Free ideas
Ideas are pretty useful. Without them we wouldn't have much going for us as a species – they help drive evolution; keep us happy, busy, warm, satiated.
In the realm of the geek, he who has the best idea is King, or at least, was; something has invaded our space recently: the investor. The investor has turned a world that was once driven by passion — in which the only currency was e-kudos — into a simple search for that ever elusive next big thing.
As a result of this two things have happened:
- Geeks, creative technologists (or whatever the advertising world is calling us these days) have become reluctant to create anything, unless someone has placed a large chunk of cash on the table, and…
- …they are afraid to accept that a bad idea, once it has been brought to life, was a bad idea; terrible products linger on far beyond their fail-date.
The commoditisation of our pet projects has stifled creativity and is beginning to seriously damage developer communities. I wonder how many great ideas persist as ideas, and nothing more, and how many poor ideas we are going to have to suffer before we can claim this world back for ourselves. After all, our tools have become so abstracted that making stuff for the Internet is now ridiculously simple (shh).
So, how do we get things moving again? For that, we need your ideas. Here's mine:
Made by Ideas
Made by Ideas (made.byideas.co.uk) is an attempt to address at least part of the problem: getting those great ideas out of heads and into the open.
All ideas are donated, anonymous and broadcast from a single Twitter account. Anyone is free to take an idea and, in turn, see where it takes them. There's no pressure to deliver, and no penalty for failure.
It's either a chance to see that idea you've not have time to produce come to life, or a place for inspiration when you have an itch to build something.
Here's a little screencast (probably best in HD, sorry, no sound):
Let's stop investing in the future, and start building it.