“>

At that point, I had been working for a full year on a start-up called Pando Projects.  I had mobilized a team to build a prototype of our website, and had tested it out with 15 pilot projects in New York City.  My goal was to help people start their own projects to tackle global issues in local ways.

The bigger vision was to help thousands of Americans run their own amazing local initiatives, share their success stories, promote the best ideas, and scale up the initiatives that could make a greater impact.  So many people have brilliant ideas and good intentions… I simply wanted to give them the tools they needed to change the world.

Pando Project's pilot Project Leaders and their mentors

At the time of the We Media competition, we had so much potential.  The MacArthur Foundation had called us, “the new face of activism.”  The Huffington Post had named me, “the greatest woman of the day.”  Good Magazine had called Pando, “refreshing and inspiring.”  And FastCompany had written, “Pando makes meaningful ideas more executable and brainpower more accessible… and Millennials are demonstrating an inspiring willingness to assume responsibility for the change they want to see in the world.”

We were on fire.

The problem was that I had run out of money.  The month of the We Media competition was the last month that I could have afforded to pay rent.  So when I held that check, my tears were real.  I had literally put everything I had into getting Pando going, and We Media was my first big break.  That day of meeting incredible mentors (like Craig Newmark and Charlie O’Donnell) and fighting for my cause and WINNING… it was one of the best days of my entire life.

After the win, I immediately used money to pay down Pando debts – the lawyer fees, the cost of our pilot website, the expenses from hosting a leadership retreat for our pilot project leaders… it all added up.  I also decided I was ready for the fundraising phase.  I immediately left for the Summit Series Conference where I met incredible philanthropists and VCs and business leaders who promised to help me raise another $250K.  They loved my idea, they loved my sincerity…  The BBC interviewed me as a “the founder of a promising start-up.”

Success seemed inevitable. Joyce’s project taught kids in Chinatown about other cultures, and was featured in “The Epoch Times”

From August through September, I went to countless conferences, meeting people and pitching my idea, knowing that $25K would not last long.  (These conferences included Summit, Socap, Renaissance Weekend, Craigslist Bootcamp, the National Conference for Volunteerism and Service, etc.)

Meanwhile I continued to manage our pilot projects and tried to grow the organization, which now had over 50 volunteers.   I was completely overwhelmed.  I needed help.  Two investment funds committed $100,000 to our growth, but it was unclear when I would get the money.  I was working on a partnership with Ford Motor Company which could have given us $500,000 upfront, but the meetings kept getting delayed.

Ashley’s project was an after-school reading class for kids in West Harlem. I felt things falling apart.  Everyone seemed to love the idea and be impressed by our progress, but no one was willing to write the first big check.

Without a Co-Founder to help me push through the days, I felt myself burning out.  I had poured everything I had into Pando – - my money, my time, and my soul.  I had success stories and press and the We Media win – and yet I couldn’t raise the $250K I needed to build a real site and hire a team to actually take Pando to the next level.

I found myself becoming reckless and irresponsible, not responding to emails and showing up to meetings unprepared.  I started to dwell on the setbacks.  (Our web developer kept delaying the launch of our site… I had a toe infection and couldn’t afford a trip to the doctor… several fundraising leads that I had pursued for months proved to be dead ends… the list went on and on.)

I started to understand why so many start-ups fail and why so many Founders become bitter, emotional, sickly creatures.  My boyfriend and I ended a three-year relationship and I lost the one person that had believed in me from day one.  I knew that I could probably raise the money I needed if I kept fighting, but I had lost my strength.  The battle was over.  I had helped support some incredible projects in New York and I had grown as a leader and as a human being.  But I was ready to admit that I needed help.Jodi organized a dance class to teach kids about confidence and creativity.

In October I put Pando on hold and decided to apply to business school.  I dreamt of attending Stanford, where I could learn how to take Pando to the next level.  I would learn about business, develop my network, and then re-launch Pando upon graduation.  But… I didn’t get in!  The rejection letter was sent on March 31st.  I guess the Universe has other plans for me yet.

I still hope that I can re-launch Pando.  But in the meantime, I’m moving to San Francisco to find a job doing something meaningful.  Before Pando I worked in investment banking and microfinance, so I’m really open to everything.  I just want to make the world better, somehow.  That’s all I’ve ever really wanted to do.

I’m so grateful for We Media and feel complete sadness and shame that the failure of Pando might in some way detract from the legitimacy of this competition.  The We Media win changed my life and re-invigorated my start-up.  I had meetings with Esther Dyson, Charlie O’Donnell, Stowe Boyd, Ben Berkowitz and Craig Newmark that all opened doors for me.  Andrew Nachison was a continual source of love and support.

