Fliers have somewhat dominated the publicity ideas, with shirts, ads, and
listings making a showing.  And TV, of course.  These are all directed at
making ourselves known, & we sure need to keep doing that.

But one thing we also need is to find more things we can offer people who
wouldn't be interested even if they knew about us - or who do and aren't.
(Yes, many of them will come to love us once they know us.  OK.)  So let's
brainstorm a little on what Grex can offer to the world at large, maybe
then turning at how to make it come about.

11 responses total.

People suggest from time to time that we could offer communications to
nonprofit groups.  We can.  One area that comes to my mind is food coops.
Now, most of you hear that and think of the AA People's Food Coop or
something comparable; but at least up to the demise of the former
distribution system, there were lots (dozens, I think) of smaller food
coops in the area.  I suspect they're still there, for the most part.

These function as buying clubs.  On some kind of regular schedule - once
a month or two, typically - people get together to put together an order:
I need some of this, but I can't use a whole case - who else is willing
to take some?  or, I see you're ordering that, would you spare some?

We could offer such groups a chance to do a lot of this part of it before
the meeting - to have their own little corner (conference?) where they
could put together items for an order and also post messages to each
other.  At some point it's likely that it would be desirable, in their
minds (& mine) to limit postings on some items to their official membership;
this issue needs to be thrashed out somewhat in advance.  If the
distributor's catalog is available in some reasonable medium besides
print (or could be made available), we could even set up some kind of
program to allow browsing & searching in it (something more friendly than
more or less!) and maybe even selection from it (pick up the order # and
prompt for the quantity).  I don't know.

Anyway.  Comments?  Other ideas?

Sounds great, Dave.  How do we find them?

Dunno, any more.  Several years back I could have given at least a couple
of contacts, but after we moved to Milan and the distribution system fell
apart & was replaced, I'm out of touch.  (The Milan coop, which we're now
in with, chose to go with an Ohio coop distributor, not the North Farms
which seemed to be replacing the Wherehouse for most of the AA area ones.
(We'll try to suggest something like this to others in the Milan coop,
though.  See what happens.)

At greater length:

To give *some* answer to Misti's question, let me start with some
personal history:  we were briefly in a small in A2.  Then we moved to
Milan, and were still in it with some strain - & then when there was all
the confusion over the People's Wherehouse, we wound up getting hooked up
with the Milan coop.  Grace & I will at least bring things up with some
people in that.  I kind of think few if any of them are computer types;
we'll see.  (But due to schedules, this is likely to be a month or two
from now.)

So we really don't know either North Farms (distributor which most of the
A2 area coops seemed to be deciding to go with after the Wherehouse
collapsed), or the current distribution system or # of small coops
around, or, really, even the people in the coop we were in.  Don't even
know off hand if they are still around or whatever (either individuals or
the outfit).  Others I once knew who were in similar small coops are
people I haven't had contact with for 10 or 15 years, now out of area.

My thought is that it might be best to try some kind of discussion with
North Farms (assuming that is who's distributing now) first.  I imagine
that if we make it plain that we're not trying to compete or to sell
anything, we could ask them for some general idea of how many groups &
how many people there are in the area, and also get some idea of what
kind of interface we might be able to consider to their
catalog/price-list info.  We couldn't do anything relating to *that*
without their help, in any case, so if they were hostile to the idea it
might be good to find out up front; and if they were receptive, we could
both use the information and then make that an attraction.  (North Farms
is based in Wisconsin, (Grace thinks Madison), FWIW.)

Hmm.  The distributor that the Milan coop uses, FORC (Federation of Ohio
River Cooperatives) has an ad in their pricelist:

                    Pricelists for PC Users

     FORC now offers monthly product pricelists on diskette.
    Both an ASCII format for use with DOS compatible software
   and PROVISIONS format are available in 3.5" or 5" diskettes.

 Order pricelists on diskette for shipment with your regular FORC order.
        The data on disk will be for the same month acording to
                    which FORCast issue you order.
         This service is free to Full Members of the Federation.
               Non-Members pay $5.00 for each diskette.

(and it goes on to give order #s and a contact name at FORC; and the Milan
coop is not a member, I think).  I suspect that North Farms might have
something similar.

Grace raised the issue at the last Milan Food Coop meeting.  Of those present,
only one other had a computer at home.  (In fact, someone functioning as
secretary had revised bylaws (proposed revisions, I think) there, which she
had **typed on a typewriter** and was not eager to change further because of
the need to retype.  (Someone with access to a computer at work volunteered
to enter them, cleaning up grammar etc. at the same time.))  So down here
I don't think this kind of service is likely to be attractive; A2-based groups
may have more people with computers, and larger groups would probably have
more people using computers if not a higher percentage.  <sigh>

Again, what I was originally offering was intended as one sample of a service
we could offer, facilitating communications in this one field.  Who else could
benefit from a bbs-style communication facility available 24 hours a day to
anyone with a modem?  Other ideas?

Another hand of grex is intending to rescue computers and make them
available at cost or for income to grex (depending on circumstances
and decisions). Sounds like there is a "market" there. 

For providing an organization with a computer for office use, I suspect the
market is very great.  For facilitating communications, we're limited to
finding organizations whose *members* (or enough of them) have computers &
modems, I think.  And it's extremely intimidating to many people, strange as
that may seem.  Um.  The intimidation due to the learning curve isn't strange
but may be easy to forget.  There's also in some cases a sheer attitude
problem; I once knew a woman (a good friend) who literally said things like
"I just don't like computers because they're too smart and they're taking
over."  This was irrational - not based on any actual facts in any way, and
immune to any question of facts or logic - but very strong & deeply felt.

I have a feeling they *are* taking over (me). And consider how much human
labor is now spent unproductively with computers. The lady has a point
(but not the one she intended). 

This response has been erased.

Yes, I'm being taken over too.  I spent almost the entire first week of winter
break on Grex, apart from some time spent hanging out in person with other 
Grexers.

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