Lately I've been extremely active, mentally. Generally when this happens I stop playing video games for a month or two and instead start working on this and that. So this time I'm brainstorming business models and trying to tie the castle* together with Web 2.0 startup principles. Among other things, such as making a Flash particle studio, and a few little web games, and some furniture, and a fort for my nephew Jake. So in general it's good times for me.
But I keep coming back to this castle thing. I'm wondering if I can use a web startup model to bootstrap myself into building a castle sometime in the next few years, instead of waiting to get rich through more traditional means, and then using that money to build the castle. I mean, traditionally, you make your money, and then you build your castle, but I'm not entirely convinced that it has to be that way anymore, and I'm starting to brainstorm ways to leapfrog the getting rich step. (Mostly because I don't have nearly as strong a vision for getting rich as I do for building a castle, so really if I can just skip it, that works for me.)
So that's what's vaguely on my mind these days. Is there an OpenCastle(TM) framework that I can adapt/build/use to facilitate a self-forming web community to design, finance and build an artist-cooperative, four-star-hotel castle-farm complex? That is my open question.
*If you're unfamiliar, the castle is a long-standing pipe dream of mine wherein I build a modern castle and live in it, and permanently invite all my friends to come and stay and optionally work on whatever. It's a rather elaborate, persistent, collective daydream, basically. I tend to take these sorts of things seriously, because most of my best and most successful ideas start off similarly.**
**What me, ambitious?
You only ask the tough open questions!
ReplyDeleteJust google "how-to artist-cooperative, four-star-hotel castle-farm complex", right?
On the surface, the closest thing I can think of is the Biltomre Estate back east but that was built on a railroad Fortune (capital F) and is now run by tourism, the food served in the restaurants being grown on the grounds. I suppose the Huntington Gardens are vaguely similar (started private and now enjoyed and help funded by the public).
Perhaps you can iterate. Can you pool funds to build just one, small castle? If you want to start with no physical building, can you run a summer camp for creative and bright highschoolers by renting a convention center or camp of some sort? You might try a BarCamp approach to get momentum: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BarCamp
Actually a private university or academy sounds like what you are describing, just make the dorm in the shape of a castle, and the food is grown on the grounds (like the Caltech olive oil from Caltech olive trees). Higher education has tax laws that favor it over a traditional corporation, right? And students can get federal aid.