FundCamp PurposeProcessPlatform
From P2PVenture.org's Wiki
| Revision as of 18:28, 21 September 2007 (edit) SamRose (Talk | contribs) (→Registration process) ← Previous diff |
Revision as of 18:44, 21 September 2007 (edit) (undo) SamRose (Talk | contribs) (→Selection for actual funding) Next diff → |
||
| Line 106: | Line 106: | ||
| ===== Selection for actual funding===== | ===== Selection for actual funding===== | ||
| Jury decisions should use factual data (grades, comments following a pre-defined grid). These data should help the Jury make the final decision, but it won't be constrained by these. The data should then be made available to each individual project to help as an educational feedback. An presentation of all the anonymized results should be made available to everyone so that participating and non participating projects can use this information as a reference for assessing their own work. | Jury decisions should use factual data (grades, comments following a pre-defined grid). These data should help the Jury make the final decision, but it won't be constrained by these. The data should then be made available to each individual project to help as an educational feedback. An presentation of all the anonymized results should be made available to everyone so that participating and non participating projects can use this information as a reference for assessing their own work. | ||
| + | |||
| + | rupal notes: might be possible through http://drupal.org/project/views_fusion ? | ||
| [[Category:FundCampPlatform]] | [[Category:FundCampPlatform]] | ||
Revision as of 18:44, 21 September 2007
This is a summary of the discussions located at Talk:FundCamp_Platform_Prototyping, and FundCamp in France English Forum from http://france.p2pventure.org
This page is meant to create an overview for the "Purpose", "Process", and "Platform" of an online FundCamp collaboration toolset.
Contents |
Purpose
The purpose of an online environment for FundCamp is to create a virtual presence for pre- and post-FundCamp Seed Funding Acceleration.
FundCamp itself is a conference style event, wherein people propose projects. The face-to-face/physical FundCamp experience attempts to dynamically compress the 4 first stages of the ProjectScreening process (idea, Founding team, prototype, stakeholders) in a contracted camp/post camp fixed period. Much of this FundCamp Process for the Face-to-face/physical conference has yet to be determined, or at least yet to be fully and concisely detailed in this wiki (To be completed). But FundCamp is a real-life event, with all its power and scale limitations.
The FundCamp Platform seeks to manage the flow of projects out of this rich interaction constrained by time and space. The idea is to get project better prepared for the FundCamp or continuing incubating for a subsequent FundCamp or an investment decision from an external investor.
Process
The process for the proposed online collaboration system is that all participants would post their proposals (by posting their projects on the online system). Prior to the actual face-to-face/physical conference, some projects would be selected to move forward in the ProjectScreening process during the physical camp/conference. The online collaboration system could serve as a virtual incubator during the offline (meaning off from the physical camp) periods; either because it's happening before the camp, or because the project has not been selected for this round.
Projects proposals end up crossing a gate because it is validated by someone external to the project:
- either a "jury" that validates an application letting the project cross the idea gate and enter FundCamp's physical process
- or because money is invested in the project making it cross the stakeholder gate and successfully exit the FundCamp's physical process.
"Jury" Validation
User:FredericBaud suggests:
I think that the jury should be constituted of the investors or representatives of the investors and that they should be the only one responsible for the final investment process (crossing the stakeholder gate).
I think that what you describe could be useful to let projects evolve between sub-stages within the two gates (idea - investors jury selected the 20 something projects that will participate - and stakeholders - jury selects the final 5 projects that will be funded). In that sense, this may be more participating to the due-diligence below.
Projects coaching
An essential ingredient of FundCamp and everything that happens around FundCamp is the idea to coach projects: either by making promising projects better, or by providing entrepreneurs feedback to stop un-promising projects earlier and reallocate energy to more promising ones.
Due-diligence
User:SamRose suggests both:
Consensus Polling: Collective Intelligence
Consensus Polling can create one type of process that combines Open Knowledge, Shared Meaning Through Open Communication,and Trust (Beyond Trust Metrics). Because it is a combination of Decision Making, and Conversation process (discussion focused on coming to a shared best decision).
and
Prediction Markets
PredictionMarkets can have less weight, but can be given a certain percentage of influence in the overall decision to move project past the "gate" in he Stage/Gate Process PredictionMarkets are useful as a counter-weight to group-processes, but letting people expand their individual thinking, and aggregating it into an overview of many individual's "best bets" on a given object.