The win gave me so much credibility as I embarked on my fundraising journey. I still don’t really know what went wrong.  I really tried.  I really fought for this. I think the biggest issue was that I didn’t have a co-founder to bring the vision to life.  If I could start Pando all over again, that’s what I would change.  I would find a co-founder to help me make it happen.

I send my love to the current We Media finalists.  I can’t say how your start-ups will turn out, but I can promise you that you’re in for the ride of your life …

Founder Mark Horoszowski pitched his startup idea, Moving Worlds, at the 2012 We Media PitchIt! Challenge April 18, 2012 in McLean, Virginia.

1: Thrive, Don’t Sustain

Find (and communicate) a revenue model that is as robust as it is diverse. With such rapid innovation and fluctuating economic issues, you need to be protected against changes and competitors. Get creative with your core competencies and use them in as many ways as possible. Need inspiration? Look at Amazon. From selling books to its latest innovation, the Amazon Locker, it continues to expand its retail prowess by delivering stellar customer service, and making sure the right things get to the right people at the right time.

2: Make Others Believe You WILL Grow

‘How will you grow‘ is one of the most fundamental questions for any business. As valuable as your core product or service is, it won’t reach critical mass without a marketing and sales plan. You probably don’t have a lot of money, so you have to be reasonable with your plan, but be creative and innovative, too. And when sharing your plan, be specific. Consider reading more about bootstrap marketing, and also 10 Startup Marketing Tips from Mashable.

3: Stand on the Shoulders of Giants

Develop, nurture, and expand key partnerships. EVERY company can have partners to help it achieve its goals. Common partner-types include technology, distribution, retail, promotion, nonprofit, network, and industry to name a few. If you can add enough value, these partners will help you grow rapidly.

3.5: Stand on the Shoulders of Giants, Again

If you’re idea is new, it’s going to take some time for everybody else to understand it. Make it as easy as possible. Try explaining it with using things that already exist, and people are familiar with.

4: Don’t Let Facts Get in the Way

People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. Check out Simon Sinek’s video, Stat With Why to learn more about that. And if you are seeking investment, know that investors put money behind a person and a team, not the idea. Let your passion for your idea – and how it will grow and make the world better – always shine through. Details are of course important, but they can often overshadow the bigger picture and diminish your passion and commitment.

5. Find the RIGHT Supporters and the RIGHT Money

Don’t seek short-term wins and sacrifice long-term success. Ask any entrepreneur or any VC and they’ll tell you stories about startups that went to VCs too early. If the business model isn’t proven yet, don’t waste your time talking to VCs. And even if the idea is proven, make sure to explore other options. Don’t let the sexiness of raising millions of dollars cloud your vision. Investors want big returns, now, and they’ll push you for it, hard. The same thing can be said about customers, too. Find the the right money, not just any money.

6. Talk About REALITY, Not a Made up Future

Your revenue projections might look great, but we all know they’re wrong. Show investors and partners the reality of your present situation. Show other facts and statistics that show opportunity, but don’t spend time convincing investors that you’re financial projections are perfect and indisputable. You can’t control your revenues, you can only control your costs. As much as you highlight revenue predictions, make sure to spend as much time explaining how you will be controlling expenses.

7. Show IMPACT

Have a clear path to show how revenues will be used, and how they will generate impact. Investors and potential customers want to see that your idea is a game-changer, and that it will be impactful in the near and long-term. And this means more than just huge ROI. It means building a GREAT company that people will want to work at, delivering products and services that HELP people, as well as contribute to the GREATER GOOD.

Go start something. Succeed or fail, you will do something remarkable that will change your life. Need more tips on how to get started? Read about 16 Lessons for Starting Social Enterprises.

Brian Reich pitches his startup idea at the We Media PitchIt! Challenge April 18, 2012, in McLean, Virginia.

Eight minutes is awkward

Each of the eight finalists was given eight minutes to present their project, plus another four-or-so minutes for questions from the judges. Of course, eight minutes is more time than you would need to provide a simple elevator pitch, but not enough time to get into sufficient detail about a platform or plan. If you think that preparing for an eight minute pitch simply requires adjusting your cadence, or offering more/less detail, you are wrong. A specialized deck, and script, for that length of a pitch is required. I
settled on 15 slides and finished with 5 seconds to spare – managing mostly even pacing through my key points and still time for a quick back-and-forth with one of the judges.

Questions have many answers

I prepared for the Q&A portion of the competition by anticipating questions that might be posed by the judges and preparing and practicing some stock answers. Still, when my moment in the hot seat arrived I found myself scrambling. When one of the judges asked how I would integrate an existing platform into my plans, I assumed he wanted me to explain how I would make that work. I had an answer for that, as well as an answer for why my plans were superior to the existing options in the marketplace. I mis-read the tone of his question and provided the wrong answer, thus missing an opportunity to clearly distinguish my plans. I didn’t harm my pitch significantly, but I didn’t do myself any favors either.

