We propose personal volunteer computing, a novel paradigm to encourage
technical solutions that leverage personal devices, such as smartphones and
laptops, for personal applications that require significant computations, such
as animation rendering and image processing. The paradigm requires no
investment in additional hardware, relying instead on devices that are already
owned by users and their community, and favours simple tools that can be
implemented part-time by a single developer. We show that samples of personal
devices of today are competitive with a top-of-the-line laptop from two years
ago. We also propose new directions to extend the paradigm