18.01.13 - 12:31 -
The chosen base for a community of free thinkers that hopes to make global changes. R.L.
A group of young people from across the globe have come to inland Andalucía to create a not-for-profit community of free-thinkers who aim to use the collective energies of worldwide supporters to launch new products, services and businesses, in a way that side-steps traditional commerce and investment models.
Since its launch in November last year, the GIGRUSH movement has created an internet platform for ideas from budding entrepreneurs. Using the principles of successful global collaborative ventures such as Wikipedia and the open-source internet browser Firefox, GIGRUSH hopes to make big changes in the world’s financial systems and environmental strategies while also providing alternatives to traditional higher education routes.
“Look at the difference between Encyclopaedia Britanica and Wikipedia and you will start to see what we are saying.” says Jamie Knapp from GIGRUSH. “One starts with a big injection of capital to employ professors and has all the associated risk of ensuring there are enough sales to pay for the initial investment. The other uses hundreds of thousands of individuals, each giving small amounts of their own time freely to create the finished product.
“It costs nothing to join us and if thousands of people, groups and organisations unite their energies, we can manifest changes across the globe, whether it is to create a new product, to reduce pollution or to put an end to starvation. Without the need for oil as fuel, it could even end wars. We can make the world a better place.” says Jamie.
Courses
As well as encouraging people to realise their dreams by getting others to help, the team behind the project hope to foster creative thinking by offering residential courses in rural Andalucía. Alex De Backer from GIGRUSH says “We want people to come here to learn how to get ideas off the ground, how to use the positive energies that come from working with like-minded people and then to lead the projects to make dreams come true. Whether people have an idea for a new kind of watch or they want to liberate ancient wisdoms about sustainable energies, it is all about thinking globally and Getting Ideas Going, which is where the word GIG comes from.”
Alex explains that Andalucía was chosen as their base because it has good transport links, lots of accommodation and a good climate for those following the educational courses that the team hope to run.
As well as practical input to collaborative projects that work in a similar way to Wikipedia, the GIGRUSH movement encourages ‘crowd funding’, a method of getting lots of people to invest small amounts to jointly raise the funds needed to launch a new product or service. “If someone has an idea but needs to develop prototypes to test the market, they can use crowd funding to minimise everyone’s risk. We have used the same principles to test GIGRUSH and already we have projects to create a new sports federation, a vegetarian fast-food chain and a project to develop the use of herbs to improve health.”
