Convopointer was presented this past weekend at OneSpark, Jacksonville’s major crowdfunding festival. We had an active booth for about 50 hours during the five days of the event and presented a 5 minute pitch on stage!
The disappointing news:
- Convopointer received 86 votes, which is somewhat lower than our hoped-for vote total of 200. Also, this year, the minimum vote threshold to receive crowdfunding was about 150 votes, so we likely won’t receive any funding. (These numbers are still being finalized by OneSpark).
The good news:
- Though there were 600+ total projects being presented at the event, 86 people decided to vote for Convopointer! These 86 people didn’t know anything about Convopointer before, but were inspired enough by our work to vote for us!
- 146 people joined the convopointer mailing list!
- For the projects that got more votes than we did, most had LOTS of people working their booth at all times to talk to more people, and they had computers set up right there for people to vote directly. The fact that we only had one person working the booth for most of the time and, frankly, didn’t do a very good job of nudging people to vote right away makes our 86 votes very respectable!
- Many people were VERY excited about Convopointer and how they might use it. While people were hearing the pitch, it was fun watching for the moment when they “got it” and their eyes got big and many people let out an intrigued “Oh! That’s a good idea!”
- Several people who were very excited about the project came back to the booth a second time with other friends and family members so that they, too, could learn about Convopointer! One man called his daughter in Orlando (about 2.5 hours away) and told me that Convopointer was one of two projects he used as examples when convincing her to make the trip to the event to see all of the cool stuff! (He was right, she did enjoy learning about Convopointer.)
- Convopointer got its first (indirect) political endorsement when Jacksonville Mayor Alvin Brown voted for the project!
Shoutouts to Ben Nasrallah and Terin Kirk for their help during the event!
Convopointer 
During OneSpark, I was asking passers-by for a topic they knew a lot about (so that then I could use that topic as an example about when they might want to place a convopointer on a page).
They topics people mentioned varied WIDELY: Jesus, Montessori, medicine, soccer, education, law, fast food, nursing, Jacksonville, etc. It was cool to hear about all of the different things people know about!