It was interesting to see that Pebble blew past its $100,000 goal for crowd funding development of its innovative watches from Kickstarter, raising over $10 million.  In checking out Kickstarter and a competitor called Indiegogo, it struck me that these sites, and others like them, might be a good way for public media entities and independent producers to raise funds for their projects -- though Pebble's large return is atypical.

Today, a Canadian friend of public media, Rob Paterson, posted some very useful advice for those who aspire to raise funding this way.  Although written from a general rather than pubmedia perspective, it should be must reading for producers wanting to pursue this. 

Additionally, you should check out Colleen Taylor's helpful post on GigaOM comparing these two major players in this space.

As more traditional sources of funding are harder to tap, these provide a good source of journalistically independing funding.

If you have experience with using crowd sourcing for public media projects, please leave a comment here or send me an email.  --Dennis