (for projects that don’t make sense!) and $160 in Paypal donations.
– 1 video published (but sooooooo many more to come!).