Been following the DigVentures story? Over on the Digital Digging blog, Henry Rothwell’s been asking all the questions. Read more from his interview with yours truly HERE… and here’s a little taster…

Appealing to a cash-strapped industry (archaeology) was always going to be a risk – how long did you kick the idea of crowdsourced archaeology around before it became worth the gamble?

“There’s a scene in Jaws when Chief Brody first catches sight of the mother of all Great White Sharks. ‘You’re gonna need a bigger boat’ he tells old sea dog Quint, staggering backwards at the enormity of the challenge. Our ‘bigger boat’ moment left us feeling exactly the same. We’d been working on the crowdsourcing/crowdfunding model for about a year and had a number of other great sites lined up – but when the opportunity came at Flag Fen to pitch our idea to Vivacity (the charitable trust who look after the Archaeology Park) everything just fell into place.

From the outside, I have no doubt that this looked like an audacious – even rookie move. But the reality is that we’d spent months debating the pros and cons of crowdfunding. We’d done our homework: taken legal advice, business advice, and had long discussions with our archaeological mentors. We were equally confident to take on the challenge archaeologically – our Assistant Directors Mike Bamforth and Dave Britchfield both started their careers supervising trenches at Flag Fen, and I have spent several years in wet trenches in Ireland. As our team grew in number, new ideas came to the fore, and any potential issues were worked out well in advance of going public. By the 29th February, we were raring to go!”

Read more from Henry Rothwell’s interview with Brendon Wilkins over at Digital Digging HERE…

http://digventures.com/

http://www.sponsume.com/project/digventures-flag-fen-lives-1