ICT4 Elderly/Online opportunities

Contents of the module

• New developments in the field of digital collaboration and online communities;
• Networking and entrepreneurship online;
• New online opportunities to have an income or financial support to develop own ideas and projects;
• Online campaigns and fundraising;
• The donation culture, wikinomics and other models;
• Personal branding.

Learning objectives

• Teach about the importance of being a part of an online community in order to seize new opportunities;
• Explain how the market is changing and how online opportunities can facilitate entrepreneurship and personal branding;
• Provide understanding and recognition of online opportunities to finance own ideas and projects;
• Teach about the new ways of being entrepreneurial;
• Teach about how to run a fundraising campaign online;
• Present different economic models like the donation culture and the wikinomics, among others;
• Teach participants on how to improve their personal branding skills.

Learning outcomes

• Participants understand the skills and competences they need to develop in order to successfully work with an online community;
• Participants are capable of recognising online opportunities to create an income;
• Participants understand new economic opportunities online (patrons, crowdfunding, subscriptions, investors, etc);
• Participants know platforms like youtube, kickstarter, Indiegogo, GoFundMe, etc to support their projects and products;
• Participants know how to run a fundraising campaign;
• Participants understand new economic models (donations, premium services, wikinomics, among others);
• Participants know how to boost their personal branding skills and their brand.

Learning scenario

• Participants share their experiences about online buying/selling;
• Participants try to imagine how could they earn money online;
• Participants try to define what means to be online entrepreneur;
• Participants are encouraged to discuss freely their perceptions of how it is possible to be entrepreneur on the internet;
• Participants are explained what is online entrepreneurship, how it can help them, how the internet is creating everyday new ways to be entrepreneurs;
• Participants are explained to the importance of being a part of a collaborative online community in order to seize new opportunities and to understand how the market is changing;
• Participants are explained to how online opportunities can facilitate entrepreneurship and personal branding;
• Participants are encouraged to explore Youtube freely and according to their personal likings, find channels or artists they would like to follow or subscribe;
• Participants are presented to other economic models frequently used by online entrepreneurs and companies;
• Participant are presented to introduction to the culture of new digital tools for fundraising.

Evaluation

• Assessment Tasks;
• Assignments;
• Ongoing evaluation;
• Assessment (test/quizzes);
• Feedback exercises;
• Questionnaire.

Following this module learners will:

• Participants will recognise new online opportunities to have an income or financial support to develop own ideas and projects;
• Promote Networking and entrepreneurship online;
• Raise awareness to the donation culture, wikinomics and other models;
• Explain the basics of how to run online campaigns and fundraising actions;
• Understand how Personal branding can help develop an idea.

Introduction

Wikipedia defines an Internet entrepreneur as an "entrepreneur, an owner, founder or- manager of an Internet based business." Therefore, the biggest difference of online entrepreneurs is that the web entrepreneur leverages the Internet to generate income.

In the internet, the income generation possibilities are endless. We need to identify a niche, develop a business plan and work hard to succeed. There’s numerous businesses that an internet entrepreneur can develop, the model of business don’t define an internet entrepreneur.

Every organisation and project needs revenue sources to implement activities, whether the activities will be face-to-face or online. In this module we will be focusing on the donation culture, wikinomics , fundraising and other economic models at the heart of web 2.0:

Donations and fundraising: are already an important part of the economy on Twitch, a platform for broadcasting gameplay. Much of the donation behaviour happens due to the desire to interact with the artist, stand out as a fan or to get a request fulfilled during the live streaming session. The reason why donations are becoming viable is because of live streaming. The “artist” needs to be able to consistently generate content and that takes time and money to develop. The question is: “is this model compelling enough to spend a significant amount of time and energy on it?”

Understanding how donations are becoming viable is easiest by looking outside of the artistic field. Artists have subsisting with donations for many years, but nowadays, many people stream their everyday lives with a lot of economic success. Understanding the Wikipedia and Yutube.com examples of donations will be very useful in this direction.

Successful fundraising implies a strategic plan. Strategic planning and activities of sponsorship are closely related to marketing, press and public relations. It aims at communicating a positive image of the organisation in order to acquire fundraising.

Wikinomics model

Wikinomics is based on four ideas: Openness, Peering, Sharing, and Acting Globally. The use of mass collaboration in a business environment is opening new opportunities to develop new ideas. Mass collaboration relies on free individual agents to come together and cooperate to improve a given operation or solve a problem. This kind of outsourcing is also referred to as crowdsourcing.

The law of participatory media or law 1/10/89%: 1% of Internet users publish content, 10% participate (comments, votes, assessments) and 89% simply consult the information without intervention.

The law of Metcalfe: the utility of a network grows proportionally to the square of its members (although in reality it is to be qualified, because some members are more active than others); Metcalfe's Law simply says that the more users there are in a network, the more value this network will have.

Multi-faceted platforms: they connect several distinct but interdependent customer groups (with potential for interactions). They have value for a group of customers only if the other groups are also present. They increase their value by attracting more and more users (network effect). Example: Google, which provides highly targeted advertising (resale of data and customer habits), eBay, Apple (and its App Store).

