Category Archives: Worldbuilders 2014

It’s that time of year again, folks. Time to make the world a better place while winning fabulous prizes.

Heifer International is my favorite charity. It helps people raise themselves out of poverty and starvation. For more than 60 years, Heifer has promoted education, sustainable agriculture, and local industry all over the world.

They don’t just keep kids from starving, they make it so people can take care of themselves. They give families goats, chickens, and sheep so children have milk to drink, eggs to eat, and warm clothes to wear. They provide communities with clean water to drink, building materials to improve homes, and business training to help families become self-sufficient.

(Are you ready? I’m so ready. Let’s do it.)

We’re always looking for ways to improve the fundraiser. So while much of Worldbuilders is the same as last year, we have some things that are entirely new, and some things that have changed a little.

So even if you’re a Worldbuilders Vetran, you might want to look at this blog closely so you don’t miss the new coolness we have waiting there.

As always, you’ve got three different options for donating:

Option 1: The Lottery.

This is the option most of you will want. It’s quick, easy, and tax deductible.

You just hop directly over to the page we’ve set up on Team Heifer, and donate.

When you donate on that page, two things happen.

1. You’ll move us closer to our stretch goals (shown below).

2. You’ll be entered into the lottery.

For every $10 you donate on our Team Heifer page, your name will be entered into our random drawing for all the swag that’s been donated. Thousands of books, comics, and games. So if you donate $30, your name goes in three times. Donate enough for a goat ($120) and your name goes in 12 times.

What’s in the lottery? A lot. So much that if I showed it to you all at once, its combined awesome would cook your brain like a toad thrown into the sun.

So, for everyone’s safety, we’ll be posting up a new blog every weekday until the end of the fundraiser on December 8th.

You can see *all* the books currently in the mix on our snazzy Lottery Library page.

Or you can check out the individual blogs here:

Note: We’re doing something new this year. Thanks to our sponsors like Cheapass Games and Mayfair, we have a more games in this year’s fundraiser. A lot more. We know some of you aren’t big gamers, so you’ll be able to select whether you want to win books, games, or books AND games.

That way everyone gets what they like best.

Stretch goals.

To encourage donations, we’ve brought members of the geek community together to do whimsical things as our donation total grows. There will be music, poetry, cosplay, puppets, and so, so much more…

Upcoming stretch goals include:

$50,000 Nika Harper Reads Dinosaur Limericks.
$75,000 Molly Lewis Performs the Pumpkin Spice Latte Song.
$100,000 Pat Rothfuss Reads “The Song of Tom Bombadil” as Tom Bombadil.
$125,000 Seth Fishman Livesteams “How to Write a Query letter & Get an Agent.”
$150,000 Myke Cole Reviews Hedging His Bets.
$175,000 Vi Hart Writes music for “The Lay of Felurian” and performs it.
$200,000 The Staff of Heifer International Perform a Puppet Show.
$225,000 James Ernest Performs his signature juggling trick: The Two-Tray Stack.
$250,000 Nate Taylor & Pat Livestream a discussion about the art of Slow Regard.
$300,000 Mikey Neumann Writes and Reads a short story.
$325,000 Christopher Paolini reads “The Eye of Argon.”
$350,000 The Doubleclicks Perform “I love you like a Burrito” with a special guest.
$375,000 Cards Against Humanity hosts a gaming livestream!
$400,000 John Green Drinks a Heifer-Inspired Smoothie.
$425,000 Marian Call sings a recipe.
$450,000 Authors Read 1-Star Reviews.
$475,000 The Worldbuilders Team Livestreams a Day at the Office.
$500,000 Strongbad Makes a Very Special Video Just for Worldbuilders.
$525,000 More Authors Reading 1-Star Reviews.
$550,000 Kevin Hearne Performs Thriller with a Dance Troupe.
$575,000 Hank Green covers “Shake It Off.”
$600,000 Neil Gaiman does a Dramatic Reading.
$650,000 Still More Authors Reading 1-Star Reviews.
$678,229 Patrick Rothfuss Kisses the Heifer Animal of Your Choice. (Hint: it’s a llama)
$700,00 Amber Benson will sing a Joni Mitchell song.
$725,000 Even Yet More 1-Star Reviews.
$750,000 Oot sings “I Don Quixote” – Man of La Mancha.
$775,000 Peter Orullian will perform a Kingkiller-themed music video.
And more to be announced….

