Feltron 2009 Annual Report

Feltron. The name itself smacks of time travel, which is why I supported his project on Kickstarter. I had no idea what Feltron vs Kickstarter was when I pledged $100 to support it. I did it because Jerry Paffendorf suggested it and I have a habit of taking him up on almost anything he suggests, which is how 1000 Inches in Loveland, an experiment in micro-ownership of real estate in his LOVELAND project, was born.

My area of focus as Innovator-in-Residence at IBM Analytics Virtual Center is Smarter Work. Kickstarter is a great example of working smarter by incentivizing others to give you funds to make your dreams real. On Kickstarter, you post your deliverable and you let people vote with their wallets. If you reach your goal, you get the funds. If you fall short, you don't. This creates a very exciting mood around projects. More than that, funders are offered incentives. The only reason I haven't posted a project on Kickstarter yet is because I'm working to craft the most exquisite rewards I can imagine.

The rewards ultimately separate the projects that get funded from those that don't.

Kickstarter founder Perry Chen in Brooklyn.

The incentive for contributing to Feltron vs. Kickstarter at the $100 level was that I got to serve on a small committee of other donors on a conference call to collaborate on...something. At the time I had no idea what, really, but that didn't stop me. I wanted to be on that conference call, to take part in whatever it is that people were willing to pay $100 to discuss.

Next thing I know I was on Skype with Feltron and the other donors, talking about the design of the Kickstarter pledge page. Feltron shared the link with each of us and led us through a presentation. We asked questions about the process, listened, made suggestions about function and aesthetics and it was a wonderful experience. We participated in making an already brilliant site a bit easier to use.

I immediately thought Feltron was a most magnificent human.

I had NO IDEA!

Every day of the year, Nick Feltron asks the people who have had meaningful encounters with him to fill out a survey. This is the result of that process!

Feltron explains:

Each day in 2009, I asked every person with whom I had a meaningful encounter to submit a record of this meeting through an online survey. These reports form the heart of the 2009 Annual Report. From parents to old friends, to people I met for the first time, to my dentist… any time I felt that someone had discerned enough of my personality and activities, they were given a card with a URL and unique number to record their experience.

I kept track only of who I gave survey invitations to, the number of the card and where it was given. The surveys answers were submitted via text forms, allowing the respondee to write whatever they desired, and leaving the task of making comparisons between the data up to me. I have used only this information to create the report, however accurate it may be. I have strived to sort and collate the data in a clinical and repeatable manner that could be reproduced by someone looking for the same stories I have selected.

The data set itself was messy and overwhelming, and filled with enough information for several more reports. There are inherent shortcomings (like the unrepresentative amount of water recorded), and endearing strong suits (like the exploration of mood). I used several tools to make this task a more manageable, including Processing, which allowed me to map and explore alternate layouts much more quickly than previously, and Amazon's Mechanical Turk.

(Thanks @chapmanchapman and @josholalia!) Follow me on Twitter. Follow @Feltron and @makeloveland.