It’s time to start documenting this project more publicly. I would like one of Carrotmob’s defining characteristics, as an organization, to be transparency. Radical transparency. So let me bring you up to speed.

At this point, Valentine’s Day 2008, here’s where Carrotmob stands:

We Got It	We Ain’t Got It
A great concept.	Proof of concept.
One dude working part-time.	A gigantic mob.
Fisher Price Baby’s First Website.	A real website.
A plan.	A business plan.
No profits.	Non-profit status.

So what happens now? As I look down the "we ain’t got it" column, it’s tempting to work on getting money or spending months building a nice site, but instead I think I’ll focus on proving that this will work, and starting to build a network of consumers. The way I see it, it will be easier to get the attention of funders and talented collaborators once we have earned that attention by actually doing something. So, how do we come up with the first campaign? Sure, someday we’ll be talking turkey with Fortune 500 ballers, but for the first campaign we need to start small, so that our small network can have a huge impact rather than a negligible one. I think we start with a small business. Furthermore, I think we should have a physical manifestation of our mob, locally in the SF Bay Area. Like a flashmob. That’s how we should launch it. The sight of people coming out to meet up together will be the proof that we exist. Here are the requirements for this campaign:

• a small business does something significant to help the environment
• to reward the business, consumers must be able to buy something they would probably buy anyway
• everyone must be able to make their purchases within a short amount of time (ie: a restaurant wouldn’t work very well, since it would take an hour just for one purchase to be made)
• it should be fun
• it should be novel
• we should be able to make a sweet video of this campaign

What this says to me is: Liquor Stores in the Mission. Everyone has liquor cabinets to occasionally restock, or at least something they could buy at a liquor store. There is no "green" liquor store. People choose what liquor store they go to based on what is closest to their house, because otherwise it doesn’t matter. If there is suddenly one "green" liquor store, why wouldn’t people go buy stuff there? Especially if it’s as part of a fun community event that launches a cool new non-profit? We can even throw in a free concert or something. Plus, there are plenty of people in SF who would be willing to spend, like, $100 at a liquor store. A couple nice bottles of wine, maybe some Patron…imagine we get 500 people to show up and make that purchase at the same time. That would be $50,000 in sales within, like, an hour. Surely that represents enough profit to entice a business to invest in an ultra-efficient fridge or two…. And what fun it will be to shoot a video in which a liquor store goes from full to empty! Yes?

So that’s the project I’m working on. Suggestions appreciated. I’ll let you know how it goes….