We’re recruiting folks for new stretch goals every day, so keep an eye on this list, and the Worldbuilders website under news for updates.

One of the new things we’re doing is letting y’all decide which direction these stretch goals will go. For example, donors get to vote on which animal I’ll kiss when we beat last year’s donation total.

Personally? I’m hoping for the goat.

People donating will also get to decide what Neil Gaiman will read when we hit $600,000:

Here I’m torn. Part of me wants to hear Neil say, “Goodnight Nobody,” while the rest of me dearly wants to hear him say, “Let the wild rumpus start!”

Either way, I’m going to have a new ringtone.

Note: Worldbuilders ends December 15, 2014 at 11:59 pm UTC-11. To be eligible for the lottery, you must have made your donation on the Team Heifer Page before then.

Option 2: The Sure Thing

For those of you not interested in the lottery, or if you’re just interested in doing some Christmas shopping early, we have a well-stocked store, lovingly named The Tinker’s Packs. We’ve got t-shirts, posters, and other coolness available for purchase.

We also have foreign editions of many titles, donated and signed by the authors. These are hard to find in the US.

All proceeds from everything sold in our store go to Worldbuilders, of course.

Additionally, this year we’ve published another calendar featuring the art of the wonderful Karen Hallion.

(Click to embiggen)

You can see many more pictures of the calendar in The Tinker’s Packs.

We’ll be adding new items to the store throughout the fundraiser, so keep an eye on the blog. If you’re worried you might miss some of the coolness, you can follow the Tinker’s Packs on Twitter and Facebook. We’ll post updates there whenever something new happens.

Option 3: Auctions.

Sometimes we get donations that are really cool…. but only for a select group of people. Some people would squee with delight at winning a portal gun, but other people, (sad, unhappy people) have never played Portal, and just don’t care.

The same thing is true with action figures, musical instruments, manuscripts, or other collectables.

So we put those things up for auction.

We have professionals willing to read and critique your manuscripts. We have signed art and rare books. We have the chance to win cameo appearances in comics and get your name into upcoming books.

We auction these things off as well.

All our current auctions are over on the Worldbuilders eBay page. Keep an eye on it. We’ll be adding stuff all the time.

NEW THIS YEAR – Option 4: A Partnership with Powells.

We show off a lot of books during the fundraiser, and over the years I’ve heard many people mention they do a their holiday shopping based off the books they see here. Or, if you’re like me, you use Worldbuilders to add to your ever-expanding must-read shelf.

So this year we’re doing something new.

If you see a book in this year’s fundraiser, and think to yourself, “I’ve got to have a copy of that….” you can follow this link, buy it from Powells, and they will donate 7.5% of the sale directly to Worldbuilders.

This applies to *anything* you buy from Powells. Not just books we’re featuring in the fundraiser. If you follow that link and buy stuff, not only are you supporting one of the coolest independent bookstores around, but a hefty piece of that money will go to making the world a better place.

You can also find the link in the navigation widget at the end of each of the blogs:

Look at that, all fancy and clickable.

Important Links and Contact Information

We’ve tweaked our website, since last year. And Worldbuilders also has a Facebook page and a Twitter account for those of you who like to have the internet injected directly into their veins.

If you have a question that isn’t answered here, you could check out our handy FAQ.

Need to contact The Tinker’s Packs? You can e-mail them here: orders [at] thetinkerspacks.com

Want to donate something to Worldbuilders? Help us spread the word? Do a stretch goal? Drop us a line here: donations [at] worldbuilders.org.

All right folks. Are you ready? I’m so ready.

Let’s do this thing.

pat

P.S. Just in case you missed it, here’s one more link to our Team Heifer donation page.

