Thanks to the advice of a friend this blog was created midway through my first Kickstarter!
Now it’s the Final Post. This is the first public acknowledgement and personal reflective statement that I have avoided doing for entire month since the end of the CanU Kickstarter.
During my Kickstarter Campaign I created the CanU Play Day experience in NYC and engaged children and parents of all ages! Everyone had a lot of fun, brains were energized, and people discovered how to play and think at the same time.
This project began when I was a Junior in college. Thanks to the patience and prodding of some teachers, I designed a toy that has given me lessons in protecting intellectual property and the power of publicity. While I was learning the hard way, CanU enabled children and adults to think in 3dimenions as they built, balanced, connected, and played.
Without fully comprehending the ramifications of any patent law, I produced and sold prototypes to the public in 2010. By “disclosing” my toy CanU was rendered un-patentable.
While I had a great product relatively few people heard about it. I lacked an awareness of how important marketing and publicity is in the success of a campaign.
Recently friends have encouraged me to think of it not as my Failed Kickstarter, but my First Kickstarter. By changing a single word my entire perspective shifted and helped me refocus on creating new things.
My toy like anything “designed”, began with a process. By following the steps, it led to the creation of CanU. Following any design process will yield insights and enrich our understanding of the subtleties in the world around us.
Now I am exploring the common threads that all design processes share and I want to invite as many people as possible to participate and solve problems that matter.
Together we (The Joes) are going to have the opportunity to practice new forms of thinking at different scales and contexts to create products, services, and business ideas.
In addition I will be interviewing professional design thinkers and practitioners (The Pros) to learn about their unique process and discover how it is different or similar.
In the final collection readers will be able to see how all of the creative problem solving processes relate to one another and what ideas were created at the end. Readers will also be able to compare ideas between the Pros and the Joes.
By participating in any part of the processes you help create the project and a resource for future problem solvers.
For more information about my new project please visit:
http://www.peopleprocessproject.wordpress.com
Keep making!
Kenny
CanU Imagine? 
Hi Kenny – curious to know why you think it didn’t work out and what you’d have done differently (or what you will do next time?)
Hey Elan,
I didn’t really grasp how early you must plan your press in advance. I basically gave a weeks notice (or less) to bloggers and journalists. After speaking with a professional publicist she explained to me that you actually need to give 4 to 6 weeks notice to get placed in a publication, last minute attempts just look desperate or worse.
As to what I would do different… I definately will be planning my press in advance because as I learned, you might have the greatest product in the world but if no one knows about it, it won’t go anywhere.
In terms of a Kickstarter’s success you need to “move the needle” to reach your goal. A $1 pledge is a barely a drop in the bucket if your goal is $15,000 but it’s more significant if your goal is $2,000.
Still people will support your project if they believe in the idea, so give them the means to express their belief.
Feel free to ask any other questions!
cool – that makes sense.
So is there going to be a CanU push #2 at some point?
Well if there will be it won’t be with the same strategy. While it may be a good toy, the fact that it can’t be patented means that it really can’t be mass-produced since no ones investments can be protected.