I spoke yesterday with Leon Benjamin of The Law Firm, an advertising agency in London, founded by Andy Law http://www.thelawfirmgroup.com Leon is Head of Digital Strategy. We discussed research that Minciu Sodas and I might do for him. I share below my proposal and ask us all, How might we participate?

Leon and I first met perhaps six years ago. He was then in charge of business development for the online community Ecademy http://www.ecademy.com I and others from Minciu Sodas visited him twice at The Law Firm on our recent trip to London. He loves what we do and I've always hoped that we might work for him. Leon is the author of Winning by Sharing, http://www.winningbysharing.net Leon is interested to hire our Minciu Sodas team for one month to do research about UK online communities. He wants to know which online communities have participants who would be inclined to participate in a video competition. The purpose of the competition is to make people in the UK aware of Mornflake http://www.mornflake.com , a maker of breakfast cereals and a client of The Law Firm. Mornflake is a family business dating back to 1675. They provide oats for many generic brand breakfast cereals. They would like people in the UK to be aware of their brand. The Law Firm's strategy is to organize an online contest for videos that raise awareness in Mornflake so that attention is spread virally, especially through Facebook. Our work would be to identify receptive online communities. We are encouraged to work in the spirit of our Minciu Sodas laboratory.

Deliverables

Andrius Kulikauskas, sole proprietor of Minciu Sodas, proposes to start a directory of online communities in the UK. Andrius will lead a team of Minciu Sodas participants to create this directory. The directory will be kept on pages at the WorkNets wiki http://www.worknets.org and will be made available for display at other websites as requested.

We will list at least 500 online communities whose participants are primarily or frequently from the UK, and provide or deduce the following information, as available:

• The community's name and url.
• Their stated mission.
• The best participant to contact, and how to contact them.
• The number of registered members.
• The number of active members.
• The geographic distribution in the UK, as noteworthy.
• The demographics, as noteworthy: Age, sex, ethnicity, occupations, interests.
• The kinds of media actively shared: Posts, chat, tweets, photos, music, and especially, videos.

• Join their community.
• Engage a receptive leader, if any.
• Learn what values they have that they would like Mornflake to stand for.
• Learn whether they might encourage participation in the Mornflake video competition.
• Learn whether they have or wish to have relations with sponsors or funders.
• Learn whether they would like to share media with other communities.
• Learn what other UK online communities they recommend.
• Ask them to check and correct, as needed, the entry for their community in the directory.

All of our work is in the Public Domain.

We will complete the above work by May 15, 2009.

Andrius Kulikauskas will then write a case study explaining how he organized the Minciu Sodas team to do this work so that others might replicate this approach in the future.

Budget

We propose to do this work for 5,000 GBP. We ask that two-thirds be paid in advance and one-third upon completion of all work.

Team

We expect to involve more than thirty Minciu Sodas participants and get help from one hundred or more participants. Our team members will leverage their own interests as they reach out to UK online communities. Andrius Kulikauskas, Ph.D., in Vilnius, Lithuania, is founder of the Minciu Sodas laboratory for serving independent thinkers around the world, and the WorkNets network for organizing a culture of independent thinkers. In 2006-2007, Andrius led a Minciu Sodas team of 100 people in 11 countries to collect 2,000 food stories for My Food Story http://www.myfoodstory.com for Greg Wolff of the Unamesa Association. In 2008, Andrius he led 100 peacemakers on-the-ground and 100 online assistants to avert genocide in Kenya http://www.pyramidofpeace.net http://www.worknets.org/upload/AndriusKulikauskas/200903andriuskulikauskasresume.doc

Andrius will work with 5 team leaders who are all skilled at engaging online a wide variety of people, such as:

Samwel Kongere in Rusinga Island, Kenya is the organizer of Minciu Sodas's network in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. He is organizing a July 1-3 conference in Kisumu on local sustainability. His family is a trader in cereals, buying wholesale and selling retail. He leads our working group Mendenyo, "Men without food" http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mendenyo/ See also his website: http://www.friendsofrusingaisland.org

