Talk:Marketing

Introduction

We want:

• Monetary support.
• "Come over to our farm" support.
• A bunch of people to try this on themselves in their own place. Some will become developers, but many will become the all important beta-testers: people who try to use this stuff themselves, finding bugs and reporting back to developers.

It looks like we're looking for markets in two ways: looking for specific examples, and looking for categories. Both approaches should reinforce each other.

Possible people to try contacting

Rationale: People that are aware of the political/criminal/economic system may be more inclined to take action to form a counter-system. The more well informed they are the better they may be able to analyze the situation to see a way to act. People that have already taken some form of action might be more willing to help out.

• http://mikeruppert.blogspot.com/ http://fromthewilderness.com Mike Ruppert. Wrote a fairly well read book, "Crossing the Rubicon", about peak oil and the political/criminal/economic system and ended with a call for action, to local sustainable economies/activism. Informed, good analyst.
• http://farmlet.co.nz/ Rebecca: rebecca at farmlet dot co dot nz A farm in New Zealand. Kevin runs http://cryptogon.com/ about political/criminal/economic news, has links to gardening and permaculture. Very well informed, very good analyst, very practical, has acted on knowledge as have some readers.
• http://dailypaul.com/ http://ronpaulforums.com/ Support local activism, many well informed people, some have taken action.
• http://survivalblog.com/ Wrote a book. Supports self sufficiency, informed, has taken action as have many readers.
• http://infowars.com/ Very many well informed people, not much real action though.
• http://polyfacefarms.com
• http://www.pathtofreedom.com/ Suburban food gardening.
• http://www.chrismartenson.com/ Has a video course to help inform people, has a forum that may have some well informed people.

Crossing the chasm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm

There are innovators, early adopters and the rest of us. I haven't read the book "crossing the chasm" but apparently the best strategy is to focus on just one group of early adopters, as the British did with Normandy, because after that the rest is easier.

(Actually, the pictures in the above wikipedia page show how the chasm is between early adopters and the rest. I don't know if the same principles apply to this very early stage.)

Now, such a group doesn't exist "per se", but has to be "defined in our perception". Apparently, it's best to focus on those who need an urgent problem solved, a bad itch to scratch. Some possible alternatives would include:

• people who love to play around with the machines. Tinkerers. Innovators in close fields who'll take your piece as part of their puzzles.
• people who need to get stuff done now, and who already have unsatisfying solutions. Firefighters in need of a better hose. The LifeTrac etc would be competing for light in an area where growth is already happening.
• Others. It doesn't matter if our "categories" overlap, because we're not trying to classify, but rather to freshen our perception to find a few Normandy candidates. So please *add* to this list, rather than remake it. Maybe create other lists, slicing reality in a different way.