A couple of days ago, an Instagram icon inspired concept of a camera with an included printer got featured all over the web. A few days later, the creator of the concept, Antonio De Rosa, started the ambitious ride to bring the camera into reality and created an Indiegogo campaign, asking for 50k to make the first steps. Reason enough for us to ask Antonio a couple of questions.

Ciao Antonio. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Hi to all. I’m Antonio De Rosa, 36 years old, graphic designer. As a good Italian I like a lot art and creativity, so when I was 17 I started to work as a graphic designer for videogames e.g. on Commodore Amiga.

You are the founder of the Socialmatic Camera. What is the Socialmatic Camera and how did you come up with the idea?

It might sound strange but I dreamed it after seeing the Instagram App icon. I tried to create a new concept.

Turning the concept into reality is, I guess, really hard work and you need a lot more money than the 50k you pledged for on Indiegogo. How do you plan to turn the Socialmatic Camera into a real object?

50k of Indiegogo is just to start the company and create the first non-working prototype. We already have some partners and are now searching for some private investors. After this first step we pass to the pre-production model: I’ve read a lot of posts about some guys saying that Socialmatic is not possible. Our goal is to show that it is possible and and we are even imagining a whole set of Socialmatic cameras. This whole Instagram world triggers more and more ideas in me. Hopefully the wholze buzz around Instagram can be used to make those plans real.

Having this big vision — building a whole set of Socialmatic cameras — without a co-founder and a proper background in engineering or business needs a lot of strength and will. — Where do you take this energy from?

I was the CMO of several companies in the area of network relationship management. During the first years of my career I’ve followed a lot of projects about product development. I’m searching for partners to help me make this product the first “crowdsourced” product: if the internet community wants and needs it, we will make it.

How long do you think it will take until you can finally ship the first cameras?

We hope in the middle of 2013, so like in about one year.

Thanks for the answers Antonio and we keep our fingers crossed that your courageous project turns out well!