Listening is important

WeMedia organized a mentoring session for the eight finalists the day before the big
pitch. Everyone went through their presentations and received feedback from a group of startup experts. Nobody performed particularly well during the prep session, mostly the result of nerves. But, every single finalist made substantial improvements to their decks and their overall presentation overnight – showing a capacity to learn and respond to constructive criticism. We were told that the passion and willingness to internalize feedback was a factor in deciding the future potential of all our projects.

The entire package matters

Finalists were asked to submit background information in writing before the live We Media event. The judges reviewed all that information closely and discussed the different finalists in advance. Most of the judges reported arriving at the final pitch competition with a sense of which projects were the strongest, but also reported that new information, and the quality of the pitch itself, played a role in changing their ultimate decisions. The details of a startup project evolve so quickly that it can be hard to keep information updated and the focus clear, but knowing in advance just how much the written information informed the final choices probably would have changed the entire process of preparing and presenting when the moment arrived.

If I had been a PitchIt! finalist another year the outcome might have been different. PitchIt! is an idea-competition, designed for relatively early stage startups, but this year’s winners were closer to launch and that was a consideration among the judges. The near-ready startups will almost certainly be able to put both the money and access to
the WeMedia network to better use in the short-term than the projects, mine included, that are still largely in the planning stages. I can’t fault that line of thinking by the judges. And I will be interested to see how the organizers update the criteria for the competition in future years to take that into consideration.

If a couple of small things had gone differently I could easily have walked away with the oversized cardboard check. The money was only a small part of the motivation for entering the competition. The feedback, the validation of my idea and the encouragement – from judges and organizers alike – to focus and discipline myself and accelerate my own plans to advance my project towards launch, will have a far greater impact than anything else.

Screen founder Liza Factor pitches her startup idea at the We Media PitchIt! Conference & Challenge April 18, 2012.

Screen aims to build a hub for teams of photographers and video makers to work together on joint productions. It’s launching later this year as a non-profit and has founders based in four countries.

Radmatter founder Katherine von Jan poses with her big check after winning the We Media PitchIt! Challenge April 18, 2012, in McLean, Virginia.

The two winners earned a $25,000 seed investment to help them launch – and access to a network of We Media Mentors who have committed to helping the winners start their businesses.

The challenge was organized by iFOCOS, the Institute for the Connected Society, and sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Ethics & Excellence in Journalism Foundation.

• The Advocator
• Feeding Curiosity
• Moving Worlds
• N-1-1
• Newsify
• RADmatter
• Screen
• Semantic News Browser

The founders will pitch their ideas April 18 at the We Media PitchIt! Conference in McLean, Va., where they’ll be part of a day-long deep dive into innovation and entrepreneurship for the digital culture. Two winners selected by a panel of judges will each earn a $25,000 seed investment to help them launch, along with advice and access to a network of mentors.

Tickets are still available. Click here to register.

This year’s submissions spanned an amazing range of new approaches to fields such as news and journalism, civic engagement and government, education, health, agriculture, business and others. We looked for finalists with a mix of these attributes:

• Story: Do they create and apply a unique storytelling experience through journalism, discovery, narrative, exposition, data, visualization, or new methods and metaphors?
• Design: Do they creatively engage multiple levels of intelligence and understanding of complex information with clarity, style, and meaning?
• Social Impact: Do they impact the social condition, stimulate citizenship, raise awareness, influence or marshal support for public policy?
• Pattern Change: Do they pioneer original approaches and paradigms?
• Purpose: Do they express a purposeful vision through values reflecting ethics, credibility, responsibility and authenticity?
• Community: Do they organize community, virtual or geographic, in a new way?
• Business: Do they reveal innovative business practices, entrepreneurial quality or a sustainable model?

You can read more about the criteria and goals here.

One of the things that’s unique about the PitchIt! challenge is that it’s open to both commercial and non-profit ideas. About a third of the submissions were for non-profit ideas.

You can still rate and comment on all of the submitted ideas. The highest rated entries will be named Community Choice winners.

Apple’s acquisition this past week of app search company Chomp, for a reported $50 million, brought the importance of app discovery to the forefront and validated the need for the industry to pay close attention to this critical part of the app ecosystem.

Better app search within the App Store will offer developers some hope that the top 25 lists will not be the only sure route to being a successful app. But Apple’s acquisition of Chomp only begins to address the broader needs of consumers and developers.

Apps are becoming an integral part of our everyday lives. With over 900,000(2) apps
available across gaming to fitness, travel to dining, and everything in-between, there
is no shortage of options for consumers. With a constantly growing catalog of apps,
the issue is not whether there’s an app for that, but, more importantly, how can a
consumer find the right app for their particular needs and interests.