User:SamRose also recommends in the process:
Open Knowledge Base
It is possible, and advised, to incorporate a native wiki into Drupal. See: http://socialsynergyweb.com/drutest/ for a working example.
The purpose of the incorporated wiki would be to build up extended reference/knowledge around particular projects, to work Threaded discussion into "Shared Meaning" which will be essential for the collaboration that must take place for this to succeed.
Platform
The platform chosen, based on the above stated purpose and process, is Drupal, an open source content managment system. Implementations described below take this choice of Drupal into account and describes workflows referring to Drupal specific functionalities.
Currently under development here: http://www.fundcamp.org/
Proposed Workflow with this platform
Registration process
Users would register based on one or more roles, as defined at SeedCamp_Platform_Prototyping. They would fill out description cards for each role, that would be part of their profile. They would have a contact form on the site that could be used to email them. Users could list their areas of knowledge and experience as open tags under the heading of "knowledge and experience".
- Users agree to Terms of Service and Privacy policy
Drupal notes: Implemented with http://drupal.org/node/112519 or http://drupal.org/project/legal depending on which method works better with our custom registration process... --SamRose 14:23, 21 September 2007 (EDT)
On the site:
- Entrepreneurs would post proposals as "pages" (or as a custom content type, like the entries in B&F Watch). Proposals could be promoted to the front page as they are posted. Or, they could be posted to a certain "view". They would categorize their projects with arbitrary categories, and self-chosen tags
- Mentoring could be done in either comments section of proposal, on Forums, or in wikipages (such as helping to co-author exec summary, investor pitch, business plan,..)
- A pool of investors who agreed to provide the funds invested during a FundCamp would register on the platform to present themselves and let them access private information that projects agreed to disclose to them.
Drupal notes: exploring http://drupal.org/project/nf_registration_mod and accomopanying modules as solution for registration. Contingent upon this module's support for multiple account or membership types. --SamRose 14:28, 21 September 2007 (EDT)
Projects coaching
- Entrepreneurs should be able to use the help of mentors and early feedback from investors to improve their project. This mean refining strategy, business documents, accessing customer feedback,... They should also receive feedback to build and improve their prototypes. It should be possible to provide feedback either publicly or privately
(Design note: we can briefly explain how to leave public or privae feedback on a "how to use this site" page on the site)
Due diligence
Collective Intelligence and Prediction Markets
Consensus Polling could be a component, or part of the Due Dilligence process. People vote "Yes" if they think a project is ready to move on to the next stage, or "No" if they think the project should be terminated, or "Not Yet" with an explanation about why they say "Not Yet". There is an optional timeclock that can be put on the vote, with the option that a certain percentage must say "Yes" by a certain time period (to be determined). this allows a potentially large amount of people to participate in the process.
PredictionMarkets can be employed in the form of Drupal's "Bookmaker" module, which allows users to post "bets" about practically anything. This could be employed in cases where a PredictionMarket would be useful, such as getting an aggregation of knowledge about certain elements in a proposed business plan/model, etc. This also allows a potentially large amount of people to participate in the process, but by way of aggregated individual judgement, instead of consensus forming.
Other options
A timed debate could also employed, to incorporate formal debate when it is deemed to be useful.
Jury decisions
Selection for partcipation to the FundCamp
Jury should benefit from simple tools to track comments on the different applications and use simple processes (voting by investors or representatives) to narrow the list of projects down to a reasonable number (e.g. 20)
Selection for actual funding
Jury decisions should use factual data (grades, comments following a pre-defined grid). These data should help the Jury make the final decision, but it won't be constrained by these. The data should then be made available to each individual project to help as an educational feedback. An presentation of all the anonymized results should be made available to everyone so that participating and non participating projects can use this information as a reference for assessing their own work.
rupal notes: might be possible through http://drupal.org/project/views_fusion ?
