The Art of the Kickstarter Stunt

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The Art of the Kickstarter Stunt

sparkhouseRunning a Kickstarter campaign is hard. The headlines from groups like Pebble and PrintrBot, breakaway successes that completely explode onto the internet, are what stick out on our Facebook and Twitter feeds. More likely, though, the Kickstarter campaign is an intense, month-long grind.

If the project is off to a slow start, it’s common for the project creators to start pulling out all the stops to try and get their project over the finish line. With the clock ticking down and the tested patience of friends and family, it’s a moment that calls for quick thinking and unorthodox tactics. I call this moment the Kickstarter Stunt.

I’ve seen people try to host events. More commonly, I’ve seen campaigns try to offer a new reward level (we did that with OpenROV). But today Zach Supalla sent me a link that really took the Kickstarter Stunt to another level: he’s open sourced the Christmas lights on his house, allowing anyone to log in and control his house lights from their browser.

In an effort to appeal to the internet’s inner Clark Griswold, Zach has rigged up his house to spread the holiday spirit in a way that highlights the unique, internet-controlled possibilities of the Spark Devices he has created. You can log in and control the house for yourself here.

I hope this pushes Spark over the finish line. It’s worth my shillings. Touché, Zach.

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Co-Founder of OpenROV, a community of DIY ocean explorers and makers of low-cost underwater robots. Author of Zero to Maker. And on Twitter!

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