....sounds excellent - - - so while you work on the
wiki - universe - to get this started, please begin a
group someplace online..... I'd suggest
While it sounds like a good project, I don't
think
it's is something
the Wikimedia Foundation would run. The WMF aims to
provide
information to the public, which isn't really what
your project is
about. Wikia (
www.wikia.com) might be interested,
they have a wider
remit.
On 19/06/07, Blake West <westb(a)wharton.upenn.edu>
wrote:
Hello, my name is Blake, I am a Penn
(Wharton) student.
I'm envisioning a wiki-project
where
people can go to post the
problems or inefficiencies that they see in their
work or life. The purpose
would be to create a place where those with the
know-how and dedication to
invent and solve problems (like engineering
students or weekend inventors)
can find the issues that need to be addressed.
Like the idea that "necessity is the
mother of all
invention", or
that innovation happens when a problem is at
hand,
this wiki-project would
give people that specific problem to focus their
energies on. Please
contact me (bwest87(a)gmail.com) if you would like
to help me work out the
detials and get this started, or to help me work
through the inevitable
problems that will be faced in making this idea a
reality. I've put two
examples below that originally stirred me to
think
of this problem.
Thank you - Blake
As some quick examples of what I'm talking
about; two students at
Penn recently devised a system to capture weather
probes that usually get
lost by the National Weather Service. The N.W.S.
sends out thousands of
probes per year to gather data, but they lose 80%
of them. Each one cots
over $100, and with the help of these Penn
students, the N.W.S. will save
hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. Yet,
how many people even knew
that this problem existed? Perhaps it could have
been solved sooner, if more
people knew about it.
A different example. I was recently
introduced to a business that
sells bedding for flowers, primarily to
commerical
growers. Typical bedding
is made of coconuts shavings that sucks up water
and the plants then take
water from the coconut shavings. The founder of
this business however, said,
"hey, why don't we put a small
bio-degradable
sheet of plastic inbetween the
coconut shavings to hold more water?" Once
the
original water runs out, the
coconuts will suck up water from the plastic bed
and the plants will have
more water. This means that planters have to
water
their plants half as
much, which means huge savings in time and
money.
Again, however, so few people even knew of
this problem, which is
probably why it took this long to find a better
way to do it. There are
people with time on their hands who would love to
solve issues for the world
(and potentially make money from them), but they
just don't know where to
start. This is where we start. Right here, with
this wiki-project. Please
contact me if you're interested.
--
Blake West
Wharton, University of Pennsylvania '09
bwest87(a)gmail.com
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