Photos courtesy of Dan Wonderly [WonderlyImaging]

In my last column, I featured a group of poets trying to kickstart their way to literary benevolence by way of crowd-funding platform Kickstarter.

No sooner had I published my column than I heard of a local poet and all-around artistic sensation hoping to publish his first book by the same means. “Kickstarter fatigue?” I posited in my last column. On the contrary—Alexander Norelli says Kickstarter is really just beginning to blossom, particularly for literature lovers like himself.

For Norelli, there’s no shame in self—or group—publishing. Not to mention the end result is so much more than just a book—there is also an incredible sense of ongoing community and support.

“I’ve never really tried very hard to get published, mainly because I never wanted to write anything but my own poems,” says Norelli. “I never had much luck getting them published. Now I feel is the time to make a book of it—it’s an intuitive feeling.”

He adds: “2013 sounds like a good year to start out on an adventure.” (We hear you, Norelli.)

Those entrenched in the literary world know there’s a certain stigma surrounding self-publishing, but Norelli is quick to dismiss that.

“My great grandfather did a lot of self-publishing so I never saw it as being a low-brow thing, it was more a way to get your ideas into the world,” he says.

“There is talk about self-published books not having the same editorial process and so the work can’t possibly be as ‘good.’  This is a myth, it’s my belief that good vs. bad in poetry is the wrong question, I think it should be interesting vs. dull.”

A major part of the process for Norelli has been learning the logistical aspects of publishing beyond putting pen to paper (or finger to keyboard).

“The tools that exist today are amazing and make the process accessible to anyone willing to take on a little debt to learn a new skill,” he explains. “Some elitists might fret ‘now everyone can write a book’ but I don’t see any harm in self-publishing, it’s a liberating challenge–like running a marathon.”

Prior to launching his campaign, Norelli did briefly toy with the idea of funding the project himself.

“I remember hearing a story about Spike Lee funding Do the Right Thing with 26 credit cards and was inspired to just take the risk and go for it. I was thinking I would just put it all on a credit card with the hope it paid off somehow.”

But he kept going back to Kickstarter, and what the platform represented to him.

“I just didn’t see much poetry being done through it, and most that I did see was journals and group projects. I didn’t really see any poets trying to get their own books published– though it took me a while to realize that was in fact an opportunity and not an impediment.”

He adds: “I really like the inclusive aspect of it.”

“Doing a Kickstarter helps get people to believe in you, because you really do have to put yourself out there. Making a video made me really nervous, but in the end I just laid it all out there. We are still very early in the age of Kickstarter—few technologies are as empowering to people wanting to realize their dreams.”

Norelli draws inspiration from many sources, but, while times have certainly changed in the publishing world,  he was encouraged to learn Leaves of Grass was initially self-published by Whitman.

“Leaves of Grass wasn’t published by some big publishing house pre-vetted by the greatest poets of his time,” explains Norelli. “It was a risk, a huge one…not only was he a poet he was an entrepreneur, shamelessly so, which I think is truly venerable.”

Some writers have luck with publishing houses, he explains, but Norelli has never been fond of the process.

“I never really liked the set-up of sending your work out for approval and resting all your hopes and dreams on someone else’s judgment—months of anticipation to have some young reader go, ‘boy does this suck!’”

“While a complex editorial process might heighten what is already there, half obscured, it won’t ever put into something what isn’t there in quality to start.”

If anything, Norelli points out, self-published books occasionally suffer from poor design choices. He hopes with his newfound skills he will be able to create “the whole package.”

His advice? “The more you learn to do yourself, the more empowered you will be, and the less expensive the process.”

If his book gets funded, Norelli plans to distribute them himself as “[he’s] always had a thing for the mail.”

“Distributing the books is something I really am looking forward to, not only because I like the mail, but because I look forward to sending the book out to people who are interested in what I am doing,” he says.

And New York City has certainly played a role in shaping the local poet’s process as well: “The loneliness you find here is unlike any other place. Here, loneliness is just another color in your palette. Writing requires more than a bit of solitariness to get done, at least in New York you don’t seem like a recluse because you are holed up in your studio for weeks or months.”

“New York normalizes the habits of the artist and allows them to get work done,” he adds. “Here it seems you are in the thick of the ferment.”

