For our Wednesday, July 27th Design Open Mic session, our headquarters welcomed Darin Dinsmore, CEO of the newly founded Crowdbrite, an online platform that facilitates collaboration among professionals and experts of varying fields in their work on design and development projects. Chapters Coordinator Frederika Zipp spoke about the Chapter Micro Grants that will be awarded monthly thanks to a recent grant from Chase Community Giving.
First up was Darin Dinsmore on Crowdbrite. Darin is an urban planner and landscape architect with over 15 years experience in community based planning and design. He spoke with us about the potential for the Crowdbrite application to save time, energy, and even money, for professionals collaborating on projects from all over the world. With Crowdbrite, individuals and groups can connect online and share their ideas on the site that continuously updates in real-time. Anything can be uploaded onto the Crowdbrite "canvas," including text, photos, drawings, and videos. The online collaboration space has the potential to improve team collaboration, community engagement, and provides convenient mobile access. Check out the video below for excerpts from Darin's presentation and to see Crowdbrite in action.
Following Darin's presentation, we heard from Frederika on Chase Bank's Community Giving micro grant program. Architecture for Humanity will use the money to fund a micro grant program that will support chapter projects. This year, monthly grants in the amount of $2,500 each, will be awarded to chapters with the most compelling proposals for how they would use the funds. There were 12 submissions for the grant this month, and as Frederika put it, they all demonstrated how "a little help can go a long way."
We got to review all the submissions together in the office, but luckily for you if you missed it, they're all available on the Open Architecture Network, here.
Congratulations to the Dhaka Chapter for winning the July 2011 Micro Grant! Check out their Prefab Retractable Classroom project on the Open Architecture network!
As always, many thanks to our presenters and audience members. Please feel free to join us for Design Open Mic if you're in the Bay Area, every Wednesday from 12-1 pm at our San Francisco office, located at 848 Folsom St. / Suite 201.
