In the last 3 months, the LoveMachine has built 3 major projects, using about 50 contributors, at a development cost of about $30K US.  We’ve created an impressive shared chat client, a contract worklist that supports open development teams with small tasks, and the corporate recognition messaging system that is our namesake.

This is remarkable velocity.  There are still lots of open questions about the process, but I feel confident this is going to scale, and hopefully become a discussion point for the industry around how to do software development.  By developing a high-transparency shared environment and a very lightweight system for suggesting, bidding, and doing work we’ve gotten somewhere interesting and new.  What is hard to describe is how much more fun it is to work in this type of environment.  It’s very refreshing to have a software team where everyone’s card are on the table, contribution value is clearly articulated, and changes happen hourly.

The image below is a graph of fees paid to team members over these last 3 months.  It is fascinating (but unsurprising) that the graph has the classic power law and long tail of so many collective contribution architectures, like Wikipedia or Second Life, etc.   More to come!

LoveMachine Earnings

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