While all this talk about Ideawarz is going on, check out Techguy in his Ideawarz Golden Axe champion t-shirt. Before you all get jealous and want to forfeit your $10K for a t-shirt, I’m pretty sure Jessye will make sure all winners still get one. I’m sure she’ll even take design suggestions. Glad you like your t-shirt Techguy and congrats on having the best idea in the Golden Axe tournament!

Hiya all,

In 2007 we are going to be mixing things up a bit in the old IdeaWarz tourneys. Instead of winning a Market Test from yours truly, Cambrian House, IdeaWarz champions will win $1000 cash, and a $9000 in funding to build their idea through the Cambrian House community. That’s right, not only will you get $10K to fund your idea, you will also keep the IP rights to your idea, and get to decide how you distribute Royalty Points. Yes, this will be retroactive for those who have already won their respective IdeaWarz Tournaments. In your profile you will be able to track the $9000 community fund money through the, to be built, funding tab.

Why the change?

We realized in 2006 that we could do more to empower the strong entrepreneurial spirit of our community. Instead of trying to consume and commercialize everyone’s ideas ourselves, we felt we could do more by giving the winners a community, infrastructure, and services that would allow them to do it themselves. A platform.

Rather than act as a bottleneck and commercialize one idea per month, why not let a 1000 flowers blossom and let anyone realize their ideas.

What can be done with the $9000?

The $9000 is seed money for tournament winners to spend within the Cambrian House community. For example, they can spend it to purchase Google AdWords to help market their idea. Or they could hire talent from within the community to help build their website. Whatever they need to get their idea off the ground, these funds and the Cambrian House community are there to assist in the lift off.

Let’s get ready to rumble

No doubt, IdeaWarz will take on a whole new meaning in 2007 with this boost in prize and award. I expect this year’s tournaments to be even more epic and sensational. If you have been holding back any ideas from the community, now would be the time to submit them.

No doubt many of your will have questions. Please join me in the forum to discuss this exciting new IdeaWarz tournament prize, and any other questions you might have.

May the best idea win!

We know that everyone is talking about us (don’t know who? Check out the list), but we’ve been waiting for our next-door/oil baron neighbor to talk about us too. Well, that time is finally here! Our local newspaper printed an article on Getting Ahead in Technology today and we are prominently featured in it!

Tamara Gignac wrote a great article about what it is like to work in the techonology sector in the middle of an oil-boom. She touches on many of the things that make working in this city unique. Calgary is a very young city, it is a wealthy city thanks to our oil & gas sector and there is amazing stuff going on here. We are happy to be in a place where some may consider the technology sector to be the odd man out. It feels that much more rewarding when our neighbors take time out of their day to notice us!

Did everyone have a chance to read the second part of Bruce Livingstone’s essay?

The next three points are: Ask the right questions, Listen, even when it hurts and Change at the right speed for the right reasons. There are excellent comments on the article, so make sure you check it out!

Also, Parker Texas Ranger has just informed us that RHF seems to be trumping Cambrian House’s traffic, hardcore. In a few short weeks, we’ve gone from Techguy (Thanks Techguy!) voting on everyone’s wishes to a whole community that is really involved in the site. We’re excited that people are begining to be as passionate about the Robinhood Fund as we are!

The first of a two part essay Bruce Livingstone has done for Crowdsourcing.

A post we are interested in for two reasons: 1. We heart Jeff Howe and read all of his posts. We’ve missed him since his last Dec 22nd post. 2. We love iStockPhoto. They live down the street from us (kind of). Patrick Lor is always willing to hand out extremely helpful advice on a regular basis.

Bruce has given us the first three of six principles he has adhered to as CEO of iStockphoto: Put the Passion First, Virtual Community is Only Sustained by Real World Gain and Build a Community to Fill the Gap, Not Follow the Leader.

The third point resonantes the most for me, there is no point in re-inventing the wheel. However, the first point, including this quote from an iStockPhoto user, “iStock was built on passion, not on dollars,” illicited an intereseting comment. The comment, by db, asked if crowdsourcing could ever be used for dry tasks without passionate users, if a big enough payoff is involved. My opinion is no, this isn’t what crowdsourcing is about.

Allo allo ladies and gents,

Here we go again! This week wraps up RND3 of the Red Pig Tournament. That means we go from our Final 4 down to our Final 2. When the dust finally settled, this is how the crowd voted:

* the numbers in brackets = percentage of votes

This means we have dajackel vs Deckard in the final. This is shaping up to be a truly epic battle as both ideas seem equally matched going into the finals. Congrats also to orphanfrequently and InfamousDutch for making it to the Final 4. Brilliant battling lads – that was an awesome run. Don’t wait till next Wednesday noon to get your votes in. Vote now and help decide which idea is worthy of wearing the Red Pig crown. May the best idea win!

Click To Play

After six long weeks of fierce competition the Robinhood Fund’s community has chosen the winning wishes in our $20,000 giveaway! Over the full span of the contest wishes rose and fell in the rankings, as wishers contacted their friends and family and worked hard to publicize their wish and earn more votes.

When the dust settled and the votes were counted, two wishes emerged triumphant:

Nice: Jeffrey Way’s wish for $10,000 to fund his participation in the construction of an orphanage and chicken farm in Mozambique.

Naughty: David Dineen-Porter’s wish for $10,000 to purchase a professional-quality camcorder and editing suite so that he can defeat Stephen Spielberg in film-to-film combat.

Want to see how the winners reacted when we handed over their giant novelty cheques? We’ll have video soon, stay tuned!

“Pursuing comedy was a huge gamble. The $10,000 is amazing, but the validation of the Robinhood Fund community choosing to award it to me is something you can’t put a price on.”
- David Dineen-Porter

We at Robinhood Fund want to thank everyone who entered a wish, and everyone who voted on them. Our community chose 2 winners, and has changed their lives. Stay tuned for some follow-up videos, as we stay in touch with the winners and keep you up to date!