(no subject)
May. 29th, 2013 09:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretLast night was the triumphant return of freeradical42's Immodest Proposals salon, after nearly a year hiatus. The topic was kickstarter culture.
Since I haven't written about it in a year, a brief resume. Immodest Proposals began as a small salon infreeradical42's apartment, just a small group of friends sitting around a table drinking wine and arguing difficult questions about futurism and culture. As the program outgrew the apartment, it went public, taking up station at bars across the city. It's part discussion group, part panel discussion, part social mixer. We always try to strike the balance so that as much as possible it still feels like a small group of friends drinking and arguing about the future. Past topics have included the future of agriculture, the ethics of mental performance enhancing drugs, the consequences of offloading memory responsibility to the cloud, and a variety of other cases of practical applied philosophy.
Last night we talked about Kickstarter culture. Anthony Conto, a game designer about to launch a kickstarter, demoed his game and then served as panelist and focal point for a discussion about the way kickstarter has changed the way projects are funded and managed and operated.
We opened the conversation by asking what about this particular moment in the internet's young history made it ripe for the rise of crowdfunding, and a variety of factors were discussed and weighed: The changes in the legal system to make it easier for small investors, the rise at last of microtransactions in the form of app purchases and music downloads, the omnipresent always-on culture fostered by smartphones and wifi, the replacement of the boomer generation with a more internet savvy generation of consumers, new technologies and techniques making prototype and small batch manufacturing more available, faster distribution via UPS/Fedex... All of those things are involved. Someone also brought up a theory of the Adoption Curve of internet tech that argued that it just took time and critical mass for an idea that had a significantly earlier genesis to finally reach the cultural mainstream, that others had tried Kickstarter-like ideas earlier without success.
And then we started moving to the specifics of the change effected, and what it meant for creators and people wanting to start businesses. How kickstarter decoupled them from the venture capital scene, allowed them to attempt small batch projects.
Still, I raised some objection. All this talk of 'kickstarter culture' has a tendency to reject the value of past DIY cultures. I cited Trivial Pursuit and Monopoly as board games developed as small batch regional projects before they struck corporate distribution deals. I was shouted down in the moment for speaking from anecdata, and I wasn't invested enough in the point to really press it, but in the light of morning and with esprit d'escalier and nobody to gainsay me, I will mount a defense of my point.
In the past, there were plenty of people with kickstarter-like projects. They'd borrow a few thousand bucks from a friend or save up from their other job, hire out a small local print shop, and try to convince a local store to carry their product. If things worked out, if they managed to get local word of mouth, maybe they would look to expand. Maybe they'd look for partners to help them expand. This was at the core of American entrepreneurial culture.
And yes, most of these projects never hit it big. Most of these projects never made it past that first stage. Even most of the successes were only regional successes. But that's business. Even if kickstarter lets entrepreneurs today fund their first batch, there's no guarantee that any of them will continue to sell after that initial batch, either. (And since often kickstarters offer their product essentially as a discounted pre-sale, they're potentially cannibalizing future full-price sales for the seed money for that first print run. )
The real point is that we don't have the small local print shops and small local distribution venues that we used to have. Kickstarter fills a void in our entrepreneur culture because in the past few decades, corporate big box stores have eroded the place of the local entrepreneur.
At the same time, there's a related point that I wish I had made last night: For all that Kickstarter resists multinational corporate growth and big box store economics, I'd guess that most kickstarters with physical products outsource the manufacturing overseas. I really wanted to have a discussion of the place of Made in USA in the kickstarter conversation, but unfortunately didn't manage to squeeze it in. (We can have it here!) What is the responsibility of a kickstarter entrepreneur to help regrow American small-scale industry?
And then, as is typical for me, we ended with me asking a weird hypothetical that nobody was really willing to go along with. What would the internet look like today if 20 years ago Kickstarter had been around as a viable funding source? Would we still have Amazon and Google and the various other new tech giants in the same shape if instead of piles of speculative venture capital they'd been funded via some sort of crowdsourced funding?
