Possible Partnership with e-NABLE
We are in the process of trying to work out a partnership with e-NABLE where we would host their community discussions. This would replace our original '3D Printed Prosthetics Initiative' with a section of the forum devoted to the e-NABLE Network. This will provide a discussion community for those that are part of e-NABLE and those that wish to help out. If things work out, there will also be a partnership with 3DPrint.com but details to that will be discussed later (if all goes as planned). We would also provide links back to the e-NABLE Network, and try our best to help their community thrive through use of their dedicated section on this forum. e-NABLE is a network of volunteers that help bring 3D printed prosthetics to those in need. It is similar to the idea I had with our '3D Printed Prosthetics' initiative', before I was made aware of e-NABLE.
Please see a more details post on this at: https://plus.google.com/100145597739...ts/XbicRwSL8yx
Or read our proposal to e-NABLE below:
Potental Partnership with 3DPrint.com & 3DPB.com
Hello, First I'd like to say that I am so honored to be part of this group. e-NABLE does great things for people in need. I wanted to introduce myself. I am Eddie Krassenstein. I am the co-founder of 3DPrint.com and 3DPB.com. I have recently been talking to several of the Core Leaders of e-NABLE, about a potential partnership with e-NABLE, and they suggested that I make a post here to get feedback.
3DPB and 3DPrint recently launched our own '3D Printed Prosthetic' initiative, prior to realizing that this tremendous e-NABLE project has already been established. We have a folder on 3DPB specifically for people that are looking to help create 3D printed prosthetics, using 3D printers. We also have had several people come to us requesting prosthetics be made for friends and relatives. There was one story where this man's aunt was a quad amputee, and he wanted to help her out as much as he could. The folder has generated a lot of interest, and we only unofficially launched it. Then I discovered e-NABLE, and I kind of put our own initiative on hold to see if we could work out a partnership with you guys.
Basically there are a few items that we would like to offer, in order to help support e-NABLE as part of the partnership.
1) 3DPrint.com would love to cover all the interesting projects and success stories that e-NABLE accomplishes. We'd love to publish news stories on as many of these as possible, to try and help get the word out about all the good that this group does. It's really an initiative that I feel needs more public recognition, and 3DPrint being one of the leaders in 3D printing news has the capabilities to do so.
2) 3DPB.com has a vast membership of 3D printer owners and 3D printing enthusiasts. In the several months since we launched we have quickly become the most active general 3d printing discussion forum on the net (other than some google communities and sub reddits). What we would love to be able to do is scrap our own '3D Printed Prosthetics Initiative' and replace it with an entire discussion section devoted to e-NABLE. Our forum runs on Vbulletin, so there are so many more options and features to implement than what these Google+ communities offer. The Google+ Community should absolutely continue to run, as it is a great way to find new members, and post the latest e-NABLE news. However, we feel that an entire section of 3DPB being devoted to e-NABLE would be very beneficial. We have the ability to have multiple folders, with mulitple moderators, and even special usergroups for those involved in the projects. We could even provide graphic icons next to the name of members that are involved. We also offer the ability to have sticky threads in different folders, with guidelines, and FAQ's, or whatever else the core group at e-NABLE would like. One issue that we see with running the entire community through a Google+ community is the lack of organization. All new discussion threads go to the top, and when there are new replies to those responses, they become lost, way down on the bottom of the page. With a forum section on 3DPB, we will be able to better organize discussion. Discussion topics with new replies automatically go to the top, so that people can see these new comments. There are many many other features we can offer as well.
You are probably wondering what we get out of it. First off, let me say that we want to help this cause, the best that we can. We have already started our own initiative for 3D printed prosthetics, to try and do this ourselves. However, we realize that e-Nable is already fully established, so why should we split apart from them? That would just be silly :) However, we do expect that the partnership will bring a little bit of additional traffic to our site. That's always nice (I'm not going to lie). However, we also feel that 3DPrint and 3DPB will benefit e-NABLE even more through this partnership. Currenlty 3DPrint.com receives 400,000+ unique visitors monthly, while 3DPB.com receives about 90,000 uniques monthly (these numbers have been growing each month quite substantially. This means quite a bit of traffic, and quite a bit of free publicity for e-NABLE. There will be plenty of backlink to e-NABLE from both sites.
Anyhow, I think this message has become a bit too long as it is. So, let's hear your opinions on this matter. I would like to do a 'trial partnership' for a month to see how it works out. If people do not like it, then we go our separate ways. Please let us know if you are in support of this partnership, or not? In the end it will be you guys that decide :)
Thanks for your time and consideration!
Eddie Krassenstein
