Opinions For This Potential Software Kickstarter....?
I'd like some opinions regarding this project as a kickstarter (sorry, it is long).
Background: I am currently a graduate student studying biophysics. A large part of my job and other scientists jobs in almost any field is analyzing data. Currently there are lots of tools available for this like Origin, Prism, Graphpad, Igor, etc... However all of these programs rely, for the most part, on the manipulation of data using spreadsheets. This is fine for small data sets, but it becomes impractical for large data sets and it just happens to be the case that with improving technologies scientists get more and more data to process. To cope with ever increasing size of data sets scientists turn to writing small programs to handle their data or programming routines in MatLab, perl, python, etc. This has the obvious disadvantage of being time consuming if you want to try multiple analyses.
The Project: The kickstarter would be to fund an opensource, flexible, scriptable, parallelized, analysis platform with an easy to use and intuitive interface with countless models and functions built in. This is accomplished by eliminating the dependence on spreadsheets keeping all of your data in front of you graphically, as objects. A smart and intuitive command prompt will be included to simultaneously allow the user to control their analysis through point-and-click or written command.
Accompanying the software package would be a detailed manual that would actually cover concepts in data analysis with real examples using the software. I.E. how to quickly globally fit your data, when should you use Singular value decomposition etc..
Where the money goes: Money generated by Kickstarter would, in small part, go to fund myself as the primary programmer and manual editor, but also to licensing fees for the programming environment and other libraries i may incorporate. Ideally, i could generate enough funding that the bulk of it could be used to get the code for the platform professionally optimized and ported to MAC OS & linux (I program in c#, which is windows native(.net)). The optimized code would then be published for open access. I envision the software as being a platform where plugins can be used such that the main code would hardly ever have to be updated.
Questions:
Would you donate to this kickstarter, why or why not?
What is a good amount to ask for? I think i would need at least 10k to get it off the ground, but more to get it optimized.
What would you want to see on the kickstarter page to convince you that it is something that is needed?
What type of incentives should i use? Donate X to get your function hard programmed or something physical like a calculator watch?
I have a start to the software right now, but i don't know exactly what to show to make it appealing to people who are not familiar with data analysis. For instance, it looks like a regular Windows program with words and graphs, which is really not that interesting. I could do a visual comparison of my software to what currently exists, but it may not convey the better functionality. Maybe it would be enough to do that and have a features comparison table?
Is there a better forum that you are aware of for funding of a project of this type?
Thanks for your time!
submitted by
PeopleThatAnnoyYou to
kickstarter
Opinions for this potential software kickstarter...
I'd like some opinions regarding this project as a kickstarter (sorry, it is long).
Background: I am currently a graduate student studying biophysics. A large part of my job and other scientists jobs in almost any field is analyzing data. Currently there are lots of tools available for this like Origin, Prism, Graphpad, Igor, etc... However all of these programs rely, for the most part, on the manipulation of data using spreadsheets. This is fine for small data sets, but it becomes impractical for large data sets and it just happens to be the case that with improving technologies scientists get more and more data to process. To cope with ever increasing size of data sets scientists turn to writing small programs to handle their data or programming routines in MatLab, perl, python, etc. This has the obvious disadvantage of being time consuming if you want to try multiple analyses.
The Project: The kickstarter would be to fund an opensource, flexible, scriptable, parallelized, analysis platform with an easy to use and intuitive interface with countless models and functions built in. This is accomplished by eliminating the dependence on spreadsheets keeping all of your data in front of you graphically, as objects. A smart and intuitive command prompt will be included to simultaneously allow the user to control their analysis through point-and-click or written command.
Accompanying the software package would be a detailed manual that would actually cover concepts in data analysis with real examples using the software. I.E. how to quickly globally fit your data, when should you use Singular value decomposition etc..
Where the money goes: Money generated by Kickstarter would, in small part, go to fund myself as the primary programmer and manual editor, but also to licensing fees for the programming environment and other libraries i may incorporate. Ideally, i could generate enough funding that the bulk of it could be used to get the code for the platform professionally optimized and ported to MAC OS & linux (I program in c#, which is windows native(.net)). The optimized code would then be published for open access. I envision the software as being a platform where plugins can be used such that the main code would hardly ever have to be updated.
Questions:
Would you donate to this kickstarter, why or why not?
What is a good amount to ask for? I think i would need at least 10k to get it off the ground, but more to get it optimized.
What would you want to see on the kickstarter page to convince you that it is something that is needed?
What type of incentives should i use? Donate X to get your function hard programmed or something physical like a calculator watch?
I have a start to the software right now, but i don't know exactly what to show to make it appealing to people who are not familiar with data analysis. For instance, it looks like a regular Windows program with words and graphs, which is really not that interesting. I could do a visual comparison of my software to what currently exists, but it may not convey the better functionality. Maybe it would be enough to do that and have a features comparison table?
Is there a better forum that you are aware of for funding of a project of this type?
Thanks for your time!
TL;DR I want to get funded to write software to simplify and speed up data analysis for scientists. Would you contribute if you weren't a scientist? Could a cool incentive push non-scientists to donate (nerdy things like pocket protectors or calculator watches...)?
submitted by
PeopleThatAnnoyYou to
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