Reply To: Space Fountain

[Rezwan]

dennisp wrote: No idea what their budget was. Given their scalability requirements I suspect it was fairly high, but on the other hand I think it was mainly one guy who built the initial site.

How much do you think that one guy would charge for the initial site?

Better would be to target specific groups involved in related issues, like environmentalism or energy independence. Also, networking in the silicon valley startup culture, and among physicists and engineers in related fields.

How much do you think specifically targeted networking might run? What would be the budget for that?

I’m assuming this doesn’t happen by itself. You have to ID prospects, make calls, write letters, follow up, visit, schmooze, do lunch, etc. Probably a lot of travel and expense. I’m doing some of this already, but just barely scratching the surface.

I’m asking for #s because we are putting together our strategic plan, and we’ve got a lot of ambitious ideas, but no resources yet to carry them out. Budget is always on my mind. Other organizations seem to spend a lot on this sort of thing.

These strategic scale measures require coordination and specific personnel (people that the “targets” in those circles will listen to, relationships) and a budget, which is a separate (ongoing) discussion – links to come when we unveil the strategic plan.
[em]
What we’d like to focus on here is what individuals can do within their own circles.[/em] Encouraging conversation, and reminding people that it counts. The long tail adds up.

We want to use this forum to figure out ways to support that individual, local scale action.