Apps are the foundation of the smartphone economy. Apple is counting down to 25
billion app downloads and Android recently broke 10 billion. By 2015 downloads
are expected surpass 182 billion. Smartphone penetration in the U.S. is already
approaching 60%, but global penetration, at less than 15%, has a lot of growth
left.

In fact, nearly 600 million smartphones will be shipped this year. Demand
for apps is nowhere near its peak, and the ability to easily find apps relevant to a
consumers interests and needs is going to be paramount going forward.

As the CEO of AppTap, an app discovery company focused on addressing the needs
of consumers and app developers, we’re constantly hearing from consumers who
are struggling to find apps that they want (or are unaware that they even exist)
and are frustrated at having to spend time slogging through the entire app catalog.

Likewise, app developers lack the tools to reach their target audience and are
unable to buy their way to the highly coveted top 25 lists.

Solving app discovery requires a comprehensive approach. An improved search
experience in the app stores is important, but we believe it only addresses an aspect
of the problem and misses out on some underlying needs and opportunities that we
think are important to solving app discovery and fostering a healthy app ecosystem.

Here are a few points that we believe are important when it comes to a
comprehensive solution to app discovery:

1. App discovery should not be limited to the app stores. It should be
everywhere. Consumers don’t want app stores to be the only way they
can find apps. App discovery should be as pervasive and integral a part of
our online experience as web search and related content links on the web.
AppTap enables any site, service or app to integrate app recommendations,
search and social discovery right into their core user experience.

2. Use context to cut through the clutter of apps and save consumers time
by recommending apps related to their interests. Millions of consumers
read content, share news and use services that reflect their interests and
needs. A USAToday user reading an article about Rome in the travel section
is likely to be interested in apps about travel in Italy. AppTap enables
contextually relevant app recommendations to be embedded in any article,
site or service, introducing consumers to the right app at the right time.

3. App developers need tools to find the right customer for their apps.
With nearly one million apps available, rising to the top can be a daunting
and very expensive task. App developers need tools to get their apps in front
of the right users, in the right context. This increases the chances of an app
developer acquiring an active user who will both drive their in-app business
models and grow viral awareness of their app.

AppTap is enabling consumers to easily discover, find, buy and share apps that are
relevant to them right on their favorite web and mobile properties. We’re helping
app developers get their apps in the hands of the right users. And, we’re helping
media companies, carriers and other companies with direct consumer relationships
play a meaningful role in app discovery for their users.

Apple, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft will undoubtedly continue to invest in
improving their own app stores. But in order to truly address app discovery, they
should embrace a broader view that goes beyond search and their own app stores.

Big media, carriers and consumer services companies should also play a meaningful
role in app discovery. Consumers want help filtering through the flood of apps and
they will reward the companies that do that with renewed loyalty and business.

This past week, StableRenters.com reached a huge milestone and launched its first beta version with information on 133,000 addresses in New York City.

The site is still limited to two huge datasets available from the city government, but it details the open complaints made to the city by tenants at each address and lists the humans behind the shell corporations and LLC’s that own the buildings. Also, each of these names is hyperlinked so any user can see what else these landlords own. That’s a huge value for any real estate researcher or tenant advocate, and something no website has done yet.

Because this all uses public data from New York City, I decided to enter it into the NYC BigApps Challenge, the city-run competition that encourages innovation with city data to improve New Yorkers’ lives. With a grand prize of $10k, a bunch of press, and a stamp of approval from the city, the competition is a huge opportunity for StableRenters.

So please cast your vote before March 8 and forever change the nature of renting a home.

Unlike the We Media Pitchit Challenge though, which asked contestants to solicit one vote from each person they could, the BigApps Challenge allows each voter to cast their vote every day. So thank you in advance for all the help you’re able to lend, but this rule is a bit much. The point of voting in contests like these is to raise public awareness about them virally (i.e. turning your contestants into your best marketers), and to force contestants to go all out and tell everyone they know about their project in what is oftentimes their first formidable PR exercise. That’s what I did last year, and it was great.

But I’m skeptical about the benefit of this every-day rule. More tweets will go out, more Facebook posts and emails, but all will reach the same people. The assumption seems to be that it exhibits a greater level of dedication on the part of voters. This may be true, but so what? Just like elections for high school class president, getting more votes doesn’t mean it’s better. In fact, a friend of mine culled through the 30 top-voted apps and found at least five that are completely non-functional or don’t exist at all (some said, “iPhone app coming soon,” for example), and many more that are exact replicas from years past. Some of these have more than 1,000 votes without a product. So let’s stick to “one person, one vote” and quit having to annoy our friends and family with the same request every day for a month.

“There are three ways to look at how society is informed. The first is that people are gullible and will read, listen to, or watch just about anything. The second is that most people require an informed intermediary to tell them what is good, important or meaningful. The third is that people are pretty smart; given the means, they can sort things out for themselves, find their own version of the truth.

