Start Me Up

Have you ever dreamed about making a documentary portrait of the American public school system , sending 365 postcards to strangers , or creating a photo essay of every Sizzler in the nation ? Even if not, you've probably had a financially unattainable fantasy goal at some point - unfortunately, that whole selling candy bars in the subway scheme didn't get you any closer. Kind of like Kiva for the Creative Class, a fundraising service called Kickstarter is now offering a way for dreamers to realize their pie-in-the-sky ambitions. Here's a look at how a few imaginative ideators are using the service:

PieLab : In keeping with the community-oriented nature of many Kickstarter projects, PieLab seeks to facilitate good, old-fashioned conversation among the residents of Greensboro, Alabama - over a nice slice of cherry pie, rather than behind computer screens. The brainchild of socially responsible design collective Project M , PieLab is currently a pop-up project, but the hope is to make it a permanent fixture, complete with a full service kitchen, a community-focused design studio, and a classroom used for youth empowerment programs. With a new sweet space, which we are betting will look like it beamed out of the pages of Dwell, the PieLab pioneers are hoping that more locals will be inspired to share ideas for bettering their economically depressed community over each and every yummy bite.

Floating Doctors : While Kickstarter isn't exclusively intended for charitable causes, some resourceful good Samaritans are using it as a way to attract benefactors and spread the word about their missions. Floating Doctors was created when Dr. Benjamin LaBrot went to provide medical care to an African village and realized that his backpack of supplies was insufficient. He decided to create a nautical health center that would visit towns in Africa and Asia. He found a ship, a crew and even enough medical supplies for a year of global doctoring. In the spirit of Kickstarter, those who pledge will receive a photograph of the voyage so that they can frame their generosity.

Emoji Dick : Our use of emoticons tends to be limited to an occasional wink to fend off potential email misinterpretations, but communicating in Emoji (a Japanese term for picture icons or emoticons) is common practice in Japan where cell phones are typically preprogrammed with an elaborate range of them. Eager to explore the way our communications and language are influenced by digital culture, technologist Fred Benenson wants to translate public domain novel Moby Dick into Emoji. [What a slacker! Is War and Peace too long or something? ;-) ] He plans to have each sentence translated three times by different Amazon Mechanical Turk workers, with a different set of workers then voting on which sentence is best. Those who pledge will either receive a PDF or hardcopy of the book, depending on how generous they are. And while we probably won't be cozying up to the fireplace with Emoji Dick any time soon, it would certainly be a good souvenir of the times to show our grandchildren - who by then will probably be completely literate in Emoji. * trendcentral articles are designed to be trend reports, not endorsements * The Intelligence Group is a trend-forecasting and marketing Consultancy focused on Gen X, Gen Y and Tweens. For more information on our services, or to subscribe to our syndicated studies, The Cassandra Report, Tween Intelligence, Latino Intelligence, and Mom Intelligence, contact Alina Goncalves at 212-277-5299 or via email at agoncalves@intelg.com.