Gamesmaker Funding
I have been trying to raise funds to help with the costs of Transport and Accommodation during my time as a Games Maker at the 2012 London Olympics. As well as trying to raise funds using Crowd Funding I have also been looking to see what other help there is out there. I have found the following which may be of interest to other Games Makers, unfortunately at time of writing none are applicable for me.
If you are a Games Maker for the London 2012 Olympics there is the expectation from the Games organisers that you commit to the following:
- ten days volunteering, over a potential three-week period;
- personally arrange and cover the cost of their journey to any applicable training and Games Time Venue; and
- personally arrange and cover the cost of their accommodation
If you are a Games Maker from Northern Ireland then you may claim for financial assistance from the NI Volunteers Bursary Scheme, if you are a British Civil Servant and a member of CSSC Sport and Leisure then you can claim 50% of your travel costs plus help of upto £20/night for accommodation for upto 10 nights.
If you live in Leicestershire then you may be able to claim up to £500 from Inspire Leicestershire.
I am still looking.
Moving servers again
I do enjoy the challenge of moving servers but this has been done due to costs.
Once everything has been checked and double checked I will be back blogging
Please do check out my GoFundMe page.
Thanks
Greg
82 Inch 3d TV for Joby
A good friend of mine in the US has entered into a competition to win an 82 Inch 3D tv, please take a look at his blog post http://thebaldfatguy.com/2012/01/03/82-inch-3d-tv-hell-yeah/ and like his video.
Thanks
Greg
Just a quick thankyou
This is just a quick thank you to those that have made a donation to my gofundme appeal. I thank my Friends of off Facebook, some of whom I haven’t seen in 20+ years since leaving school.
The latest donation has come from a fellow Blogger and Entrecard dropper, Doug of ‘Doug’s Missoula Montana Lifestyle‘. I thank you sir for your kind donation and have posted a link on my gofundme page to your blog as a way or saying thank you.
I hate video
Well I hate making them should I say.
As my regular readers know I am giving Crowdfunding a go to raise funds to allow me to volunteer as a games maker in the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games. Well today I had a go at making a video introducing my self and what I am trying to do.
I am not the most videogenic person and my Cerebral Palsy does not help but I did it anyhow, please take a look :
If you like what you have just watched then if you can make a small donation please do so on my Gofundme site.
Crowdfunding rewards – help needed
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned the idea of Crowd funding to raise funds to cover costs of accommodation during my Games Making shifts at the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games.
Well yesterday I created my own GoFundMe page, this allows anyone to donate as little or as much as they like. I was so surprised that within just a few hours I had two small donations.
My next job though is to set some ‘rewards’, this is common practice in Crowd funding, to offer something to funders in return for their funding/donation. Offering rewards are optional but as I don’t like asking for ‘hand outs’, I want to offer some kind of reward to those that donate to my fund but I am not sure what I can offer.
I can offer five reward levels on my GoFundMe page, my idea’s are:
£5 or more – a thank you on the GoFundMe page.
£10 or more – as £5 plus mentions on Twitter and FaceBook
£25 or more – as £10 plus Ad on my blog and Sponsor a Games Maker for a year
£50 or more – as above plus hosting for a year on my server
£100 or more – as £50 plus 5 page web site design
My problem with this is with the last 3, they probably would not appeal to a large number of potential funders and they are not related to what the fund is for nor the London 2012 Olympic Games.
If anyone has any idea’s do please let me know.
New year, old memories
Happy new year to every one.
I am not sure how the subject started but over the holiday period the words ‘do you remember’ where said by someone. I recollected my first every computer. It was a Sinclair ZX 81, which I got 30 years ago this past week. It was marketed in the US as the Timex Sinclair 1000.
Sinclair ZX81
The ZX81 came with just 1kb of memory although you could get ‘expansion packs’, I had a 16kb expansion pack, that plugged into the back (yes that is kb and not mb). They didn’t have ‘proper’ keyboard but a touch key pad. Keyboards where available from third parties but they needed to be ‘hard wired’ into the computer.
My kids find it hard to accept that a computer could run on just 1kb, I told them I actually remember when a certain Mr Gates said ’640K ought to be enough for anybody’, at the time I was programming in Basic on an Amstrad 1512 (Sinclair PC5000 in US) at work and thought wow, it wont get much better than this.
Amstrad 1512
What do you remember from yesteryear that would appear unbelievable to the younger generations?
Crowd Funding
It has been suggested to me in response to myI am a Games maker post it has been suggest that I look into crowd funding. Crowd funding means that you ask many to give small amounts rather than trying to find a one or two large ‘sponsors’.
