On Thu, Apr 19, 2001 at 03:17:33PM -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > It might help in keeping the message short and simple (always a key > to success) to rely on the webpage for much of what I suggested > earlier. Have the main thrust after our name and what our mission > is, be "visit the webpage." I think this is an excellent suggestion. Instead of trying to develop a really fancy flier, we could come up with a simple meme instead. (A meme is like a catch phrase, in that it moves from person to person easily.) I read an article on this at Guru.com, where an example of a consultant who would tell people "I help service businesses find more customers." This would immediately draw a response, "Oh, that's what I need." Or, even if it didn't directly apply to them, people would often remember and tell others who were looking for more business. So, basically, we need a very short and simple phrase that tells people what is useful about the buying club. Brainstorming... "We help people save money on organic foods." "Organic foods at more reasonable prices." "We build community through food and cooperation." "Organic food for everyone!" "We help people buy organic food." "We help people save time buying good food." Hmmm... Other ideas?? > I keep meaning to investigate where the list is and start phoning > people. I've been wondering if it would help if tried to develop a > formal telephone tree. Each member would be responsible for calling > one specific person without access and that person in turn would be > responsible for phoning one other person without access, etc. http://buyorganic.org/live?SignUpList That would be great. We could turn the list into such a tree, but of course someone has to volunteer to do the footwork of sorting it out, or figure out how to get others to help them. > Everyone does always have the option of Jeb setting them up with an > e-mail account through buyorganic.org and accessing the site at the > library. Right, although I haven't made that clear on the site yet. I have to be careful about diving too deep into supporting a lot of free users before I have it fully automated... There are plenty of free email services available though, so this shouldn't be a problem except that it is so inconvenient to go to the library to check email, etc... > We do always need to consider that too much success, too fast sinks > many businesses because they aren't equipped to deal with it. If we > add too many members all at once before we have the bugs worked out, > it could be rather chaotic. Exactly. The wiki seems to work very well for some things, but it's clear that we need something to automate the math, and keep people from accidentally stepping on each others toes when it comes to entering orders. I still have quite a bit of work to do setting up the FoodClub software, and then probably customizing things further... > How do we picture dividing up the orders smoothly for instance if we > add a great number of people? I'm am worried about how the orders are entered right now, but I think if we lock the order page and have people only list their items on their own pages and pay for them, then I (and other 'admin' users) can copy __paid__ items to the main order page making sure it doesn't get messed up. The list of pending items to split can be a separate page, (actually just put in the existing SplitList page), in a format that can easily be copied and pasted into email to the announce list periodically to let folks know what others are hoping to split. I think those simple steps will allow the current system to work reliably enough for a fairly large group online. As for the order delivery and split up process, I think we might soon get to the point where everything is picked up from the delivery location in full cases, and split up by individuals later. I think it's too much work for the volunteer responsible for the delivery location to deal with things being split up on site. Plus, having people split things up individually could be an excuse for folks who order in bulk to have a little "party" at their house after the order comes in to split up their cases. The announcements for such events could go out as group money requests in PayPal to those invited, with amounts based on what each person owes based on their portion of the split. (Of course, the math of this too should be automated too ;-) Hmmm... This was too long for an email. I should copy parts of this message to some wiki pages for availability, comments, and revision... Thanks! -jeb