The model of the first free dose/sample: customers have the possibility to use the product for free for a small period of time or number of times, like a first class, or a 30day trial period. After, if the customer wishes to continue to use the product, they will have to acquire the full product and pay the normal price. We also talk about the Freemium / Premium model, application to the digital world of the principle of "the first dose of free drugs".

Freemium / Premium model: a large customer segment has the opportunity to benefit from a free offer, thanks to different configurations. Free access provides the leverage to build awareness and popularity. For example, the customers who do not pay are"subsidized" by another group that buys advertising space, donates, or subscribe to a higher offer of services, paying for it, premium services. From the moment people have taken the time to invest in trying to discover the tool and discover their power, the effect it can have on our lives, users are willing to pay for more advanced functions, facilities or simply the absence of advertising.

Example: Flickr, Skype or Google.

Keywords

Online opportunities, Networking, Entrepreneurship online, Donation culture, Wikinomics, Online campaigns, Fundraising, Crowdsourcing, Mass collaboration.

The purpose of the session will be:

• to provide an introduction to the field of digital collaboration and online communities for entrepreneurship
• to facilitate networking and entrepreneurship online
• to discover the donation culture, wikinomics and other models (like Online campaigns and fundraising)
• to motivate participants to pursue online opportunities to have an income or financial support to develop own ideas and projects

Session structure

Group discussion

Trainer starts the session by asking some questions to participants like if they ever bought or sold anything on the internet, how they imagine people can make money online and what it means for them to be an online entrepreneur. Participants are encouraged to discuss freely their perceptions of how it is possible to be entrepreneur on the internet.

Online entrepreneurship

Trainer makes an introduction to the topic of online entrepreneurship and online opportunities. Trainer starts by asking some questions to participants about their previous knowledge about how to fundraise in the internet, what it means to be an online entrepreneur and if it is possible to make money online. Trainer explains what is online entrepreneurship, how it can help us, how the internet is creating everyday new ways to be entrepreneurs. The focus of this exercise should be on how important it is to be part of a collaborative online community in order to seize new opportunities and to understand how the market is changing. How online opportunities can facilitate entrepreneurship and personal branding is also discussed with participants. This segment of the training session is supported by a slide presentation prepared in advance and shared with participants.

Explore Youtube channel

Participants are encouraged to explore youtube freely and according to their personal likings, find channels or artists they would like to follow or subscribe. The second step is to explore their channels, see older videos, and see the evolution of the videos. After, participants will have the chance to discuss their findings.

An interesting YouTube video to watch and share as an Idea worth spreading is: Bruce Benamran | TEDxGeneva:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7Ssa6UEpUQ. Bruce Benamran is a computer engineer that nothing destined to science, except his... entire life. In 2013, as a hobby, Bruce launched into production e-penser.com, a French web series to talk about subjects that fascinated him. 18 months later, he published 50 videos to talk about subjects as diverse Eratosthenes, general relativity or the queues, on average seen over 400,000 times each.

Discussion

Other economic models at the heart of web 2.0

Trainer will present other economic models  frequently used by online entrepreneurs and companies. Models like the Premium/freemium and the model of the first free dose will be explored and a group discussion will be encouraged.

Alternatives to consider, study, discuss in class:

• Amazon Mechanical Turk, Access a global, on-demand, 24x7 workforce, https://www.mturk.com/
• Additional service based on AMT is https://turkerview.com. TurkerView is designed to bridge the gap between workers & requesters through data & communication.
• Hire or work as expert freelancer for any job, online, https://www.freelancer.com/
• Data based model for individuals and communities, http://mesinfos.fing.org/english/ and https://mydata.org/mydata-101/
• Fund placement - investment, https://www.lendopolis.com/

Introduction to the culture of new digital tools for fundraising

The trainer will discuss some of the most used platforms to raise money online (like youtube, kickstarter, Indiegogo, GoFundMe,  etc). It is not the goal of this session to go deeper in any of the tools presented but to present some of the online platforms created to help fundraise. Also to discuss the ideology behind this new business models that have participation and collaboration at their cores. The goal is to understand and recognise online opportunities to finance own ideas and projects and at the same time learn new ways of being entrepreneurial in the internet. This segment of the training session is supported by a slide presentation prepared in advance and shared with participants.

Group discussion

After having the chance to learn about different ways to be an online entrepreneur, participants will come together again to discuss. What are the main things they take away from the experience and what are the main difficulties they believe online entrepreneurs face.

Homework

Participants should read the articles below and share them in any social media platform they use.

• Are donations becoming a viable part of artists’ business models?
• Internet Business Models (30 min)

Debriefing

To wrap up the session, the trainer will facilitate a debriefing moment where participants are encouraged to express their questions, doubts, ideas and feelings toward the topics discussed.

Evaluation

Participants will answer a brief questionnaire to evaluate the session.

Overall duration of the session

1 hour and 30 min

References

• Wikipedia: Fundraising redesign.
• It Doesn't Take Money To Make Money | Brandon Leibel | TEDxSDSU
• The importance of fundraising
• Diingo eCulture group: List of significant practices and behaviours in digital environments.