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industry & research and offered to help fund and get other universities to back the idea . I then brought in Jack Rejtman , an American technologist who had worked at Yahoo , and we developed a full business plan and a website mock-up . By August 2010 we secured $ 10 million in funding over three years . The universities of Melbourne , Monash , ANU , Western Australia , UTS and the CSIRO contributed $ 3 million . Another $ 3 million came from the Victorian State Government and $ 3 million from the Federal Government . Plus , Commonwealth Bank Australia funded the entire web development team , led by Michael Morris , who custom built one of the best platforms in the world .
At the end of 2010 we set about hiring at speed a team of 20 who started in February 2011 . We inducted them into the new way of creating content and then without much fanfare ( and without any media spend on advertising / marketing ) we launched on March 25 .
The idea caught fire . In real time we tracked through Google Analytics how readers doubled virtually every day . Around the world others were intrigued with the project and asked if they could launch international versions .
Over the last 10 years , many other new digital entrants have come and gone but The Conversation has survived . That success is down to getting a few things right :
• We set the editorial bar high to ensure we created intelligent , reliable and easily understandable content to inform better public discussion and understanding .
• To address the dumbing down of information , we only allowed those with deep understanding of their subject area to contribute .
• We set about rebuilding trust through applying strict codes of conduct , transparency and full disclosure of all funding for The Conversation and the authors who contribute .
• We developed a funding model that would avoid a reliance on advertising . We introduced a tiered membership model ( depending on size ) whereby each university makes an annual contribution . To secure that meant knocking on the doors of all 39 university VCs . And though many held out for years , they all ended up joining . That has given The Conversation its funding security and independence .
As for the universities , The Conversation has been transformational in bringing over 20,000 academics into the public mainstream and ensuring their research gets huge readership and influence . It has also helped the sector better demonstrate its value to society ( and taxpayers ) at home , and globally build their profile and research . ■
Professor Andrew Jaspan is the founder of The Conversation and was the editor and CEO from 2010-2017 . He is now at Monash University .
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