It’s our great pleasure to introduce our brand new crowdsourcing module here on LMR! Its purpose is to crowdsource ideas with the members of the LMR community and see which are the ones the community wants to see made.
To this end, you can upvote or downvote any idea you see just by clicking the thumbs-up or thumbs-down icon. Or just share yours by submitting an Idea. Voting on the ideas is the best way to make your voice heard and express yourself about what you want to see on LMR in the future.
There is no such thing as a dumb idea. So feel free to share yours by posting it here. Make sure your title is explicit enough, and don’t hesitate to detail it in the body of the post.
All the ideas gathering the most upvotes will carefully be considered for implementation. And in that spirit, we’ll also submit some of our own there to see if they resonate with you.
Engage professional builders, Kickstarters, etc - actively market to professional builders to have them come here and post blogs about the trials and tribulations of whatever cool thing they are building. Allow them to post and push their product a bit as long as they ALSO talk about the problems and the tribulations of creating the next cool thing. It builds content here on the site that folks want to view, and it also inspires us to reach to new things.
podcasts section - these podcasts can be instructional, (how to setup ROS for instance), tutorials etc not done previously. - would have to be previewed for appropriateness, can add gamification points for each accepted podcast.
Engage robot clubs and makerspaces around the country - Nashua Robot Builders based in NH has our meetings at makeitlabs a makerspace in Nashua, NH. There is a great synergy between robot clubs and makerspaces since having access to the latter allows one to build better robots unless one has $20K or so in their shop. I know of three others who come here from our club. I know there are other robot clubs around the country. Maybe have a club section where clubs can post meeting dates, content from the last presentation, etc.
Quarterly contests - Prizes don’t have to be much People like bragging rights. Each submission or win adds to gamification points plus a small gift certificate to robotshop.com (maybe $10). Maybe each robot that is submitted during a quarter is automatically enrolled in the contest. Coolest Robot, Most Innovative, Best use of recycled materials,Best Use of Technology. People like these contests; people will be talking about it for a while after winners announced. Creates buzz and makes everybody go back and look at the submissions that won.
Anyways, just a few things I have thought about. Building a community is an interesting proposition. I look forward to seeing what other ideas come out of this “crowdsourcing”.
