Welcome to the Crowdsourcing Mornings segment! Every weekday morning, Geek Alabama talks about and features one crowdsourcing project from crowdsourcing sites such as, Indiegogo, and others. The hope with Crowdsourcing Mornings is to feature and help a project be successful and reach its fundraising goal. Please enjoy today’s featured project!
Please read our crowdsourcing guidelines at: https://geekalabama.com/media-kit-pr/geek-alabama-crowdsourcing-guidelines
After seven seasons of my podcast Ecosystems for Change and hundreds of interviews with entrepreneurial ecosystem builders from around the world, I wanted to create a tangible testament to the work these tireless community champions put in every day.
I wanted to write a book that captures their stories in all their complexity and nuance. From rural communities figuring out how to bounce back after traditional industries collapsed, to mid-sized cities navigating silos and fragmentation among entrepreneurial supporters, to regions that have been trying to build multi-state innovation ecosystems. In conversation with these ecosystem builders, they let me see their ecosystems through their eyes: What worked, what didn’t, what hurt and what brought them joy on the journey to building to building thriving ecosystems.
What emerged from these conversations, and my own decade of doing this work, isn’t so much a new framework but a unique mindset, a set of practices, and an honest accounting of what it costs to cultivate entrepreneurial ecosystems over time.
It Takes a Valley tells these practitioners’ stories and documents the patterns underneath them. It’s written for people who are already doing the work; by centering over 50 stories of individual ecosystem builders, it’s also written by practitioners in a way – not as an outsider’s analysis of what ecosystem builders should do differently, but as a grassroots perspective from those who have been building ecosystems for years – from Puerto Rico to Nebraska, from Ecuador to Australia.
I wrote this book for ecosystem builders, economic developers, funders, community leaders, and anyone who works at the intersection of entrepreneurship and place. It’s for the people who look for connections where others see silos, who hold relationships across organizations that don’t always trust each other, and who measure progress in years rather than quarters.
It’s also for the people who fund this work and want to understand it better, and for the practitioners just starting out who are trying to figure out how the field actually works.
As of June 15th, this project has raised $11,000 of their $12,000 goal. This project has 5 days left to raise the $12,000 or it will not be funded. For a pledge of $25, you will get one eBook. For a pledge of $50, you will get one paperback. To learn more and to pledge money, go to: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ittakesavalley/it-takes-a-valley?
Categories: Crowdsourcing Mornings Stuff
