Week 1 of the BRCK campaign

First off, a HUGE thank you to everyone who has tweeted, Facebooked and written about our BRCK project. An even bigger thank you to those who have supported us through some contribution to making the Kickstarter campaign a success. As I write this, we have just topped 500 backers, cleared $75,000 and are at 60% of our goal. Yes, we still need your help to get to 100%, and appreciate you sharing the Kickstarter link widely. It's been a big week at Ushahidi, with the launch of the New Crowdmap, along with the BRCK Kickstarter and the announcement of the MAVC partnership. Everyone on the team is taking a welcome respite from the blitz over the weekend, as we gear up for next week's follow-up. During these times of added attention, it brings other voices and eyes to your organization. Sometimes it takes other people looking at what you do, and then talking about it, to better understand yourself. That happened this week with a brilliant post by Nat Bullard titled, "Backup / On ramp / Good enough" where he crystalized what really makes us tick with this:

"We use technology to define the function.  Ushahidi uses function to drive the technology."

The BRCK as backup generator

This idea of a seemingly simple problem of internet connectivity in the parts of the world which have shaky power and net infrastructure is what led us to question the solutions put before us: routers and modems made for the more developed parts of the world. That's the first part of the story of the BRCK, and it's the thing that drives us to make it real, as we feel this pain every day ourselves.

The BRCK as glue

The second part of the story on the BRCK leverages that idea of simple connectivity and pushes us to use our core competency, which is web development. It's where we see that the BRCK is really the glue between the cloud and the internet of things, where you can connect your devices and sensors in the real physical world, and control them from anywhere.

In the Media

There have been some fantastic media pieces this last week, where it seems like the BRCK has struck a chord with people around the world. There will be a few more newsworthy items over the coming weeks before the BRCK campaign ends as well. MIT's Technology Review started the week off by digging into how this simple technology makes sense to come from Ushahidi, with our background in crisis/disaster. Quartz really understood the value of third-party applications and hardware connectivity. Forbes gets into the details about being offline when the power goes out, and why that doesn't need to be true. Since I was in Germany to speak at re:publica, it was great to have coverage by Spiegel. Matt Berg wrote up a good post, on what excites him about the BRCK, and questions he has for the team. There were a lot more, you can see them here:

Engadget: Insert Coin: BRCK wireless router packs a fallback 4G connection, internal battery

Geek.com: BRCK, emergency internet access that works without electricity

All Things D: Ushahidi Raising Kickstarter Funding for Rugged Hotspot BRCK

The Next Web: Meet BRCK, a piece of hardware that will bring you the Internet when all lights go out

Tech President: Internet You Can Actually Stick in a Suitcase

Digital Trends: ‘BRCK’ is a backup Internet generator for when the power goes out

Discovery: Backup Device Keeps the Internet Up in a Disaster

TechSpot: Meet BRCK - the rugged backup generator for the Internet

Tech Central (South Africa): A new Kenyan project on crowd-funding site Kickstarter is garnering big attention and is fast raking in contributions.

T3: Kickstarter for BRCK, connect to the internet without electricity, goes live

Golem.de (German): Brck sorgt für Netz und Strom

AIT News (Arabic): “BRCK”: جهاز جديد يوفر الاتصال بالإنترنت مع انقطاع الكهرباء

Aliqtisadi (Arabic): تطوير جهاز جديد يوفر الاتصال بالإنترنت مع انقطاع الكهرباء

Alibaba (China): 神奇的上网设备BRCK：无需电源也可连接互联网

Origo.hu (Hungary): Egy téglaméretű kütyü segít, ha elmegy a net

IT Web Africa: Ushahidi turns to Kickstarter to raise funding for 'BRCK'

Google Hangout

We did a Google Hangout for the BRCK this last week too with Heather, Rob, Jon, Angela, and Nat this last week. Here's the recording: