Success! (And ways to contribute if you missed the Kickstarter)

Running a Kickstarter campaign is not for the faint-of-heart. Five grueling weeks of non-stop self-promotion can really take a lot out of you - even if you're a natural-born extrovert like me. But we did it! We even managed to raise $4,155 over our initial funding goal - though still $3k under our stretch goal to fully fund a Spanish-language version.

Several people have asked if it's still possible to contribute to the project, since the Kickstarter campaign is over and we still need more funds, and the answer is Yes!! We are still able to receive contributions through our non-profit fiscal sponsor, Filmmakers Collaborative, and all donations are tax-deductible in the US. ANY amount is welcome.

Another way you can help is by posting a "Worse Than Poop" selfie. We ran a contest to see how many people we could get to post selfies taken next to a mode of transportation that was either "#worsethanpoop" or "NOT #worsethanpoop". Perhaps not surprisingly, the "NOT" category was much more popular, and images are still coming in - this one from Luis Villa of Costa Rica, taken while visiting the Bay Area! (Can you tell what is 'unusual' about the photo?)

Luis Villa at the Palo Alto transit center - our most recent #worsethanpoop selfie!

To post your own selfie, just take a photo of yourself next to a clean, or dirty, mode of transportation, and a sign that says either "#worsethanpoop" or "NOT #worsethanpoop". Then post the photo on Facebook or Twitter with a hashtag (that's important!), like this: #worsethanpoop. Or, just email your photo to me at worsethanpoop -at- gmail.com.

Bill McKibben Likes Us! (and the Ethics of Flying to a Climate Rally)

With ten days to go in our Kickstarter campaign - and $5,000 still left to raise - I've started feeling a bit desperate. So I wrote to Bill McKibben this morning about our project, hoping he might help to spread the word. It felt like a vain hope - I mean, I've written to plenty of bloggers and journalists already about this project, and most of them don't respond. Plus, I decided to write to the leader of the climate movement two days after some really, truly bad news about the state of the climate came out, and a few hours after his most recent article in Rolling Stone hit the Internet. Getting any kind of a response seemed highly unlikely at best.

So imagine my joyful disbelief this afternoon, when I saw this tweet:

Yes, this is from THE Bill McKibben. And yes, I did tell him we were thinking of attending the climate rally in NYC.

I wrote him back and thanked him, profusely - but what I didn't ask (I hate to bug the guy, he's so busy trying to save the world) was whether or not he thinks that flying across the country to attend a climate rally - ok, THE climate rally - is actually a responsible use of fossil fuels. I have a feeling he would argue that it is. (Read his article - I think you'll see why.) Especially since we would (of course) offset all that carbon. But still. I'm curious.

What do you think? Is it ethical? Are YOU going to be in New York? Why (or why not)?

Bike to Work Day!

Today was the SF Bay Area Bike to Work Day. Elliot and I got up an hour early, to greet people at the CalTrain station.

Kathy Durham, Palo Alto's Safe Routes to School/Commute coordinator, gives Elliot goodie bags to hand out.

We made a giant poster and handed out flyers - along with free bagels, coffee, and goodie bags. Elliot even dressed up in his professor costume. Crowd funding has made us shameless.

Vanessa and Elliot, in between waves of cycle commuters.

Sven Thesen at 7am, waiting for commuters and chanting "Worse Than Poop!"

Towards 8am, more people started  arriving - including the Mayor and the City Manager.

Elliot & Vanessa with team Bike Palo Alto - including Kathy Durham, Mayor Nancy Shepherd, Chief Transportation Official Jaime Rodriguez, and City Manager Jim Keene.

One cyclist, when he heard about Worse Than Poop!, asked Elliot to sign his flyer.

The lucky recipient of Elliot's very first autograph.

