Ariel Waldman

(photo of Natalie Villalobos and I at SXSW 2008 via Tantek)

With many creator-types unemployed or between clients, trendhunters expect a new sprouting of startups, echoing the creation of web 2.0 companies from the post-dot-com unemployed. I don’t believe that will happen in the same way. Peoples’ piggy banks are squealing and while web 2.0 companies got started with minimal money, most individuals now don’t even have enough to take the startup step forward.

Rather, I am witnessing a high tide of what I’m dubbing “pico projects” (terminology partially influenced by the recent launch of Picocool). Small projects developed by an individual with input from nearby friends as a makeshift advisory council, with little to no concern for monetization (at least at launch), just the desire to see an idea through to fruition.

Within my immediate circle, the launches of pico projects such as Huffduffer, Baconfile, Picocool and (my own) Spacehack are examples of this new wave. Projects that are more than single-serving sites, but less than a pitched business plan or even what Jason Calacanis has dubbed the $5-10k “microstartup“.

My friend and sometimes advisor to Spacehack, Ben Ward, points out that the shift from startup to pico project is not only due to a downturn (as some of these pico projects are more mini moonlighting outside of day jobs), but to the pervasiveness of tools readily available today as compared to just a few years ago. As a non-developer, this rings clear – my project in its current state uses about the limits of what I can “hack” together on my own without dependency on a developer. But this is also true for developers, as frameworks like Django have more easily allowed for the development of endeavors like Baconfile.

In mentioning this slight shift, Jeremy Keith pointed me to £5 App, a meetup for individual or two creators to showcase simple software that they decided to just go ahead and execute. I particularly enjoy this line from the meetup description:

“The discussion will range from technical (what tools/languages were used during development) to business (building communities, spreading the word, costs and rewards).”

…calling attention to the fact that these projects care more about building communities than how to talk to angel investors.

What are some pico projects you’ve come across or built in the last few months? I’ll link any I find to be interesting from the comments at the bottom of this post.

Other interesting pico projects:
• Not in the comments, but Jeremy Keith pointed me to Readernaut
• Josh McKenty, a colleague from NASA, reminded me of the TinyApps project
• Emily Chang introduced me to 4am Project
• Blaine Cook recently created TinyArchive

Spacehack launched to the public today! I’m really excited to produce a resource that myself and others felt was lacking in the online space community.

Spacehack is a directory of ways to participate in space exploration, interact + connect with the space community and encourage citizen science.

A huge thank you goes out to all my former coworkers at NASA who continue to support me in my outer space endeavors – these ideas come to fruition from a community more so than any individual.

I hope to see Spacehack continue to grow and be a valuable source of information for anyone who wants to get involved in space exploration but doesn’t know where to start.

When I started CupcakeCamp back in May of this year, I had no idea it would be as popular as it was (we had about 300 people and 500+ cupcakes attend!). It was such a rewarding experience to see people from all different industries smiling and sharing cupcakes and meeting new people (what easier way for people to meet than to start a conversation about cupcakes!?).

At nearly every event I went to, people asked me to bring it back, so I’m very happy to oblige and be throwing CupcakeCamp2 this December.  RSVP yourself here and register to bring cupcakes here.

Equally exciting, I received an email from Open Source Cupcakes who will be throwing the first ever CupcakeCamp East! I’m ecstatic that in less than 6 months of the first CupcakeCamp that it has already spread across the nation.

Can’t wait! As always, if you have questions about CupcakeCamp or need help organizing your own, feel free to ping me.

(artwork by Cindy Li)

The first ever CupcakeCamp (inspired by BarCamp and the constant cupcake gatherings in New York) is coming to San Francisco this Sunday! CupcakeCamp was created by Cindy Li, Lynn, Marianne Masculino and myself with support from the cupcake-loving community.

To RSVP to CupcakeCamp, go here. We also have a wiki here.

Cupcakes Take The Cake recently interviewed me about CupcakeCamp and my personal cupcake views.

Can’t wait!

I’ve been digging through a lot of my old work this past week and stumbled across a pitch that was a lot of fun to execute. In 2005/2006, my former agency VML received a RFP from Ubisoft to create buzz for their upcoming release of Splinter Cell 4. I had directed a very large brainstorming session for creating various concepts for the pitch. With an incredibly creative and talented team, we came up with some awesomely insane guerrilla ideas to pitch, but we wanted to somehow prove to Ubisoft that we were able to not only create these ideas, but to actually execute them as well. My favorite projects have always been the ones that I’ve been involved with from creation to execution, and part of the reason I really enjoyed working at VML for so long was to be able to do random things like this.

The night before the pitch, Adam Kellogg, Aaron Weidner, and myself flew in to San Francisco and acquired a generator, a $60k projector, and a minivan. The result is this video. Adam edited the video overnight and we presented it the next morning in the pitch (note: this was never meant to be a viral video). At the end of the video, we turned to Ubisoft and said “now, imagine if that was the NSA building” – their jaws dropped. Needless to say, most of our ideas required a budget for bail.