The means have arrived. The truth is out there.

Throughout history, access to news and information has been a privilege accorded to powerful institutions with the authority or wealth to dominate distribution. For the past two centuries, an independent press has served as advocate for society and its right to know — an essential role during an era of democratic enlightenment.

It feels like a new era has been thrust upon us — an era of enlightened anxiety. We now know more than ever before, but our knowledge creates anxiety over harsh truths and puzzling paradoxes.”

Still rings true. The moment and the movement have overtaken the forecast, but We Media (300,000+ downloads) continues to serve “as the reference point for any serious discussions of this topic …” David Weinberger, the visionary technologist-commentator-author wrote back then.

Didier Editions asked to republish the intro in a collection of English textbooks called Password Terminale for French students 17-18 years old.

We said oui.

With more precision than the Giants’ final drive to win the game, the “show-technology” company LMG rolled out nearly 800 custom-constructed LED tiles, built an electronic set over one-third of the football field, and rigged 32 projectors 150 feet above the set in less than seven minutes.

The display of imagery, video and 3D effects that followed — living VOGUE magazine covers, reverberating speakers and a heavenly universe — dazzled. Not even production excess, Madonna, M.I.A.’s middle finger, a pageant wish for “world peace” or something called LMFAO could ruin the twelve-minute media spectacle known as the halftime show.

Then came Clint. “Halftime for the Auto Industry” brought a lump to the throat of this former Detroiter with a gritty, reality metaphor about struggle and perseverance. The spot, more compelling than the half of football that preceded it, roiled the gods of football. Google and You Tube pulled the video after the NFL apparently suffered a concussion, filing a copyright claim that the commercial was political. Can’t have emotional honesty in the Super Bowl; it might draw attention from a violent sport, entertainers shooting us the bird, and wardrobe malfunctions. Fortunately, the video is back up today.

A sequel to the pulsating, Eminem “Imported from Detroit” campaign by Wieden+Kennedy, “Halftime” is rich with the unapologetic this-is-who-we-are-and-this-is-what-we-do attitude that made me proud to work in the Motor City. A pretty good metaphor for America, too, if you want to take it there.

Calling all media, technology and social dreamers: The 2012 We Media PitchIt Challenge is open to entries. The challenge offers $50,000 in seed funding to help turn ideas for innovative media and technology startups into something real.

To submit an idea to the challenge or vote on others, visit the PitchIt Idea Hub.

The submission and online voting deadline is Wednesday, Feb. 29, 2012.

A group of 6-8 finalists selected by We Media will pitch their ideas live before a panel of expert judges and the audience at the We Media 2012 conference on April 18 at Gannett, Inc., in McLean, Virginia. Two winners selected by the judges will be offered a $25,000 sponsorship to help them bring their ideas to life.

The public can also comment and vote on the ideas submitted online. The three ideas with the most votes will be named Community Choice winners.

PitchIt, which in 2011 was ranked by the web site StartupSmart among the world’s top startup challenges, gives a boost to people with big ideas – but not fully formed startups. It’s for would-be entrepreneurs who have bold visions for using media and technology to improve the human experience in the digital world.

PitchIt is unique among startup challenges because it’s open to both commercial and non-profit entries. In either case, the potential for social impact is among the criteria used to judge submissions.

We’ve created a platform for founders with ideas to take center stage – and we’ve helped launch some amazing companies built on powerful ideas. Past winners have included SeeClickFix, Sparked, Audimated, NewsIT and Stable Renters.

This is the sixth year for the challenge, which grew out of activity at the annual We Media conference, where we bring together an influential mix of media, technology and social visionaries for conversations on big ideas driving innovation, investment and opportunities in the digital culture. This is the fourth year with a sponsorship on the line to help the winners do something big with their big ideas.

The challenge is organized by We Media for iFOCOS, a non-profit research center and innovation lab, and sponsored by the Ethics & Excellence in Journalism Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Our partners for 2012 include Ashoka Changemakers, a global network of social entrepreneurs, and Gannett, Inc., the US media company that publishes USAToday.

If you’d like to attend the 2012 We Media conference, join the We Media mailing list to receive registration and program details. We’ll be sending invitations soon.

Contact us now if you’d like to participate as a sponsor or exhibitor.

The conference program will also include the live finals of PitchIt, our annual seed investment challenge for innovative startups and social ventures. Last year PitchIt was named one the world’s top startup challenges, along with competitions organized by MIT, IBM and the SXSW interactive conference. We offer $25,000 to each of two winners, along with advice and help from We Media – and access to a network of We Media Mentors who work one-on-one with the winners.

If you’re working on a pre-launch, unfunded startup, or need a kick in the pants to help turn your brilliant idea into something real – read up on the criteria and get your plans in order now. We’ll be open for submissions later this month.

