Idea Lab

How the Spot.Us Garbage Patch Story Got to the NY Times

by David Cohn
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

Today in the New York Times science section you'll find a piece written by Lindsey Hoshaw about the Pacific garbage patch and an accompanying photo slide show. This piece would not have been possible if Spot.Us and a community of over 100 people hadn't come together to fund her trip. It is a great case study for Spot.Us, and arguably the best of the 40-plus projects we've undertaken in the past year. Despite its ambition, and the mound of publicity it generated, the story went off without a hitch. It involved almost every facet of how I imagined Spot.Us could...

• November 10, 2009
• 2 comments

Good, Fast and Cheap: Startups Can Only Pick Two of These

by David Cohn
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

Whenever people ask me about the process of building a website, here's how I explain their choices: "There is good, fast and cheap -- you get to pick two." Spot.Us has quietly started development again. I'll be putting up sketches of a much needed re-design on the Spot.Us blog soon, but you can see a sneak peek at the bottom of this post, courtesy of Lauren Rabaino. Looking back at what has almost been a full year of work, this is the part of building something from the ground up that plays to one of my strengths. It comes down...

• October 12, 2009
• 1 comment

Spot.Us Maps Out Three-Month Plan for Growth

by David Cohn
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

If you want to cut to the chase - the most important link is this simple Google Form where we are collecting feedback on our progress. Spot.Us recently had its second community advisory board meeting at Tech Liminal. We experimented with making the meeting more open by inviting new interns, volunteers and people in the community, so that we could have an open discussion about setting goals. We felt it was important to get as much input into this process from different community members in order to create a conversation about the direction of Spot.us as an organization. On the...

• June 17, 2009
• No comments

How Crowdfunding at Spot.us Has Worked -- and Fallen Short

by David Cohn
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

It has been a year since Spot.Us was officially announced as a project and six months since our website launched. So it is time to reflect back on what we have accomplished, where we have succeeded and failed. It is amazing what can happen in six months! It is far easier to look at one's own project, their baby, and gleefully point out where it has surpassed expectations. Don't worry, I will probably do that in this post. At the same time, however, I feel an obligation, perhaps with an extra critical eye, to point out where it can improve....

• May 12, 2009
• 2 comments

Spot.Us Has Success and Failure in the Same Week

by David Cohn
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

Spot.Us has just had one of its most exciting weeks chalk full of successes and failures. The most interesting lesson is related to the Oscar Grant shooting in Oakland California. It is a tragic event that occurred where a Bart police officer shot and killed a young man. The entire event, caught on camera, has touched on deep seeded issues of class and racism in Oakland. Subsequent protests turned into civil unrest and the city of Oakland continues to deal with the emotional aftershocks. All this came just four days after we had successfully funded an investigation into the Oakland...

• January 28, 2009
• 3 comments

Growing a Community and The Importance of Being Iterative

by David Cohn
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

As always: If you just want the status update of Spot.Us as a project -scroll down to the bottom for a nice digestible list of what's going down. Or - keep reading for detailed thoughts. This will be cross-posted at the Spot Us blog. Two months ago I decided that instead of sitting on my hands and waiting for a "tada-moment" to launch spot.us, we should just get started by using a wiki and a blog."Best decision ever" (said in the voice Jeff Albertson).Producing something from nothing Granted, the site can best be described as fugly (take a guess what...

• August 28, 2008
• No comments

The Bull Pen is Active at Spot Us

by David Cohn
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

We raised $250 in 10 days to support a journalist. On July 3rd I announced that Spot.Us created a wiki that could accomplish our basic goals: The wiki would allow groups of people to come together around topics, let journalists create pitches and using a 3rd party e-commerce solution, we could crowdfund. Two weeks later, we have successfully raised enough money for our first example of "community funded reporting." Best part: You can duplicate this. I've used no secret technology and I tried to detail the steps I took at the Spot Us blog. A note about this first example:...

• July 14, 2008
• 2 comments