I don't really know what answer I was looking for, but it wasn't "No, kickstarter wouldn't have worked back then, without the critical mass of internet-savvy people." I don't buy that, and anyway what's the point of a speculative hypothetical if you reject its premise and can't move past it. Boo, boring people. :P
Anyway, it was interesting and had me thinking about the shape our economy is going to take in the future, and the choices we will have to make to try to guide it where we want it to go.
freeradical42's Immodest Proposals salon, after nearly a year hiatus. The topic was kickstarter culture.Since I haven't written about it in a year, a brief resume. Immodest Proposals began as a small salon in
freeradical42's apartment, just a small group of friends sitting around a table drinking wine and arguing difficult questions about futurism and culture. As the program outgrew the apartment, it went public, taking up station at bars across the city. It's part discussion group, part panel discussion, part social mixer. We always try to strike the balance so that as much as possible it still feels like a small group of friends drinking and arguing about the future. Past topics have included the future of agriculture, the ethics of mental performance enhancing drugs, the consequences of offloading memory responsibility to the cloud, and a variety of other cases of practical applied philosophy.Last night we talked about Kickstarter culture. Anthony Conto, a game designer about to launch a kickstarter, demoed his game and then served as panelist and focal point for a discussion about the way kickstarter has changed the way projects are funded and managed and operated.
We opened the conversation by asking what about this particular moment in the internet's young history made it ripe for the rise of crowdfunding, and a variety of factors were discussed and weighed: The changes in the legal system to make it easier for small investors, the rise at last of microtransactions in the form of app purchases and music downloads, the omnipresent always-on culture fostered by smartphones and wifi, the replacement of the boomer generation with a more internet savvy generation of consumers, new technologies and techniques making prototype and small batch manufacturing more available, faster distribution via UPS/Fedex... All of those things are involved. Someone also brought up a theory of the Adoption Curve of internet tech that argued that it just took time and critical mass for an idea that had a significantly earlier genesis to finally reach the cultural mainstream, that others had tried Kickstarter-like ideas earlier without success.
And then we started moving to the specifics of the change effected, and what it meant for creators and people wanting to start businesses. How kickstarter decoupled them from the venture capital scene, allowed them to attempt small batch projects.
Still, I raised some objection. All this talk of 'kickstarter culture' has a tendency to reject the value of past DIY cultures. I cited Trivial Pursuit and Monopoly as board games developed as small batch regional projects before they struck corporate distribution deals. I was shouted down in the moment for speaking from anecdata, and I wasn't invested enough in the point to really press it, but in the light of morning and with esprit d'escalier and nobody to gainsay me, I will mount a defense of my point.
In the past, there were plenty of people with kickstarter-like projects. They'd borrow a few thousand bucks from a friend or save up from their other job, hire out a small local print shop, and try to convince a local store to carry their product. If things worked out, if they managed to get local word of mouth, maybe they would look to expand. Maybe they'd look for partners to help them expand. This was at the core of American entrepreneurial culture.
And yes, most of these projects never hit it big. Most of these projects never made it past that first stage. Even most of the successes were only regional successes. But that's business. Even if kickstarter lets entrepreneurs today fund their first batch, there's no guarantee that any of them will continue to sell after that initial batch, either. (And since often kickstarters offer their product essentially as a discounted pre-sale, they're potentially cannibalizing future full-price sales for the seed money for that first print run. )
The real point is that we don't have the small local print shops and small local distribution venues that we used to have. Kickstarter fills a void in our entrepreneur culture because in the past few decades, corporate big box stores have eroded the place of the local entrepreneur.
At the same time, there's a related point that I wish I had made last night: For all that Kickstarter resists multinational corporate growth and big box store economics, I'd guess that most kickstarters with physical products outsource the manufacturing overseas. I really wanted to have a discussion of the place of Made in USA in the kickstarter conversation, but unfortunately didn't manage to squeeze it in. (We can have it here!) What is the responsibility of a kickstarter entrepreneur to help regrow American small-scale industry?
