Youth Venture

Our idea is to create an “Interdependent” website that will be an online web based sustainable community networking hub.

INTERDEPENDENT PROJECT - The Sustainable Matrix
GUARANTEED FEAR FREE SOLUTION SPHERE
http://www.interdependentproject.org
Interdependent - The Sustainable Way~LIVE IT!
We began with our idea to create an “Interdependent” website that will be a private online web based sustainable community networking hub for EcoVillages and sustainable communities. Our mission is to provide a space that facilitates the communication, connection, and sharing between both small and large communities of individuals who declare their “Interdependence” and share a deep commitment towards educating, building, researching, and living within the interdependent and sustainable systems matrix.
We sent in our proposal and after getting approved by the selection panel we began working on implementing our action plan. We submitted our proposal at the end of October and by December 7th we were awarded our seed grant. We did not receive the grant in the mail until the 2nd week of February and by then 2 of our team members had to veer off in a different direction due to economic hardship and some family problems.
We entered a Keen Footwear contest and submitted a great proposal in the hopes of getting some more support for the building of the web portal (which we did not win) and worked on refining our mission during March and at the beginning of April an opportunity happened that caused us to revamp our strategy again.
One of our team members suggested that we look into "internet radio" and when we typed it into a google search a company came up that was a platform where you could broadcast your own radio show for free so we looked at the "categories" and when we saw that there was no "sustainability" category we emailed the platform to request that they add that category for our show.
The customer service director emailed us and asked us to give him a call to tell him more about what we were planning. We had a conference with him and he got super stoked about our idea to have a show focused on "sustainable solutions" that would be completely free of the typical "doom-gloom" and fear based rants that we are usually bombarded with when attempting to access info about sustainable living. He talked about the "niche advertising revenue potential" which would benefit his company - He emailed us a couple days later and said he had great news for us and wanted us to call him. When we called him he told us that the company was not only going to add a category for our show but was going to give us our own "channel" for free - he told us that we could not tell anyone though and may have to sign a non-disclosure agreement because the channels cost around 10k a month - he said that the company only had 3 channels and that it was still in the process of launching them. We could not believe what an opportunity this was - the company had a shared revenue program for advertising and he told us that if we brought in our own advertisers we could earn 50% of the ad revenue to fund our project.
This meant a serious shift in our strategy so we sat down and laid out a plan to invite the "best of the best" educators, leaders, organizations, and communities to be interviewed for 10 different "shows" related to sustainable living. The first thing we did was contact some more key people who we invited to become a part of our team - at the time we only had 3 people including me. Over the next 2 months we worked day and night learning things we never dreamed we would have to learn about radio production, the advertising business, setting up a media company, program scheduling, how-to-do interviews, live broadcasting, and business proposals - an incredible learning spiral. We set a launch date for June 22 but by the beginning of June we knew that there was no way we could launch the website and radio channel by then with all the things we still needed to do so we set the launch date for the end of August. We had received an enthusiastic response from everyone we contacted to be interviewed and we had also decided upon 10 businesses that we would be proud to have sponsor the channel's 10 shows - companies who we called our "Top Ten Pioneers of Sustainable Business". We worked with the advertising director trying to figure out all the in's and out's of the proposal business and I have to tell you it is super complex in many ways. We contacted organizations who we felt were the best organizations with sustainability missions and began forming alliances and making plans to give them radio time on our channel as well as recorded about a half dozen interviews with awesome individuals within the sustainability movement. We had been sending emails to the director at the host platform all this time giving him constant updates of our progress and requesting that he please give us a "letter of intent to broadcast" so that we could send it along with our proposals. That was at the beginning of June and by the end of June he still had not provided the letter despite his partners reassurance that he was working on it.
At the beginning of July I took a trip to Colorado for two weeks and we had set everything up before we left to make sure that when I got back that we would go full steam into the launch. Upon our return we emailed the director and asked him what the hold up was all about and he told us to call him. When we called him he said that the company owner who said we could have the channel had changed his mind and that we would now have to pay for the channel......"WHAT THE F#*$%????? - We came a little unglued to say the least - our hearts hit the floor like a 3 ton block of cement - "WHY????" - He said that he had simply changed his mind and that "something given for free can be taken away"....