On January 20, StableRenters will go live with landlord identity and a score based on complaints per unit for nearly every rental, co-op and condo property in the five boroughs of New York City!

As you can see, much has changed at StableRenters. I found a developer, made too much work for my part-time self, quit my day-job, and am gearing up to launch a more advanced beta version than I ever imagined.

How in the world did this happen in just two months? After looking tirelessly for the right developer and finding mostly over-qualified develop/design shops that wanted to take all my money and produce a great final product from start to finish, I decided to look farther afield. I wanted a small demo app that I could show the world and gauge response and value before going further, and no one qualified that I knew in NYC would do that for me.

I finally decided to check out Odesk, an online market for freelancers. There I found a qualified and enthusiastic Ruby on Rails developer that was willing to do the project for a few thousand dollars, a common rate among developers in Lahore, Pakistan. Along with a low intensity site administrator I found on Sortfolio to manage access permissions, I was set to begin.

I began working with these two when I still had a job, and quickly it created more work than I was able to handle in a few hours each night. Also, my wife was ready to kill me. I wasn’t sure where this would lead.

Then, December rolled around and I still had about $15,000 left from the Pitchit challenge that would be taxed if I didn’t spend it all on legitimate business expenses by the end of the month. I mapped this out, thought of extended consulting fees, a year’s worth of office space, an iPad, a new computer, and a desk. But as fast as I figured this payment schedule out, I was getting increasingly irritated by the workload of my decreasingly relevant non-profit fundraising day-job, and decided it was time to quit. I bought a few things and took the remaining money as salary. My last day at work was December 16. After taxes, I only had enough money for a few months at my current salary, but I took the plunge. If I hadn’t quit, I’d have known this venture’s outcome 100 percent. Now, at least there’s a chance at funding and success.

So after three weeks of fulltime startup-dom, I made the decision to apply to the BigApps Challenge. I found that the city had released 2 useful datasets: the identity of all landlords, management companies and the shareholders of every rental, condo and co-op property with 3 units or more in the five boroughs, as well as the complaints made to the city by these buildings’ tenants.

Sure, the Big Apps Challenge could win me $10,000. But a friend showed me last weekend that in the 2011 BigApps Ideas Challenge (just ideas for apps, not launch-ready products), one of the winners selected by a panel of judges was a platform that allows “residents to rate their building’s owner, management co., and landlord, and lets interested renters browse those ratings.”

I couldn’t believe I missed this news and it sounded too familiar to pass up. Besides, it’ll be a great opportunity to persuade the city to open up more of its data by showing the value of what could be: a site that uses every relevant piece of city data, including still-closed housing violations and lawsuits, to force slumlords to shape up and reward responsible landlords for the first time with free marketing and a flock of renters eager to do business with an honest professional.

If you know anyone that lives in New York, please like my Facebook page, and in February vote for StableRenters in the BigApps Challenge. It will make your life and city better.

There’s the physical space of weSpace, the co-working hub we’re launching for entrepreneurs and digital creatives. There’s the social space where we connect innovators through technology, collaboration and creativity. And there’s the space between the ears where we consider our place in a shape-shifting world.

Space matters. It can inspire people to do great things. To engage one-another. To think more deeply. To innovate and make a difference. Space inspires us.

But like great expectation, great space just doesn’t happen. It unfolds in time. “The future enters us slowly, as if to transform us, long before it happens,” the poet Ranier Marie Ilke counseled.

Space must be designed. Carefully, bit by bit. Steve Jobs put it this way: Design isn’t how it looks, it’s how it works.

We Media emerged a decade ago with a prescient and somewhat ominous (at least for some) design: Networked technology would enable everyone to set the agenda for what we know, how we work and how we live. In the world we designed in 2002, control shifted from traditional institutions to everyday people. Media was democratized; power flowed to citizens.

Many people see this as the Internet revolution. It is, but not the way they think. While the “digital everything” was the first law of We Media back in 2002, it was also a foreshadowing of a social revolution to come. The age of access that we saw coming a decade ago is patently obvious today as people everywhere design or redesign their place in a connected society. The implications for just about everything are profound.

Design sits atop our agenda for the visible future. It is the way we interact with the world. It’s how and what we see, how we organize thought, how we translate concepts to others, how we create, how we express ourselves. Design brings us closer to communion with the ineffable in a period of enlightened anxiety.

Watch this space.

New plan: Build small app, get data from city government, make app bigger, spend less money.

Since my last post I found a developer after months of looking. It was a team of three techies, highly skilled in data scraping, visualization and database architecture. They had everything I needed, and if I went with them, I’d be on my way to launching a great beta site and be dead broke at launch day. Data scraping from very old and finicky databases can cost a lot of money.

