We had a great first week, raising $633 for the Lads Project. I’m so touched by everyone’s contributions, I do honestly get teary every time one comes in, no matter the size. I received a surprising phonecall in the middle of the night from someone, over the UK, interested in making a large contribution. I was pretty stunned by it. Hopefully, that will come through, it will be a huge help to the project.

I had a chat with a buddy of mine here about getting me access to a BiPAP machine I can work with for testing. Both the throat mic and the new “SIMBA” mic I’ve been designing need to work in conjunction with these breathing machines. I do have a mask and tubing here, but the BiPAP machines are very expensive and I don’t really need to own one, just borrow/rent one. So hopefully we’ll track one down this or next week. Anyone in the Skokie/Chicago area have a BiPAP machine I could borrow?

I’m planning on bringing my video camera with me when I visit the Lads in April, maybe we’ll put together a video to post on YouTube. Along the way, I was thinking of doing some video-blogging and talk about how the project is going. I’ll try to post those vlogs here in the Updates too.

I’ve also been sending out emails like mad to people, but I have not posted anything on my Facebook wall about the project. This is an experiment I’m doing in crowd-funding, by not-posting a blanket request for contributions. In the a cappella world, especially, groups are constantly asking for money in their crowd-funding projects and it’s honestly gotten a bit tired. I didn’t want to be another one of those people. However, I’m not sure if it’s working or not. I mean, we did raise $633 in a week without a post like that, right? Maybe if we hit the $3000 goal, I’ll then post something to try and get a boost to the $5000 stretch goal or beyond! Hmmm?