Pamela McLean in London, UK is a teacher and also a leader in helping people overcome cultural barriers, linking especially the bandwidth-rich in the UK with the bandwidth-poor in Nigeria. She leads our working group Learning From Each Other, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/learningfromeachother/ See also her blog: http://learnbydoinguk.blogspot.com

Sasha Mrkailo in Sombor, Serbia worked as Minciu Sodas's leading online assistant for My Food Story, Pyramid of Peace, Global Utopias, the WorkNets wiki and chat room and other projects. See: http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?SashaMrkailo and his blog: http://opensourcelife.wordpress.com

Tomas Cepaitis in Vilnius, Lithuania is Foreign Minister of the Republic of Uzupis, a creatively-minded neighborhood of Vilnius. He leads a network of 200 ambassadors of Uzupis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzupis He also leads our working group Human Human, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/humanhuman/

Fred Kayiwa in Kampala, Uganda is a champion online social networker. He is a student and leads youth soccer teams and a children's theatre. http://www.kampalajuniorteam.org Fred leads our working group One Reaching Another, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/onereachinganother/

We will draw on many others who might participate as team leaders or members or advisers, as needed and as available, including: Benoit Couture (Canada), Rachel Wambui Kungu, Tom Ochuka, David Mutua, Peter Ongele, Dennis Kimambo, Kenneth Chelimo, Dan Otedo (Kenya), Odeta Abramaviciute, Vygantas Vejas, Audrone Anusauskas, Liuba Salimova (Lithuania), Wendi Losha Bernadette (Cameroon), Awne Abo Zant (Israeli-occupied Palestine), Mark Petz (Finland), Dante-Gabryell Monson (Belgium), Josephat Ndibalema, William Wambura, Kiyavilo Msekwa (Tanzania), Gleb Tyurin (Russia), Andrius Kasparavicius (UK), Edward Cherlin, Jeff Buderer, Dorinda Moreno, Janet Feldman (USA). (I encourage you and all to write if you might be interested to work on this project!)

Andrius will receive 2,500 GBP for his work and responsibility. Team leaders will each receive 250 GBP, paid in advance, and the remaining 1,250 GBP will be divided among all others who help us with our work.

Minciu Sodas

Minciu Sodas is a sole prioprietorship registered in 1998 in Vilnius, Lithuania. Andrius Kulikauskas is the sole proprietor and a citizen and taxpayer of Lithuania and the United States of America.

Ideas

My proposal above focuses on our work-at-hand, which is the research that we would do for The Law Firm to identify receptive online communities where they can find participants for the online video contest. Leon Benjamin and I also spoke about ideas for the contest to motivate participants and help make people aware of Mornflake cereal. Leon explained that the winning video will be the one that gets the most hits through Facebook.

A central idea is that the videos be about people's values rather than about the cereal's merits. Most people aren't motivated by breakfast cereal! And few people in the UK are aware of Mornflake or know where to buy it. But there are many creative people who would like to promote their own values and would be happy that a breakfast cereal promote them, too.

The video contest might simply require that each video include the line, spoken or written, "What should Mornflake stand for?" Encourage people to focus on the values they would like Mornflake to have, and to be as inspiring, creative, shocking, funny and unexpected as they might to win people's attention.

I encouraged Leon to make the most of his interest to involve online community. Assuming a 20,000 GBP prize fund, I suggest that the top prize be shared by the winner and their online community, so that they each receive 5,000 GBP, for example. This would encourage communities and their participants to motivate each other. Midway through the contest I would give out 50 prizes of 100 GBP to the most active communities and ask them to throw Mornflake parties with the wish that they buy Mornflake in their neighborhood and try it out, and that they upload video from their party. And I would give out 5 prizes of 1,000 GBP to the community organizers who prove most helpful so that they consult, in public, on the subject, "What should Mornflake stand for?" and draw attention to noteworthy videos.

