It’s day 24 of the Kickstarter for The Hawaii Project, Saturday, April 25.

OK, in yesterday’s post, I’d pretty much given up on the Kickstarter’s chance of success. But. I got a well-needed kick in the pants from some old friends, not to give up. That led me to re-read some things I’d written to myself a few years back, especially lessons learned from reading Gates of Fire, about the Spartans at the battle of Thermopylae. (you can read that here: https://www.viking2917.com/leadership-lessons-from-the-ancient-greeks/). Takeaway: back in the arena. 5 more days. Going down swinging.

Brief Commercial Interruption: If you’re reading this, you may not know what The Hawaii Project is. The Hawaii Project brings you books and book news you’d never have found on your own, by tracking hand-selected sources of great books, uncovering things that match your favorite authors, personal interests and current events, and bringing them to you daily. 10% of our revenue goes to 3 great literacy non-profits. If this resonates, back us on Kickstarter: 

http://www.thehawaiiproject.com/kickstarter

The project is going forward in any case – perhaps more slowly than if funded – so, I’m going to spend the last week driving the Kickstarter but with a focus on learning things I can take into the next phase, either way. My two targets: Facebook and Authors.

I’m going to explore more fully whether Facebook is an effective marketing channel, whether that’s via Facebook groups or ads or something else, and I’m going to get in touch with authors, who are natural sponsors of The Hawaii Project as they have books that need to reach readers, and I have a prototype of an Author page where people can follow their favorite authors, that needs cleaning up and sharing around (if you’re an author looking to connect with readers, please get in touch!). I spend a few hours dusting off that page and getting it running again so I can share it around.

I take the evening off and go see Ex Machina, a movie about how search engines might become the basis of AI. Intriguing premise, actually pretty plausible. The movie is stylish but slow. B+. But it’s a good few hours not thinking about Kickstarter (Rule 12: One hour a day, one day a week, don’t think about work. – I’m not going a great job of following this rule…).

Thanks for following along.