Ultimately, Norelli hopes and believes Kickstarter, and whatever similarly positive, artist-friendly platforms crop up in its wake, will help push the boundaries of what is currently being done in literature.

“Kickstarter is just a means, it is not an end in itself,” he says. “While the many editorial levels in traditional publishing houses can help bring out the best of a work, I would not say they are conducive to trying new things, or testing anything established to make sure what is taken for granted deserves to be.”

photo from Wikimedia Commons

According to a recent article in Mashable, New York is becoming a hotter and hotter site for start-up businesses and entrepreneurs. Where Silicon Valley is king, NYC, for many reasons, is rising in the ranks.

Young and popular companies like Foursquare and Kickstarter, as well as companies like Twitter and Facebook who have building offices here, are highlighting a vanguard of new and growing tech companies.

In April 2011 there were roughly 15,000 relatively new tech up-starts in the NYC area, but now that number has increased by about 11,000, the article says. It also says that…

“Last year, venture investors plowed $2.75 billion into 390 startups in the New York City area — the most money and investments since 2001, when the dot-com bubble was rapidly losing air in Manhattan’s “Silicon Alley” and everywhere else, too. So far this year, $942 million has been invested in 182 startups in New York.”

That number is merely a fraction of Silicon Valley’s funding —around 12 billion, according to Mashable— but it’s surely an auspicious spurt in jobs, opportunities, and innovation. New York is, actually, the second-largest technology hub in the U.S.

According to a May report by the Center for an Urban Future, New York has surprisingly sprung up to second and is the only major U.S. area to see an increase in venture capital deals between 2007 and 2011. It’s seen a 32% increase over the four-year span, opposed to a 10% decrease in Silicon Valley, 14% decrease in New England, 8% decrease in Orange County, and 11% decrease in the U.S. overall. IT is also the leader in NYC since job growth since 2007. (Publishing down 15.8%… uh oh…)

This is eerily similar to the dot com era, but we’re in a better position right now than we were at that time.

“You can get traction before you have to raise money. The tools are orders of magnitude easier,
and so investors aren’t funding ideas… They’re funding businesses”, Frank Rimalovski, the managing director of the NYU Innovation Fund, said in the report.

These numbers mark an auspicious future for the city’s employment, entrepreneurship, and innovation which, ultimately, marks an auspicious future for the city as a whole.

Who wants to start a tech company?!

Mashable

Yesterday a Kickstarter campaign was launched for a new gaming console called OUYA. An hour ago they passed $3.1M pledged, and bet by the time I finish writing this post they’ll hit $3.3M. It’s still got 28 more days to go, and where else are you going to get a $99 gaming console? Seriously.

What’s up with this thing? OUYA is going to be an Android based console. Which means, basically, apps on your TV. Or, really, an App Store on your TV. The idea is fairly solid. Android is a platform that developers are already familiar with and popular games will surely be ported immediately to test the Cash Climate in a new market. The company has said that all the games must have some sort of freeness to them. Whether that’s just totally free, just a trial version, or pay for premium content, or, like, you know, the last boss is absolutely invincible unless you drop a hundo on that dude. I’d want to create the best game ever but make it so the character actually has to eat and you can only get e-food with real $$$. I’d make so much money.

I feel no shame in simply copy/pasting the tech specs:

Specifications:

• Tegra3 quad-core processor
• 1GB RAM
• 8GB of internal flash storage
• HDMI connection to the TV, with support for up to 1080p HD
• WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
• Bluetooth LE 4.0
• USB 2.0 (one)
• Wireless controller with standard controls (two analog sticks, d-pad, eight action buttons, a system button), a touchpad
• Android 4.0

It needs to be noted that the coolest thing here is how open these OUYA guys are to hackers. The box, designed by Yves Behar of fuseproject, will have standard screws so that anybody can jump in there, and rooting the thing doesn’t void the warranty. It’s an open invitation for developers and hardware hobbyists alike to open up on this thing. As of this moment (3:55pm on Day 2 of this Kickstarter drive) there will be 23,859 OUYA consoles shipping out in March 2013. That’s pretty impressive.

It sort of came out of nowhere but with the recent success of Double Fine, Wastland 2, and Shadowrun (so stoked!!) Returns, and now OUYA, Kickstarter and Gaming are like these soulmates and who the heck knew? This should be the model for everything. Instead of pitching to producers, who get all their info on the consumer from focus groups and failed marketing campaigns, developers can pitch directly to us. We know what consumer want because that’s eff-king us.

