At the 2013 Aspen Ideas Festival, Kickstarter Creator, Co-founder, and CEO Perry Chen sat down with the Institute’s President and CEO Walter Isaacson. Both New Orleanians, the two spoke about their favorite Kickstarter project in the city—a house that functions like a musical instrument in the Bywater neighborhood—as well as the future direction for the world of internet-based crowdfunding.
“I think governance is key for any user-generated content,” said Chen. “It’s potentially becoming the most important part of the web.”
This comes shortly after Kickstarter took down a literary project down from the site, albeit after it was funded, because it was deemed mysoginistic by many of its users. Chen explained that the choices Kickstarter makes regarding what can and cannot be included creates the platform’s identity and personality. “I think that even if people want us to be other things, we have our own mission,” which he said, is to act as a platform for raising funds strictly for creative projects.
Watch above as Chen and Isaacson talk about the value of establishing a code of conduct for all websites employing user-generated content.
