31. Joogle Labs
Welp, this is it. 31 of 31. Over the past month, I’ve shared with you ideas for new technology platforms, Web publications, organizations and initiatives that aim to address the needs and transform the future of 21st century Jewry. As I said in the beginning, not all of these ideas are winners, but hopefully most of them have been illuminating and thought provoking in some way.
It’s been an interesting experiment and I am grateful to all who joined me this past month — particularly those who reached out to offer words of support and direct assistance for several of these projects. I am also especially grateful to my fiancee, Ris, who put up with many a late night with my eyes glued to the screen.
As noted in my op-ed on Jewish incubators last month and in the various subsequent responses, being a Jewish social entrepreneur is not easy. The opportunities for Jewish innovators are few and far between, and even then, the best of these opportunities — and even success itself — can be economically prohibitive.
Frankly, I don’t want to max out two credit cards and pray that one day I’ll raise enough money to pay myself a reasonable salary. It’s just not the lifestyle choice for me. So until my time comes, I’ll be working a steady job and eking out my projects in the twilight hours. (Notice the posting times as of late?)
The thing is, the Jewish community is already cutting my check, and I am a very satisfied digital strategist for a very remarkable organization. But dozens more organizations are leaning on me for advice, and I’ve got all these ideas to benefit the wider community (even with all the progressive political ones aside). Sometimes I feel that, for what I’m getting paid to work on just one organization’s digital strategy, I could be getting to apply myself to the benefit of even more of the community.
With all the talk about mergers, deduplication and resource sharing, it kind of seems like a waste to be limited to just one project. But with the right team, the right budget, and the right host organization…
My ultimate vision is for a Jewish innovation laboratory where a team of creatives and coders focuses their time banging out Web solutions that benefit the entire Jewish community, whether it’s online educational resources (like Jonah and the Pop-Up Jewish Dictionary), communal infrastructure (like a CMS for Jewish orgs or Kickstarter for Jewish innovation), Web publications (not necessarily the raucous ones on 31) or organizationally-specific solutions (like my current projects for Repair the World).
Create an in-house lab at a Jewish community organization like JFNA, or a Federation or foundation or Jewcy or MyJewishLearning. Put together a team of the best and brightest — designers, programmers, copywriters, project managers. Pay ‘em what they’re worth, instead of having them divide their time fighting for scraps. Try to stay out of the way, and let them throw whatever at the wall to see what sticks.
That, I believe, is the kind of risk innovation really takes.
Anyway, a man can dream, can’t he?
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Join us tomorrow as we kick off 28 Days, 28 Ideas, which continues the theme of this blog with 28 more ideas from 28 new Jewish voices.
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