And then, as is typical for me, we ended with me asking a weird hypothetical that nobody was really willing to go along with. What would the internet look like today if 20 years ago Kickstarter had been around as a viable funding source? Would we still have Amazon and Google and the various other new tech giants in the same shape if instead of piles of speculative venture capital they'd been funded via some sort of crowdsourced funding?
I don't really know what answer I was looking for, but it wasn't "No, kickstarter wouldn't have worked back then, without the critical mass of internet-savvy people." I don't buy that, and anyway what's the point of a speculative hypothetical if you reject its premise and can't move past it. Boo, boring people. :P
Anyway, it was interesting and had me thinking about the shape our economy is going to take in the future, and the choices we will have to make to try to guide it where we want it to go.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-29 06:44 pm (UTC)In one sense, kickstarter is a lot like those marketing campaigns that ask you to write an essay about why you like such-and-such soap, for which they will send you a free bar. The long-term value of the cognitive realignment that happens while writing that essay is worth more than the cost of a single bar of soap. Here, too, the "yeah, I'll help make this happen" emotional commitment has a value above the actual dollar amount invested.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-29 07:49 pm (UTC)(In some cases I've seen both. One book project saw the author completely bail after six months, while his publisher kept sending out weekly updates to supporters like clockwork about what he was trying to do to get the author to uphold his end of the bargain.)
(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-30 02:29 am (UTC)My claim, then, is that you need a recession.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-30 01:22 pm (UTC)I think you make an interesting point, one which
Still, Kickstarter has been embraced by industries that never really attracted VC money. In places like game design, small batch self-publishing, indie band record recording, Kickstarter is standing in for past generations of offline DIY culture- zine culture, garage band culture, etc... Is DIY culture associated with recession? Maybe. Disposable income and recessions don't usually go together, though.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-30 05:59 pm (UTC)But it is not just DIY culture. When I think DIY culture, I think of doing things and designing games, not monetizing them extensively. You could say that kickstarter is a way to efficiently monetize a DIY culture, and I think that's true for some of Kickstarters. On the other hand, monetizing hobbies is a lot of effort, and the sort of thing to you do when you are not that secure about your other money supplies.
Most kickstarters that I know come from established authors, webcomic artists, musicians and, to be fair, Burning Man collectives. Amanda Palmer could find a label or start a label. The guy who does Dresden Codac could have found a publisher. They chose not to, and everyone chose to give them money anyway.
Disposable income and recessions don't usually go together, though.
aha! I say! Technically, consider how many people went to the movies during the Great Depression. Even when it is bad, people have tiny amounts of disposable income. Can't get five new dresses, can get lipstick. Can't take a vacation, bu can see a movie at least. Cheap entertainment, peddling hope.
I don't think that's applicable to kickstarter though. It is not really cheap entertainment. What I actually meant was 'we needed a recession and a recovery', or perhaps 'and an uneven recovery where the tech sector has lots of money to throw at things, but other people need it'. Needed is a strong word though, and I am not sure how convincingly I can argue this line without statistics.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-30 06:23 pm (UTC)I, generally speaking, don't find it productive to generalize about kickstarter on the basis of the big projects, because they're not representative. There's a huge number of movie projects on kickstarter that aren't getting much attention, and those movies if they make their goal will most likely end up touring indie film festivals and fading away, and then Rob Thomas hops on and gets two million dollars pledged in days. On the other hand, obviously those big kickstarters are what's driving a lot of the attention to Kickstarter- when
Most kickstarters that I know come from established authors, webcomic artists, musicians and, to be fair, Burning Man collectives
We also talked about this, how so much of the attention that a particular Kickstarter project gets is driven by the retweet or other support of some tastemaker with the ability to send attention to the project, and how this fact runs against Kickstarter's egalitarian myth that projects are funded based on the merits of the project and the whims of its democratic userbase. I would go so far as to wonder if Kickstarter won't eventually accrete into something as rigid in its own way as present VC circles, with the make-or-break-it moment for a project being a meeting with some tastemaker who chooses whether to promote the project.