But after some helpful conversations with Stowe Boyd (@stoweboyd) and Anil Dash (@anildash), two of the We Media Mentors I was introduced to during the Pitchit Challenge, my new plan is to make a small app that functions for about 50 addresses, and show it off to city agencies in hopes of persuading them to hand it over in a usable form. This allows me to save money otherwise spent on data scraping, and forces me to build relationships that will no doubt prove vital.

The New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) produces this data by taking tenants’ complaints, conducting inspections, issuing violations, and occasionally bringing legal charges against delinquent landlords. Whatever administrative fee is needed for HPD to part with this data must be nothing compared to the costs of scraping the data of 1 million addresses myself.

So, forging this kind of relationship will certainly be an important step for Stable Renters. But the collaboration created will exponentially increase the impact of HPD’s work, allowing New Yorkers of all kinds to make sense of the important datasets they produce and put them to good use every time they rent an apartment.

With NYC’s Road Map for the Digital City and a newly created position of Chief Digital Officer (former We Media contributor @rachelsterne), this type of relationship is not unfathomable. Stable Renters is just one more way for the city to get the maximum value from the wealth of data it produces every day. HPD recently released its Property Registration information (aka the identity of the landlords and management companies for most rental properties) through NYC’s Open Data hub. This information should change next year as the effects begin to be felt by Intro-87, a city ordinance passed in August 2010 that will require landlords to provide real names and addresses for all human (not corporate) stakeholders holding 25% or more of a property. This will make it harder for landlords to hide behind a different corporation name for each building they own, and easier for tenants to find out who actually owns a building. That’ll be a great day for New York City.

For story-tellers and publishers, the app from filmmaker Steve Rosenbaum and developer Jeff Soto of Tendigi also explores new territory and a new template for digital books – in this case, a collection of stories told mainly through video.

Better known as the Twin Towers, the skyscrapers of the World Trade Center became an iconic symbol of New York City when they were completed in the early ’70s. They dominated the skyline of lower Manhattan and gave substance to the city’s unabashed conceit as the greatest on earth. For the past decade, they have also symbolized the nation’s worst terrorist attack, the rubble and crater where the towers once stood a gaping void in the city’s and nation’s psyche. Now, construction of new skyscrapers is under way, along with an underground museum and outdoor memorial designed by architect Michael Arad that will formally open to the public on Sept. 11, 2011.

Rosenbaum’s digital story of the World Trade Center is an app in the sense that it works only on the iPad. The story itself is told mainly through videos collected from a variety of sources, along with photo galleries, a smattering of explanatory text and a timeline. The format is especially well suited for the videos. A book full of videos – that’s a new kind of thing and it’s engrossing, like a good book. Unlike a book, the app experience has no beginning or end. That’s “non-linear” in geek speak. There’s no right way to “read” it.

The app will be available in the iTunes store Sept. 1, where it will be free until Sept. 12. Then the price will be $9.95. Click here for more about the app.

Creator Steve Rosenbaum is an old friend and longtime participant and contributor to We Media. He’s also the author of the recently published Curation Nation and founder and CEO of tech startup Magnify.net.

I asked Steve to share some insights into how and why he took this approach with the 9/11 anniversary.

Q: How did you build it? Literally – what tools did you use?

A: I knew I wanted to create something different. A ‘book’ that you could read, or a series of photographs that you could explore, or a collection of videos you could watch. And I knew that this story would have different audiences that would want to explore it in their own way, from their personal point of view.

So I sketched out the user interface on paper, and then downloaded wireframe elements for Photoshop. From there, I designed and created a working blueprint of the UI.

Once I’d come up with the idea of Past, Present and Future as the overriding navigation – I added a Gallery feature so that users could go deeper in either video or photographs, and a timeline so that readers who wanted a linear history could find that in the app.

Now, I’m a writer and a photographer, and a filmmaker – but I don’t write code. So I went out looking for a developer who’d work with content apps before and had a real love of the iPad look and feel. I found Jeff Soto at Tendigi – a development shop that is deeply rooted in Apple i0S development. He was able to bring a project plan and a development timeline, and in addition to writing the app, his team did a great job created the graphic elements that make the App’s UI easy to engage.

So, I did the wireframes and pulled the images and edited the videos and the Tendigi team wrote code, and turned my sketches into pages.

The content came from the work I’ve been doing at the WTC site for the past 5 years. I have almost 22,000 images, and 300 hours of video. I’ve been covering the story since it 9/11/01 – and so I’ve been able to develop amazing relationships on the site and with many of the key participants.

I’ve been shooting in HDV -in a dual system that records to Compact Flash Memory cards and HDV tape on a Sony HVR Z5U HD camera. I’ve got 14 terabytes of storage to back up the cards, and then the tape provides a secondary backup. For the stills i’m shooting on a Canon 7d.