Okay...so what now? We have full on engaged in the launch and promised all of our guests that their interviews were going to be broadcasted on a platform with hundreds of thousands of listeners, engaged in serious commitments with organizations and communities - we begged him to talk to his boss again or allow us to show him what we were bringing to their platform and he denied us completely because he said he did not want to lose his job....okay....whatev...It was the most horrible feeling having trust shattered like that and the rage was intense inside of all of us. The old saying of "get it in writing " and ideas about not being able to trust business people who only care about money kept playing like a bad skipping CD...
Our team's mentor told us that this was the cross roads - this was the place most people give up and choose to become victim's to failure...we had a choice - as long as we did not focus on what was happening as a set back but a sign from the universe that something better was waiting for us and if we let go we would be able to open ourselves up for a solution to a very serious challenge.
2 days later we contacted another host platform - a professional platform that charges money to broadcast to see how much it would cost to move our whole production elsewhere....
We told the producer we spoke with all about what had happened - sent her our guest interview roster and slide show we had made of our 10 shows and she was completely blown away. She knew all about the company and she spent a couple hours on the phone with us filling us in on the internet radio industry and going over several strategies for being able to move our production onto their platform without having to come up with thousands of dollars that we did not have.
It took us 4 weeks to find an investor that could put up a small down payment on a one year broadcasting contract where we would have professional executive producer, engineers, full company support and a platform that receives 5+million unique visitors per month ----now this what our guests deserved and we felt a new wave of energy and commitment towards the project.
Full steam ahead we told our guests and growing list of pre-launch community members that we had upgraded without going into all the gory details - if any of them ever read this profile here all I have to say is "We were determined to deliver what we promised no matter what".... :-) We signed a contract with the new host platform and they partnered with us to be the featured show on their new "Green Talk Network" - we would be broadcasting 3 days a week at the noon hour. This was way better than the crazy 24/7 channel that we would have to manage - our mentor was right - and although we made a serious commitment with a contract the new company was completely professional and they created a way for us to make small payments spaced out over time. A launch date for the radio show was set for January 5th, 2009 - giving us some more time to create the kind of production that would honor the guests (who now numbered 30+ awesome pioneers of sustainability)
Now mind you - we had been keeping ourselves just barely above water ourselves and the small seed grant had been long ago invested in our marketing strategy for fundraising - we realized that our project was now way outside of the parameters of our original proposal but the intent and mission were completely intact - we were now on our own in many ways venturing into the realm of "nothing is ever gained without taking serious risks" - the worse thing that could happen already had in our minds and we decided to put our faith and trust in the human relationships that were the bedrock of our project.
We had hoped to be able to launch in September but one of our elder team members needed our help with his project that he was developing to be a web portal where the "political" conversations (that were bound to come up on our site because of the "sustainability" core theme) could be directed to - we had been learning a great deal about the movement as we were building this project. We also developed comprehensive content guidelines that would serve to keep our "solution" orientation the focus of all interviews and website content.
By the end of September we set a website launch date for the web portal for November 11th - we worked day and night again building and refining our project's brand, slogan, focus, categories for the shows and website, contacting the first four communities that would be populating and helping us to build their private network with their feedback, scheduling interviews, learning more web stuff including video production, and making first contact with our "Top Ten" business community who we were depending on to sponsor the radio project. We also had a new team member who brought a huge information asset to the project that would be the featured program that we could offer member communities.
The elections proved to trump our plans and our newest member helped us to coin a motto for our process - "Laugh and Plan in Conjunction" - the whole process was so intense and filled with stress that there came a time when something inside us had to surrender to the laughter and pure enjoyment of the ride that had seemed to have taken on a life of its own. 3 and 4am sign-off times at the laptops became the norm during this time and finally - on December 4th - the web portal went live!
http://www.interdependentproject.org
and this is just the beginning...
...Dream It....Do It.... I hope my story inspires others to not only Do It - Don't let anyone or anything stop you - because they will try ~ but it is your choice...don't give up... problems are always seeking their solutions....
In Sustainable Solidarity
Daniel