Of course, now we have to wait to see if these guys can back it up and deliver products that we actually want as much as we imagined we wanted them. That’s going to be a high high hurdle, dudes. But if this works out it could really do good things for the future of creator/consumer dialogue.

Are you going to grab an OUYA while they’re just $99? What do you think?

Follow Carib Guerra on Twitter @44carib

So I’ve rounded up a short list of awesome stuff that is trying to get made right now. The benefit for you is that donating on Kickstarter not only helps to make dreams come true, but you also get cool new/unique products at a crazy discount. Here’s how this works:

1. I tell you what it is in a fun and witty description.

2. How much it costs to get something worth it.

3. When the Kickstarter ends (when no more donations can be made and the project either succeeds or fails).

4. If it’s funded yet (Kickstarter projects that don’t reach their funding goals don’t get made, and donors don’t get charged. It’s safe for everybody).

5. You donate!

Cash Music-
CASH Music is a non-profit organization that gives music artists and labels easy tools to maintain a slick web presence. In jargon we call these ‘solutions’, which is fair. What it solves is the sadness I feel whenever I have to go to a band’s MySpace page which is a somehow demeaning experience for all parties involved.

All the classic bandsite classics are there: Tour dates, Merch, Music, etc. Best of all, the money goes straight to the artist (or whoever maintains the site for them). This is another one of those steps in the right direction for The Future of Stuff.

Cost: 10 bucks gets you a 22 track compilation featuring The Cribs, Deerhunter, The Night Marchers, Andrew Bird, (never-before-heard?) Elliot Smith track, and more!

For $50 you get Beta access to the platform for your, or anybody else’s, band

End Date: March 9th 2012.

Funded?: It’s totally funded already!

Mainstreet MMO-
This is sort of like if Second Life were filled with cool shit you actually cared about. Right now it’s just a model of Dubuque, Iowa, which, whatever, right? But the concept is great: Look around the city at real businesses and landmarks. Sure, Google Earth does this to a degree, but in the long run the Main Street MMO people would have each city constantly updated, as it changes in the real world, by people who know and love their localities.

Cost: Minimum is 5 bucks, but for $50 the programmers will name one of the fake people walking around virtual Dubuque after you. A $50 visit to Dubuque for cyber-eternity? What a deal!

End Date: April 24th 2012

Funded?: Nope!

Ramos Alarm Clock-
Yes! A You-Proof Alarm Clock! If you knew me, you’d know that I am notoriously bad at getting out of bed. At times I’ve set three alarm clocks, each one minute apart, in different spots around my room so I’d have to move the sleep off. But the human mind is a powerful thing, and my blatant genius brain would simply make the rounds when the first alarm went off. The Ramos clock is a well designed deal with tricks to curb even the most genius snoozers.

There’s a button to stop the alarm on the actual clock, so you can keep it safely next to the bed. “But I’ll just unplug it,” you say? Nope. A back-up battery keeps this beast alive for hours post-socket. The only way to kill it is by entering a code on a keypad that you’ve hung in the bathroom, kitchen, or wherever’s most likely to get you out of bed.

Cost: $160 for the LED Ramos clock. $350 for the wacky vintage Soviet-era Nixie tube version. Freakin’ awesome.

End Date: April 1st 2012

Funded?: Totally funded. Expect yours by September 2012. That’s when I expect mine.

Dash: The Smartphone Car Stereo-

It’s a Smartphone Car Stereo, dudes. I support any move to consolidate our digital peripherals. With the powerful potential of smartphone computing, there’s increasingly little reason to collect other half-assed devices. Let bygones be gone like the mp3 player, point and shoot digital cameras, bulky and confusing to operate ‘printed books’, board games, and finally: The car stereo. Dash lets you plug your iPhone 4 or 4S (more versions coming soon) into a specially designed faceplate for your car stereo. Bam. It even charges the damn thing. If somebody had told me 15 years ago that I’d be able to plug my phone into my car I’d have said, “Why?”

Behold: The Future.

Cost: For $250 you can get this solid deal. Awesome. It’s already fully funded so fear not.

End Date: March 21st 2012

Funded?: Yessir.