The important thing to know is that this App is an early take on the subject, and I’ll produce a feature length documentary once the National 9/11 Memorial Museum opens in September 2012.

Q: Why this story? I know you’re a New Yorker. So are lots of people. I know you’re a film guy. So are lots of people. How did you wind up with this story?

A: As a filmmaker, you mostly get to choose your subjects. But the story of the 9/11 Memorial really chose me. I’d made 7 Days In September and frankly thought that was all I wanted to do on the subject. But as the site was cleared, and then the designs became public, I found that I was drawn back to the site again and again – trying to understand what was being built and how it could possibly fill such a terrible loss. When I saw architect Michael Arad’s designs for Reflecting Absence – I knew I was going to follow the story until the site construction was completed.

Now it’s been five years – and I’m proud that the remarkable team at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum have allowed me into their world. Day in and day out – the work they’re doing is demanding, complex, and important. What they’ve built on the Plaza is elegant and powerful. It honors those who lost their lives, while at the same time embracing life and offering the city a space that will help return lower manhattan to the city. Underground, the Museum under construction will i think suprise even jaded New Yorkers with its complexity and it’s throughout history of the events.

Q: Why an iPad app?

A: Building an app wasn’t a forgone conclusion. I knew I had a unique collection of editorial elements, text, video, and photographs. My first thought was an eBook – but the more I learned about the format the more I understood that it was primarily a textual format with video and photo’s as an add-on. The Kindle, a device I love, wasn’t going to make it possible for me to share the media elements the way I wanted to. Sure, I could have built for Android, or even for iPhones, but I wanted to be on the iPad first, and given the tight timeline, I had to make a choice. The iPad has a 30 million unit footprint, and that’s around the world. I know that 9/11 is a world story – so it seemed like the right platform.

I wouldn’t say it was an experiment. For me it was an evolution. I’d just had my first book come out – and having it in stores as Borders went out of business reminded me that the evolution from physical books to digital books was well underway. Yes, I could have done a photobook, but then I wouldn’t have been able to share my video – which I think is pretty important for this project. So I was ready to do a digital project, and the App format was the best fit.

Q: What did you learn with this project?
A: I’m very much used to telling stories from beginning to end. Taking the reader by the hand and going on a Journey. But 9/11 is a story where doing that is likely to turn off as many readers as it engages. If you were 12 years old in 2001, as my older son was, you don’t need to see the ‘day of’ video ever again. You lived it. But if you’re my younger son, who was four years old on 9/11, then maybe you need to see the day to understand what happened – how the sky turned dark as night in the middle of the day.

Giving readers the material to take their own journey is a leap of faith – it’s in some ways harder than a piece of linear narrative. Because you have to trust the reader to engage, and explore, and find their way out of the story. Not all readers will do that – but I hope many will.

Q: What do you want people who use the app to learn or feel or do?

A: The Memorial is in some ways deceptively simple. Big empty sky where the buildings once stood, massive voids where the footprints where. Arad’s design is complex, and the story of how he conceived of it is remarkable. So getting to meet the architect, and listen to him tell the story in five, six, even seven minute segments is something I hope people appreciate. No news story, or even documentary film would be able to let him tell his story this way. I want people to come away from the app understanding what was built, how it came to be, and why it is in many ways a triumph – it is something New Yorkers and Americans will be proud of.

Q: I know you’re a documentary guy, a story-teller, a New Yorker. Still – aren’t you tired of watching 9/11 videos? 9/11 sucked. How does your app about 9/11 NOT suck?

A: The app is most certainly not about 9/11. If fact, probably less than 10% of the app covers the day of 9/11. It’s about the 10 years, the construction, the memorial, the artifacts. It’s about the future, not the past. And it’s a future that I think has the potential to be looked at as an effective and emotionally pitch-perfect project. If you can visit the site, the app can service as primer that helps you understand the site and get oriented. If you want to visit, but can’t make the trip – then the App is a way to answer the question: “what did they build at the WTC site” and give people a hands-on understanding of the Memorial.

Q: How does a tech startup CEO find time to write a book, make a documentary and build a mobile app about the nation’s greatest crisis in half a century?

A: Well, the book I wrote, Curation Nation, is about the emerging practice in editorial of organizing content in to a coherent narrative from multiple sources. Happily, that’s what Magnify.net does – so writing book that helped me understand the field that I need to both understand and lead. The app too is curated – there’s content from the construction of the Twin Towers from YouTube, and links to news sources and blogs in the Timeline.

The video in the app is powered by Magnify.net, so for me and my team – learning how to build an app with video that was embedded, powered by our platform, and able to be updated from a web interface was a great piece of learning.

I think for a CEO of a company that makes a software platform for curated content, staying active in curated content is very much part of my job. Curation isn’t something you learn on paper, you learn it by doing it – anything less is just theory. I wanted to put curated video for apps into practice. And we did that.