Foundation Meetup — Briefing
It was a magical and intense 3-days here at the East-West Ashram for the LifeMaker Foundation Event. We discovered a lot about ourselves and about the future that awaits us.
For all those who couldn’t attend the meeting, here’s the detailed briefing of all the topics we’ve covered:
1. Branding & Logo
Our friend and graphic designer Ria has presented her proposals for the branding. She was inspired by the Cosmic Turtle, the giant mythological animal that carries the world on its back.
Present in almost every ancient culture, the Turtle is known for it’s strenght, patience and wisdom. In Ria’s words:
“It works as a perfect analogy for LifeMaker, while imagining an alternative world and helping people transition to a more aware and fulfilled life.”
This is her first bid for LifeMaker’s official logo:
We’ve all been positively impressed by Ria’s suggestion, and decided to stick with the turtle! In the coming weeks we’ll try out some iterations on the theme and come out with the final version.
2. Animation + Wireframes
While we are working to release the complete interactive prototype of the app by the end of the year, we decided to use some key wireframes already made by our UI-UX designer Amit as part of an animated video-clip, that will explain the main features of our platform from a user’s perspective.
For this video we chose the simple use-case scenario of a young woman that works in the corporate world, and is unhappy about her life. She eventually learns about LifeMaker, and her life is changed forever!
You can check out this simple presentation where the story-line is presented as a comic strip, and where you can exclusively preview some of the app’s screens.
3. The LifeMaker Tribe — Video
We have also showcased the result of last month’s efforts, a 6-minutes video compilation highlighting the best parts of the footage we’ve shot with more than a dozen spiritual and ecological activists living around Dharamsala area.
Many thanks to Soumya and Sreeram, our amazing film-makers that put so much passion and talent in this piece. It was wonderful working together, we feel fortunate to have met you and look forward to more collaborations in the near future!
For all of you who still haven’t had the chance to see the video, we ask to be patient for a week more, as we’re in the process of subtitling and sorting out the last edits. We’ll then release the video both on the social media and on our official website, which is also going through a radical facelift.
4. Website & Forum
All the informational and promotional material we are creating will eventually end up, neatly organized, on our renovated website.
We have also agreed to open up a dedicated forum section where people can register and participate in group discussions about anything LifeMaker-related. We are designing the forum to resemble the forthcoming #RAM section of the app itself, thus giving everyone a chance to become acquainted to its essential functions and terminology before the actual app is released.
5. Crowdfunding Roadmap
Around New Year, we’ll launch a 3-months crowdfunding campaign to cover the app’s development costs throughout the rest of 2018.
We have done some rough estimates, and the budget we’re thinking about is quite substantial (about 100K euros).
Instead of using a crowdfunding platform as we did last spring (and thus lose 15% of the money raised), we decided to set up our own fundraising wallet directly on the website.
6. Outreach Strategy
To achieve such large budget we need a major, well planned and well executed outreach strategy.
We are thinking to focus simultaneously on a massive online campaign that involves social media activists, reaches out to a number of carefully selected organizations and applies for non-profit grants and other fellowship programs, and also on a widespread offline campaign for which we will basically tour the whole India for the first three months of the year and organize events and conferences at different physical hubs and locations.
We have designed a blueprint for two standard types of LifeMaker event: a 1-night talk or conference, and a 3-days gathering or retreat. While the former will be mostly an occasion to present the project and broaden our network, the latter will be a full-fledged holistic retreat that offers the complete LifeMaker experience: self-development seminars, yoga & meditation, arts and crafts workshops, team-building games, tribal dancing and lots more!
If you would like to have one of these events happening in your area, please contact us at hello@lifemaker.us and we’ll try to include you in the roadtrip calendar that’s going to be released by mid-December.
7. Way of Living
On the last day, inspired by the presence and wisdom of our venerable elders Anish, Ranga and Swami Ji, we compiled a first draft of the Lifemaker constitution, a set of spiritual and practical guidelines that will ensure harmony and peaceful coexistence within our network. We called it “Way of Living” charter. A separate update about the charter is to be published shortly on our blog.
8. Organization — Structure and Legal Framework
Finally, we discussed the organizational structure and the legal proceedings that we must follow in the coming months to register the newborn LifeMaker Trust.
The Trust will promote the network distribution while preserving its integrity and founding values. It will be be run as a non-profit organization that promotes social and environmental welfare. Every member in the LifeMaker network will automatically be a stakeholder of the LifeMaker Trust.
Members will cover the network’s operational costs and all the extra funds generated by the platform (eg. donations) will be reinvested into community projects and events. The trust will also issue an yearly transparency report on accounting & finances.
The organizational structure will be made up of three concentric layers of contributors — the “Core”, the “Seeders”, and the “Supporters” — plus an external advisory board — the “Elders”.
Each of the layers, including the core, will be open to admitting new members. What we ask for is commitment to the LifeMaker cause and will to contribute your time and skills to help this project germinate and bloom.
Don’t be afraid of taking the first step:
“Be a LifeMaker. Be the change you want to see!”
