Vote Now On Our First Open-Source Project

September 8th, 2010 by Nate

Last week I announced that ItStartsWith.Us is going to attempt something new: build an entire project from start to finish with ideas from and execution by our team members, all for free.

I’ve been receiving submissions for a week, and I’ve pulled out the top three ideas I like best below. Take a look and then use the poll widget at the bottom to vote on the one you think ISWU should begin work on. I’ll keep polling open for a week and announce the winner next Wednesday. Then we’ll get started building it. Simple enough, right? And the nominees are (in chronological order) . . .

1. Generational Stories
I was thinking about linking generations through anecdotes. I’ve noticed several younger high school/college students on the ISWU network. The project could be to gather interviews regarding how people in the older generation helped each other, or bettered their community before the age of the internet. We can collect/document these stories and methods and post them on a separate blog or site. Maybe even try a few. People have endeavored to help each other for centuries. I’m curious as to how the rise in technology has affected how this occurs.

2. Mysterious Letters
Mysterious Letters is a project by two artists; Lenka Clayton and Michael Crowe. They sent a handwritten letter to every house in a town that they choose (maybe not so) randomly and so every family received a handwritten letter that according to their blog,”We hoped…would prompt neighbourly discussion, spreading across the town, promoting community curiosity.”

If you allocated every member one house to write (handwritten or otherwise) and send a letter, we could send inspirational and encouraging letters to a whole town, and if each member wrote two, or three letters…
The letters would make the day of anyone who received one, if they needed a boast or not.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/646138685/mysterious-letters
http://www.mysteriousletters.blogspot.com/
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/646138685/more-mysterious-more-letters-mysterious-letters

3. Tee Shirts
Build an online tee-shirt shop for ISWU. Something fully functioning that we could put up, and then let team members design shirts to upload and sell on the site, with proceeds going to fund ISWU.

There you go, guys. Vote below. Questions/feedback in the comments section.

create a free poll on pollsb.com

Photo Credit: doortoriver

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Mamacasz

Love the mysterious letter idea!
http://twitter.com/BudgetsAreSexy j. money

yeah, mystery letter is HOT. and everyone can actually participate in that one! just need a really good group of people managing it from the top to make sure it all goes well logistically.

t-shirt one is cool too, esp since we can all actually see that one in action and it will help ISWU on a continual basis, but it's not as “crazy”. and I think we like crazy

maybe we do t-shirts for the next project or two?
http://emily-jane.net Emily Jane

Mystery letters would be a FANTASTIC project!
Margie H

Very interesting concept! This sounds like fun for the writers and the recipients! Great way to spread some positive energy in some negative times.
Layne

All great ideas, but my vote went to mysterious letters!
Peliroo

I really really like ALL of these ideas, but the generational one has special meaning for me.
wml2h

mysterious letters ftw!

but really, they're all great ideas. I voted for mysterious letters, but I'm having visions of taking my 10th grade girls small group to a nursing home & have them collect the stories of the people there as a way to build relationships/learn from the older/wiser/more experienced for the generational one.

t-shirts are rad, but there's a lot of services already like that out there & the impact seems a little lower than the other two. Just my opinion
http://www.facebook.com/LewisClarkServiceCorps Casey Armstrong

It would be neat if the mysterious letters could include information on the targeted town that could help people use their community to get ahead in life. Like I did in this website for my community: http://sites.google.com/site/gettingaheadinthelcvalley/ Just an idea…
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_SSJA4FSRMLT4MQQ6S7HV7ZJGMQ Insane Star

T-shirts would be a great way to spread the message but aren't directly making other people happy, I think the mysterious letters idea is the best one and it sounds like a lot of fun too!
Matt Herman

Generational stories gets my vote. I'm very lucky that I am 31 and still have all four of my grandparents. When I was younger I would get bored with just sitting around and talking at family gatherings. Now those are the times I look forward to because I know that I won't be able to hear those stories forever. Here's one from my last trip to visit my Granddad that I think would fit the theme.

Back around 1935, my Grandfather's church didn't have a church, they met every Sunday in the back of the general store. That didn't stop them from building a strong community, which is real foundation of a good church. As their community grew, they out-grew the store and needed their own church. One member donated a lot on the edge of town, which started the church donating a church. Each week the preacher would tell the church what they needed to build that week; 100 bricks, 6 windows, or 10 packs of shingles and how much it would cost. A collection plate would be passed and each week there was enough money for supplies for the next week. Now there wasn't money for laborers, so the church members would also come by during the week to help with construction. One thing to note here, this was a community of farmers in western Nebraska, so after working on a farm all day, without modern machinery, these farmers would be construction workers in the evening. After about six months, the church was built. The church had donated a church and it was theirs. There wasn’t bank or loan involved. There weren’t construction crews or prefabricated walls. Where there was an empty lot, there was now a church that was built by a community coming together to build something for themselves and their future. That church is still there today, there are services every Sunday, and the community is as strong as ever.
http://ItStartsWith.Us Nate St. Pierre

That is such a cool story, and perfectly illustrates where all this ISWU open-source stuff will be headed in the near future. Love it.
http://mrskandcaptainj.com Mrs. K

Letter writing- a lost art! I love this idea. It gets my vote.

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