Budget proposal

Context: We came up with this budget proposal by request of city officials, so that they can apply for internal funding (deadline 31 Oct), which then will be used to co-finance the multisharing platform as part of a broader project on Sharing Cities which will be financed by the Swedish innovation agency Vinnova (deadline 31 Dec). Vinnova requires some kind of co-financing (50%), which is why we're applying to this internal funding first (that's how you do when you're a poor activist or when your project is a anti-business idea ). Note that this already an estimation for the total budget. The final project entails a partnership between the municipality of Gothenburg, Solikyl (Foodsharing in Gothenburg) and Digidem Lab (a non-profit dedicated to experiment, test and promote the use of digital tools for deliberative democracy in cities and organizations). My friend Petter from Digidem Lab, a developer who has experience in the field, helped me out estimating this budget based on average market prices in Sweden. Prices are in Swedish crowns, so for a rough approximation, consider 10 SEK = 1 EUR. On the actual use of this budget, and thorny questions about the use of money, see my views on it below.

Note: this is not the final budget proposal, so comments and feedback are welcome. If anyone's interested 'll try to translate to English the full application as soon as I can, otherwise it might take a longer time.

2018
Project management and concept development, 50% employment
500 000kr

UI design 100h
100 000kr

Prototype development for user testing/experience 150h
150 000kr

Server costs
24 000 kr

2019
Project management and concept development, 50% employment
500 000kr

Interaction and UI design - adjustments 80h
80 000 kr

Full-stack development for the development of the platform 600h
(this is extremely hard to estimate, so with one employment contract it is perhaps easier to estimate)
600 000 kr

Server costs
24 000 kr

...

Use of budget

This is my (Bruno's) personal view on money, how I see the use of money in my personal life and in any kind of project that I might be able to conduct...

Money is to me only a means, a resource, to achieve an end. It is certainly not the most important resource - the most important resource in this (or any) project is people's time, skills and engagement.  In the worst case scenario we'd have to buy people's time and skills, which is the reason why we need to come up with a standard budget proposal. This would probably result in a process and final product that has no real passion and dedication in it, less people involved, and therefore with far lower quality and chances to survive. Nonetheless it is still a product that will be out there in the common domain, and the time and skills we bought here were not directed to senseless profit-making, that is, the use of money with the purpose of creating even more money.

In the best case scenario, money is there only to give a sense of security to people who have an intrinsic motivation to participate and contribute to this project, but that otherwise would have to sell their time and skills at other kinds of work that they don't consider as meaningful, just in order to make a living. The more people with this intrinsic motivation that we can include and support within the budget constraints we have, the better.

That being said, let's make the best use of this available resource, keeping in mind the goals we have for this project.