Citizen Science Business Models - An Idea Worth Exploring

Thank you all for your feedback.  With your advice I put together, and submitted, a proposal for the upcoming Citizen Science 2015 conference.  It's a favorite topic of mine and one that is essential to moving our field forward "For Love and Money: Business Models that support, benefit from, and share the rewards with, the work of citizen scientists."

This is an ambitious talk for me but one I feel is important.  In many ways I can only scratch the surface in a PowerPoint presentation to a conference room of citizen science professionals.  But it will kick off a whole series of follow-up reports on this blog about the topic.  There is much good background research that can't be included without overwhelming the audience, but is perfect for an online environment.  There are also nuances, subtleties, and sub-categories of information that are vitally important and can't fit on a Powerpoint slide.  But mostly I want to keep the conversation going long after the conference ends.

I'm doing this in my strong belief that the citizen science community can make important discoveries and support research that provide value to profit-making companies, and they deserve to be rewarded for that service.  But that money is also needed to support citizen science research and pay for investments that will expand what citizen scientists can do.  Research costs money and it has to come from somewhere.

Conferences also cost money.  And in true citizen science fashion they are hoping to crowdfund through the company Razoo for a significant amount of support. I'm hugely appreciative of all the opportunities this conference provides so I'm happy to make a donation.  Won't you join me?  This conference is here to help you but they need your support.  Give a little or give a lot, anything will help.

See you in Palo Alto!