While I'd had success with the handful of companies I mentioned in log 09, I still fell way way WAY short of the funding goals we had set and needed to hit to execute the project as proposed. With supplies, funding, and time at the DesignLab now running short we made the executive decision at the end of April to move on to Plan B for funding, a crowdfunding campaign.

With everything above said, let me just take a moment to discuss the elephant in the room. When we first started this project, we did so with the intention of developing and executing it all in complete secrecy until its planned release (sometime in October/November of this year). In our minds, to fully take advantage of the mystery surrounding the artifact and it's call-to-action we'd established at the project's start, it needed to stay a secret until it wasn't. Dan, the Lab's Resident Engineer, liked the idea so much that he agreed to let us keep the project and it's hackaday project page a secret until it was released. I know, I know, then why are you reading about this now?.. Well, while awesome in theory, this plan was largely contingent on us receiving the aforementioned $90k in funding we needed by May 1st to fully take advantage of the DesignLab and all of the in-kind support and equipment provided to us through the lab to make the 40 cabinets we'd pitched them on (FYI, our residency ends June 30th)...

To be clear, this by no means marks the end of the project, or changes its intended/planned use. Rather, as Dan correctly suggested in the one-on-one meeting we had with him where we decided to go the crowdfunding route, surfacing the project now in this manner only benefits the project and our planned call-to-action, improving it's chances of success as more eyes will now have a chance to see it over time as we continue to develop the cabinet in public before it's release. As Dan explained to us in this meeting, the big fear he had related to our specific project while considering us for a residency at the DesignLab was the chance that this project would "pop" like a bubble when introduced to the general public, there one second, gone and forgotten the next... Essentially, he feared targeted recipients would get them, maybe open them/maybe not, and then we'd never hear from them or get the response we wanted through the project to begin with. While I don't necessarily agree with this assessment based on the fact that we're targeting a very specific group of creatives that this project authentically speaks to (eg: nerdy, thoughtful, and socially conscientious), I could never the less understand and see his point of view. The final nail in the coffin for keeping the project secret until it's release? Dan (correctly IMHO) thinks going public with a crowdfunding campaign will create some social pressure on cabinet recipients, encouraging them to 1) open the box and 2) act... and in my book this was good enough!

With crowdfunding now in our sights I've reached out to Crowd Source, Hatchfund, and Kickstarter and spoken several times to several different development specialists with each platform to get the down low. More to come on that as this portion of the project continues to develop...

fun fun fun...