Hey there everybody. We’ve got an announcement to make… but we figured we’d do it in video format.

That’s right. It’s almost time for Worldbuilders.

This year’s fundraiser and Carnival of Delights will be November 10th through December 8th.

You’ll note two differences from last year.

1. We’re starting earlier.

Those of you who have been around since the beginning might remember that Worldbuilders was originally a November event. But over the years, as I became increasingly busy and decreasingly organized, the fundraiser slowly got pushed back a little at at time until it wasn’t even starting until December.

In some ways this was nice, as people tend to feel generous around the holidays.

But the downside is that everyone tends to be insanely *busy* around the holidays, too. Students have end-of-semester chaos. Parents have holiday shopping. Most everyone has some sort of family gathering. All of that means it’s really hard to get people’s attention.

Luckily, now I have the Worldbuilders team.

(Not pictured: the monkey who took the shot, Brett)

Not only are they handling more and more of the heavy lifting of the fundraiser themselves, but they’re delightfully well-organized.

So this year, we’re getting back to our roots and moving the fundraiser a little earlier.

2. The fundraiser is going to be faster.

Last year’s Worldbuilders was a huge success. We raised more than 700,000 dollars for Heifer International.

However, the fundraiser itself went from December 3 to February 4. It was nine weeks long.

Not only was it like running a marathon, but it overlapped the holidays. That made it hard to keep the momentum of the fundraiser going while at the same time making me feel like an absolute scrooge of a boss.

It occurred to me that the length of the fundraiser was mostly a holdover from when I was organizing things myself. Which is to say I was mostly *not* organizing them. These days the Worldbuilders team is a well-oiled machine. They have meetings and timetables. They use a calendar and everything. Seeing them using these revolutionary tools, I realized we really didn’t have a *reason* for the fundraiser to run as long as it has been….

So earlier this year, we tried an experiment. We ran an Indigogo campaign for one week to see if we could make a short fundraiser work.

And it did. We blew the doors off and raised more than $200,000.

So this year we’re going to keep it short and sweet. Or at least shorter and sweet. It’s going to be like an avalanche of awesome. We’ll be posting up new stuff pretty much every day.

So stay tuned, lest you miss something.

Donations.

Why yes. We’d love some donations. Thanks so much for asking.

We’ve had books, games, and cool ephemera coming in for a couple months now. But this is your fair warning: since we’re doing a more compact fundraiser this year, we need things to arrive by the middle of November if we’re going to make good use of them.

If you have something you want to kick in, like geeky memorabilia, or signed books, or you should email us at donations [at] worldbuilders.org.

If you’re a member of the geek glitterati who wants make a donation or help us spread the word by doing an act of whimsy, email us at donations [at] worldbuilders.org.

If you have an idea for an author or other cool person you think would be a good addition to our fundraiser but you’ve never seen featured here, maybe drop them a line and ask them to email us at (you guessed it) donations [at] worldbuilders.org.

Volunteer and Other Offers of Help

I’m well aware that some of you would love to help with the fundraiser, but cash is hard to come by. No worries. I understand completely. I’ve spent most of my life in that position.

What can you do to help other than chip in money when the time comes? Well….

If you live in central Wisconsin, you could stop by Worldbuilders HQ and help us work our magic. We have a lot of work and never as many hands as we’d like, so we’re always looking for volunteers to help out around the store. Email us at volunteers [at] worldbuilders.org
If for some bizarre reason you don’t live in Wisconsin, you could start planning an act of whimsy of your own for when the fundraiser starts. We’re encouraging everyone to play this year.
Run a blog? Write for a paper? Are you huge on Facebook, Twitter, Ello? We love it when people help us spread the word. So start warming up your click fingers.
If you’d like to do an interview or set up some type of more formal press or event with the Worldbuilders team. Drop us a line at Questions [at] worldbuilders.org.

That’s all for now. Stay tuned for more tour announcements and other sundry things.

Brace yourselves, folks, together we’re going to change the world.

pat

Category Archives: Worldbuilders 2014

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