Blast off

Tuesday night we hosted a cocktail party at the home of Sandra Slater and Drew Maran, to officially kick-off our campaign to crowd-fund Worse Than Poop! We had grown-up cocktails, and "poop cocktails" for the kids. (Annie Talbot even brought "pee-pee syrup" - oh-so-realistic-looking orange-flavored simple syrup - to mix in with the CO2 spritzer. I'm not sure if she had any takers.)

Sven Thesen the Biking MC, and our first two guests: Hamid Saadat and Gary Hedden

Sven Thesen played Master of Ceremonies. We showed the Kickstarter video, and Maddi Hausmann (EV aficionado and Leaf sales rep for Nissan Sunnyvale) interviewed Elliot about his involvement in the project. We set up a pledge station, and people cycled through, making pledges to the project.

Sven and Elliot toast to launching Worse Than Poop!

Note to all you future crowdfunders out there: if you decide to set up a pledge station, at which multiple people will be pledging, be sure to station someone super tech-savvy at the station ALL NIGHT to supervise the process. Don't let this be you:

Towards the end of the evening, we were up to $3300, and feeling really good. Then, suddenly the amount dropped to $600. WTF?!

It turned out that a lot of people didn't understand Kickstarter's double-log-in procedure - which requires backers to log in, and OUT, of both Kickstarter AND Amazon. So several people thought they were pledging, when in fact they were simply undoing someone else's pledge, and attributing it to their own account. Suffice to say, it's taken us three days to sort this out, and I'm still not sure it's completely resolved. Lesson learned!

The good news is, even without all the pledges from Tuesday night entered into the system yet, we have already raised $2790, and I expect we'll be over $5000 by the weekend. So we're off to a strong start!

Sandra & Drew's beautiful home filled with supporters of Worse Than Poop!

And the even better news is that so many people have been coming out of the woodwork to support this project. We have 41 backers already on Kickstarter - and more every few hours. It's awkward putting yourself out there, asking everyone you know to back your film - but sometimes people really surprise you with their kindness and generosity. It sounds corny - but looking around on Tuesday night at the loving and supportive community around me, all there to help us make a difference in the world (and have some fun in the process), I felt truly blessed.

Earth Day, here we come...

It's Sunday night, and we launch our Kickstarter campaign on Tuesday. Less than 48 hours to go! I'm nervous, and exhausted. Tonight at dinner, we asked Elliot if he remembered when he first heard about the project and agreed to do it. "I remember you came to pick me up after school, at Kids Club," he said. "And I remember, you said, 'I've got an idea!...'"

The rest, as they say, is history. Or soon will be.

Yikes! We launch in less than 48 hours! (From our first "Professor Elliot" photo shoot, June, 2013) 

As we prepare for the intensity of the campaign, a few people have pointed out to me that not everyone knows what a "Kickstarter campaign" is. So, in a nutshell: it's a way of crowdfunding a project - in this case, by using the Kickstarter web platform.

Crowdfunding is a way of gathering financial support through many individual donors, most of whom donate small amounts. Running a campaign is supposed to be by turns grueling, mortifying, and exhilarating. Missy Laney, of the Sundance Institute, told me it's like having a newborn baby in the house. You spend every waking moment on it - and you don't sleep much. (You can see why I'm feeling nervous!)

In our case, we are also running an "all or nothing" campaign - meaning we won't get a penny unless we raise at least our goal: $21,000. This is the bare minimum it will take to make Worse Than Poop! the film we know it needs to be. In reality, it will take more than this - but $21k will get us far enough to make it happen. And as with all crowdfunded projects, the more people who find out about it, the more likely we are to meet our goal. 

This is why you, dear reader, are so important. You have the power to forward this post to your friends, to like us on FaceBook, to follow us on Twitter, and to tell everyone you know about Worse Than Poop!  Starting on Tuesday, for as little as $5, you can become part of the solution, part of a movement that will change our world for the better, one pooping car at a time. We'll also have many awesome and fun rewards for you - fabulous tokens of our affection that you won't find anywhere else. So stay tuned... and if you haven't already, please take the Poopie Pledge to support us on Tuesday!