Hello Everyone. I wanted to welcome all new visitors to the site and subscribers to our blog. This weekend, we had a terrific breakthrough in the progress of OurBlock.TV. We took part in something called StartupWeekend. You show up on Friday, meet people and build a site with the goal of launching that service on Sunday evening at 7PM. Of course, OurBlock is a bit too complicated to be just a weekend project but our working prototype, new color scheme, new logo and some new team members.
For the sake of privacy, I’m not dropping any names in this post (including my own) but I wanted to communicate changes, ideas, planning and some general things for the sake of open communication and transparency as we work closer to getting OurBlock up and running. I’ll continue to do this because a single voice is necessary to ensure there is never confusion in our plans for launching this website and I’m happy to have your support.
The demo at Startup Weekend went beautifully and I overheard that we received the largest applause according to mentions on Twitter. I wanted to copy a few quotes that I saved from Twitter after we completed our demonstration of stats, metrics and get a live demo of the new website.
1. pgkiranLove the concept of ourblocktv.com My Neighborhood is working hard in fighting crime,this can be of great help
2. RT @davemcclure: Solve/Prevent crime in your neighborhood using http://ourblocktv.com (via @ceelee)
3. AndaPROur Block comments about privacy concerns. I like the idea of community involvement to fight crime, but I could understand that.
4. shaigOurBlock is solving a large problem, I want to use their service for my complex
5. ahmed_moussa ourblock.tv http://blog.adamsblock.com/ is probably the most powerful tool created this weekend
6. TimIsHungry Watching @adamjackson present “ourblock”- an anti crime webcam network. Is big brother now ourselves? Interesting dilemma.
7. AndaPROur Block combines live video of neighborhood with opp for people to discuss what’s happening. Great crime fighting tool!
I’m overwhelmed with the tweets our team received while demoing the product at Startup Weekend and we’ll continue these demos as the site progresses and becomes more mature. Overall, there wasn’t a negative comment aside from a question from the audience that asked, “how do the cameras work if it rains?” Great question and the $49 camera works great even when wet.
Moving forward and without revealing any detailed numbers or detailed plan, we have two options for moving forward. Those of you in attendance last night saw our slide that showed the site’s two financing options. There’s actually a third that I won’t be disclosing right now. At the low end, we raise some capital with a goal of profitability within 12 months. This plan involves using an existing Video system like Justin.TV or Ustream.TV for our video recording, hosting and sharing. This is our best option for a fast launch, a cheap operating cost and more money going to charity instead of into engineering or R&D.
There is another option that requires we build the entire thing ourselves and we’re exploring the exact cost of this but it’s not cheap and it will mean the site will take 8 months or longer to deploy and cost more and less money will go to charity for the first year while we try to get the site up. Neither myself or Adam want to follow this path. We want to put the site up IMMEDIATELY and grow extremely fast with very little overhead and have every single penny go to charity. This has and always will be our goal and if not giving money to charity is the only way to get the site up then we won’t do it. That’s the reality of this.
I also wanted to clarify something that I’ve been receiving inquiries about via Email. Adam Jackson is the creator of this project and my chief adviser but as a company, I’m currently acting alone. Adam is unpaid and is graciously helping me with this project to ensure the scope of AdamsBlock / OurBlock remains unchanged and on schedule. His contacts and insight have been amazing and I’m lucky to have him around. I want to stress that this isn’t Adam’s Project and unfortunately, he’s still getting hate mail. It’s very sad and I wish it would stop. Send it to me instead (owner@adamsblock.com) and I’ll gladly mark it as spam.
The future? It’s uncertain right now. I can say that nothing will be publicly available for you guys until at least September. It looks like we’ll be launching the site on the 1 year anniversary of Adam’s launch of the site which was on October 16th, 2008. We’ll see how that plays out but I’m trying to make it sooner.
I wish I had more to share with you at this time. I did want to once again thank you all for the continued support and we’re anxious to get this launched. All inquiries can be mailed to us and we’re always looking for OurBlock broadcaster signups.
One more thing. A new AdamsBlock.com site design will be up today Stay tuned.
