Apply to Big Ideas competition

[mitar]

Apply to Big Ideas competition.

Deadline: November 13, 12 PM PST (that is noon, no?)

[raaswol]

Do you still want to work on this Natalia?

[nataliadreyes]

@raaswol I removed myself from the ticket because other work is absorbing my time, so unfortunately I won't be as involved as I'd hoped :/

[raaswol]

All good @nataliadreyes, glad you can contribute anything at all :-)

[raaswol]

We need to decide- everyone please weigh in...which category are we in?

Improving Student Life: http://bigideas.berkeley.edu/contest/students/ OR IT for Society: http://bigideas.berkeley.edu/contest/tech/

[ciaobrian]

I say IT for Society.

[raaswol]

I instinctually agree with you- my first choice. But the woman I spoke with today 1-on-1 said she guessed "improving students' lives" STILL she thinks we fit into that category...but I'm not sure which one we'll be better competition in...

[ciaobrian]

Hmm..the reason I felt we would fit more into "IT for Society" was because I felt our goals aligned with: "Technology can be a powerful tool that can be harnessed to efficiently and effectively provide resources to those who need them." And PeerLibrary is an open source project that helps provide certain academic tools to students. I also agree with the woman that we could fit in improving students because it makes us look more non profit, but I wasn't sure about two points 1) improving students felt really general, and I'm not sure a IT project would stand out 2) our target audience is beyond students, but more generally targeted to society (collaboration and communication among peers).

[raaswol]

Good points! It does feel really general for that area, but check out the stats from last year: 187 pre-proposals (this phase) -> 56 finalists-> 42 were funded. On the other hand, we do fit really well into IT for society and she said we should focus on where we think we fit best; our intentions and impact. However, we'll have to compete with all these IT projects, of which there are likely plenty. I'll look into the minute details of the stats too.

[ciaobrian]

I think that makes sense. Since our priority is funding right now, if fit into both categories, let's try to go with the sector that gives us a higher chance of receiving funding!

[raaswol]

aside from the writing workshop, I spent 5 hours on this so far - 3 at the idea generation dinner, 1 at office hours, 1 at home

[raaswol]

Finalizing the decision today about which area to apply to

[mitar]

@raaswol, can you make a Google Docs with application text and make a link here to it?

[mitar]

Here is document with the application in the process: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZjBxwPGA0AsNGPxk8Xdo1qcfXK8NZvSHwuYk5US0R2A/edit

Notes.

[Klarster]

Hi, I just wanted to see if I can help here. It says that the document with the application in process is in trash - can't get access to it. I can only see notes...

[raaswol]

Thanks klara, please do! I def need help with the budget, and the application. There is a new version, not in the trash, please refresh :-) (just added an hour ago- i couldn't get online from my friend's room in Cloyne so I just wrote it offline)

[mitar]

I updated the link above.

[mitar]

You can take one-year budget from this application:

We are requesting $510,000 to finance the transition from a volunteer-run project to one with a dedicated and full-time team.

Currently we have assembled a core development team on a volunteer basis. Funding will enable us to grow our team by hiring a full-time technical staff which will include software engineers, visual designers and mobile developers. We also expect to recruit analysts to conduct research on user behavior to acquire insights on how our users are engaging with the platform. On average we expect to pay a salary of $70,000 per person per year.

In order to truly take PeerLibrary to a global scale, it is important to forge relationships around the world. We plan on allocating $15,000 per year for reimbursing our contributors for travel expenses and conference fees. The more people we can send to different institutions, the faster we can promote our platform and achieve widespread adoption.

We estimate our operational costs to be $75,000 per year. This includes server infrastructure (~$25,000 to $35,000 depending on our dataset size and user growth), legal services ($20,000) and technical equipment ($15,000). Currently we don’t have any office space expenses as we work in a lab at UC Berkeley. We will allocate the remaining amount ($~10,000) to miscellaneous expenses such as event hosting and promotional materials.

So, $75,000 + $15,000 + n * $70,000. You can adapt numbers.

[mitar]

And then we can say that we would use Big Ideas money for promotion of the project, conferences, travel, and basic operational costs, while the rest will be done by volunteers for now. In the long term we want to employ volunteers to make a project sustainable, but for now Big Ideas will really help us with initial costs.

[raaswol]

I spent 4 more hours on this. @Klarster how many did you spend?

[Klarster]

Me too. I spent 4.5 hours just reading guidelines and examples and setting up the draft and creating a timeline yesterday + finishing up today.

[raaswol]

Yeah, Klara was a HUGE asset, she did so much for this application!

[mitar]

We are sorry to inform you that your project, "Open Conversation on Academic Literature", was not selected to move on to the final round of the contest.

[ciaobrian]

:(

[Klarster]

Oh well.. We'll keep trying ;)