“A week is a long time in politics”, apparently. I’m not sure what that means: every time I’ve asked Mark over the last week or so, he’s been reduced almost to tears, mumbling something about “being proud to be a European”, but “no longer allowed to say so out loud”.
But what I do know is that a lot can happen in just one week; and a lot has been happening here, as Mark starts to put together costings and estimates in spreadsheets. The pictures that I posted last week show that it’s technically feasible to create me as a real Elephpant, and prove that there will always be at least one of me. Now he’s putting some numbers and costings together to show whether or not I’m financially viable; and he tells me that it’s all looking good so far, though he needs some more numbers to be certain. And it will need at least 1,200 of me to work, because that’s the minimum run that the factory will do; but I shouldn’t cost much more than any of the other Elephpants out in the world, despite the extra overheads of the colouring process.
That’s all very good news for me. It’s important that there are lots of me all around the world, spreading the Diversity message wherever they find themselves.
Every PHP developer across the globe is a part of the PHP Community – regardless of their gender, race, nationality, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, religion, or their choice of framework, libraries, tools, or the version of PHP that they use. Reminding everybody that we are all different, and yet we share in common that we are all part of that worldwide PHP community.
That’s the first part of the Diversity message that producing me and distributing me around the world through a kickstarter project will implement.
And while Mark will keep the costs as low as possible (hopefully, he’ll be able to find a few companies and businesses willing to help sponsor me, so that those costs can be kept low) to try and ensure that I’m available to as many developers as possible.
He’s also hoping to make a small profit by adding a couple of Euros to my price. And 80% of the profits that I do generate will then be used to help fund Diversity Scholarships at PHP Conferences: would any Conferences that run such a scholarship scheme (or want to run one) please get in touch with me (through these pages at the moment). The remaining 20% will be donated to “Open Sourcing Mental Illness” to support Ed Finkler and the great work that’s doing in fighting the stigma of mental illness within the development community.
So I really have a very important task, which is why I’m writing all these blog posts even before I exist as a viable product. In future, I’ll post a bit about Diversity Scholarships, and about the work of OSMI; but for now I’m just posting to say that work is going on “behind the scenes”, and it won’t be too long before the kickstarter begins.
This post transferred from a post originally made on the blog site at markbakeruk.net on 5th July 2016.