Have you used crowd funding as a way of raising money for a project of some kind? If so did you use a Crowd funding site? How successful was this method of funding?
Before I can use any of the Crown Funding sites I need to make a personal video setting out who I am and what I am doing. As a disabled person this is not something I am looking forward to but if I have to then I will. I have set my ‘target’ to about $1000, this should cover the most of my accommodation costs without needing too many funders.
If you feel you can spare $10 in the mean time then please feel free to leave a donation at Sponsor a Games Maker or if you have your own blog it would be really appreciated if you could blog about my plea.
Thanks
I am a Games maker
I am proud to confirm I am a ‘Game maker‘ for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games, I am not based at any of the sporting venues which is a bit disappointing but needless to say I am happy to have been selected.
Now it’s time to sort out accommodation but there are two problems, the first is we have not yet been told what our shifts are going to be so we have to either wait or book now for the full 2 weeks for each of the games and pay for accommodation we don’t need, the second problem is the costs. Obviously prices are determined by demand and there are going to be an awful lot of people/tourists in London during the games and this is reflected in the prices being asked. There are councils and camping clubs taking playing fields and charging £20-£30 (about $32-48 USD) per person per night.
Unfortunately this prices are making it difficult for us Games makers, if I book now for just the Olympic games (14 nights) then we need to pay out £280. If I wait until I get my shifts in a few months time then the chances of finding somewhere available will be more difficult. As I am a Games maker for the Paralympic as well then the costs could be between £400-£500, on top of that I need to get to London and back.
Do not get me wrong, I will not be pulling out or anything silly but i have created a site ‘Sponsor a Games Maker‘ in the hope that some one might be able to sponsor me by donating somewhere I can park the camper van or some other accommodation during the games.
If you know of anyone that may be able to help please give them the url above.
Thanks
Mobile network that pays you
A couple of months ago my son, Sam, bought an android phone from Carphone Warehouse with his birthday money. As he was only 14 any contract would have to be in my name and I wasn’t keen on that idea. Fortunately Carphone Warehouse sell their phones unlocked, so you can buy a PAYG phone with a top up with which ever network is offering the best price, PAYG phones are cheaper when purchased with a top up from one of the big networks.
We then started searching for the best payg sim only deal we could find, he’s only 14 so talking isn’t high on his priorities but texting (SMS) and internet is. I found a company called GiffGaff which operates on the O2 network. First off their call and text prices are far better than the major networks, calls costing just 10p compared to 20p-25p on major PAYG providers and SMS just 6p compared to the major networks generally charging between 10p-12p a text.
The call costs aren’t the best bits, the best bits are the optional GoodyBags which you can buy with your balance. These range from £5 to £25 and last a month. Sam uses the £10 Goodybag, this gives you 250 minutes talk time and unlimited texts and internet, what else could a teenager ever want?
It gets better though, GiffGaff reward you. If you give a friend a sim card or if they order one online and they activate it with a £10 top up, they receive an additional £5 credit for free, giving them £15 credit for their first £10, note no free credit is given if they sign up directly at the site without going through a users link. They also give you 500 points for the referal and twice a year they total your points and convert them to money, 1 point=1p so your 500 referal points become £5. This is great as we unlocked an old phone for our youngest son, Chris. It doesn’t have internet and would only be used now and again. This time we topped up £10, the free £5 was instantly added to our balance giving us £15, we have bought the £5 goodybag which gives him 60 minutes call time and 300 texts, in addition to that, for every minute someone calls him, a minute is added to his allowance.
if you take part in the GiffGaff community forum you can also earn points, in September some how I earned 1036 points (£10.36), this and any more I earn before the end of November, plus the 500 referal points from Chris’s sim, will be paid out in December, either by paypal or onto your PAYG balance.
Oh and as long as you top up your phone by £10 every three months you get free GiffGaff to GiffGaff calls and texts.
To summarise, by the end of November we will have spent £30 on credit/goodybags for Sam, we have 1536 points which converts to £15.36 that will be added to his balance in December. If no other points are earned before the end of November then it means Sam would have got 4.5 months of free text and internet + 250 minutes of calls/month for just £6.67 a month.
Chris’s account hasn’t referred any users yet but did get his £5 free credit, giving us 3 months for the price of 2 for him.
Tesco currently have a very basic unlocked mobile for £9.99, we are going to get one just to stick a GiffGaff sim in so the kids can phone/text us for free without eating into their allowance.