posted April 30th, 2008

Overview

K5M is a virtual, fully-functional stock market where anyone can own a part of me and all my future projects. It's not about generating profits, particularly, although that might very well happen: it's about a group of people working towards the same goal. By using an adapted structure of the market economy, the shareholders and I have a ready-built mechanism for operations, accountability, and measuring success that is not only well documented but also easily understood.

Overall Highlights

History

The beta test of the K5M site has just started, which means there isn't much of a formal history. However, the idea of this project has been around for a long time. The original inspiration came from etoy.com, a European art collective that modeled themselves after a public company in response to a corporate attack on their intellectual property. Mike Merrill was an investor and shareholder of etoy, but was disappointed that the model they used was not on an open market. Future projects by Mike Merrill involved raising capital in short time periods, which was the occasionally the downfall of projects that required a quick reaction. The idea of K5M was born out of that frustration.

Future

The market should be fully complete and out of beta testing no later than May 17th. If that deadline is met, we will also be auctioning off close to 3000 shares at that time. Shares will only be sold via auction once per year in order to create a stable market. After the auction all shares must be purchased from stock holders until the next auction.

Current Projects

  1. UrbanHonking.com is just finishing a major redesign, back-end upgrade, and server move. A new blog template was designed by Luke Seeley and applied to almost all the active UH blogs. Additionally, with extensive support from Curt Merrill, UH was upgraded to Movable Type 4 and moved to a new server hosted by media temple. The frontpage design is expected to be completed in no more than two weeks, followed by a week or so of small tweaks to ensure the UH community is up to speed with the new system and everyone's blog is working. Q2 should see additional blogs added to the UH stable as well as further development of an UH webstore.
  2. Ultimate Blogger 3 concluded in 2007 and the rights to UB4 were awarded to G-RAD.org. There is still a DVD to produce in 2008, possibly marketed as a "How To" on creating virtual communities.
  3. 1000 Beers has fallen slightly behind schedule, with only 61 beers posted on the site so far. However, there is a backlog of beers to post, and a plan to attend more tastings, which should bring us back up to speed quickly. One problem we are facing is that as we complete more beers it is more difficult to remember which we have tried.
  4. The KmikeyM Blog was one of the first to move to the new server. There were a few small problems which led to less posts and the continued lack of comments. There were a total of 17 updates to the blog in Q1.
  5. Project Celestim is the first K5M project to be approved. $80 have been invested in a plan to produce and sell eggs in Africa. Initial reports are that things are getting off to a rough start.

Project Ideas

Future projects will all be approved by shareholders (unless it is not feasible due to time constraints) and I don't want to be overly speculative many of the ideas have not been fully planned. But here is an idea of things that may happen in the rest of the year:

  1. A Daily Video on Flickr.com was started on April 11th. There have been 20 videos posted so far, one of which was deleted due to an accusation of copyright infringement.
  2. P.A.R.O.A.T. did a number of test runs last summer and invested in some hardware. This will likely start up again after the weather improves.
  3. Money Blog is a lucrative idea that I hope to propose soon after the market is complete.
  4. Stock Certificates may be issued later in the year in a more public setting.

Contact

Please contact kmikeym@kmikeym.com if you have any questions or comments.

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