I think a key goal should be to encourage the use of the "mornflake" tag for videos and posts so they are easy to find.

I suggest that all videos entered are placed in the Public Domain as a condition of the contest. This will make for a wealth of video footage that can be reused by all without restriction, and such an archive would encourage others to create variants, making for an active discourse and increasing the chance of videos (and "What should Mornflake stand for?") spreading virally. I would invite online community organizer's to think about a longer term vision for Mornflake, perhaps Mornflake widgets for sharing videos among online communities so that they can share news and videos amongst each other. Such a "Mornflake channel" would then define a certain kind of community and what Mornflake stands for.

Values

As Mornflake helps people promote their values, I think that people will grow interested in Mornflake's values. I am keeping in mind an opportunity that opened up in London when John Caswell of Group Partners met with me and others from Minciu Sodas (Franz Nahrada, Samwel Kongere, Graham Knight). He agreed that we develop a Public Domain version of his consultancy's methodology by which a business (or community) agrees on what it could and should and will do. http://www.grouppartnerswiki.net/index.php?title=4D The videos, if in the Public Domain, can be materials for Mornflake but also others to think this through for themselves. This can suggest future campaigns. As Mornflake develops it's identity, others might also.

Impact

I conclude with a recent letter from Samwel Kongere which shows the real impact that the Mornflake campaign can have. We will identify many receptive online communities in the UK so that they might likewise inspire us with their visions, What should Mornflake stand for?

Samwel Kongere: Thanks for all who are concerned, I am encouraging the women and men to stay at their home villages and make the farms. When i was going to London i asked a handful of women 30 plus; to prepare land for seasonal planting, good they have prepare land and planted maize, millet, peas and other crops for food, wonderful. I may thank God for giving rainfall this Sunday of Easter. We have bright sun shine today, but when i visited the farms, the villagers are worried roads are impassable we are dejected we cannot get cereals, the prices is escalating, no public transport can reach here. The women might not weed their crops due to hunger. If we can get between 200$ to 300$ this will be enough because i am using them as a model of women who will discourage the rural to urban migration, sustainabillity though must come from a trial. I am making my own farm where horticural is my hope for survival. Dearly i am meeting the women tomorrow to contribute a secret to support their kitchen need, according to them anything consummable is vital and this time. Your stretched hand will be helpful. We also need containers to harvest rain water. More tomorrow after meeting. Samwel. http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/mendenyo/message/2561

Thank you!

Leon, I'm excited that we might work for you!

This is a profound opportunity for me and our lab, Minciu Sodas. I urge our participants to respond and to be ready to work intensely and with all speed!

Andrius

Andrius Kulikauskas

AboutThisPage

• ProposalLeader=AndriusKulikauskas
• ProposalSummary=Do research for LeonBenjamin of TheLawFirm to find UK online communities with participants interested to participate in a Mornflake video contest.
• ProposalStatus=We received first payment and are starting work.
• UKOnlineCommunityResearch=LeonBenjamin of TheLawFirm accepted this proposal from AndriusKulikauskas of MinciuSodas to create a directory, in the PublicDomain, of UKOnlineCommunities, especially for use to learn which UK online communities have members who might participate in an online video contest to promote Mornflake breakfast cereal.

Comments

Wed, 15 Apr 09 19:05:37 +0000 WilliamWambura: This is a profound opportunity for me and our lab, Minciu Sodas and our organisation,UYOGA.Am very free to work intensely and with great speed,if i can get this opportunitiy to do so.

William.

Fri, 24 Apr 09 21:39:53 +0000 Masimba Biriwasha: I am ready to take off - I have understood the ToR, and need the step-by-step how to create the pages.

Thank you

Masimba

Tue, 12 May 09 09:22:08 +0000 alex: Andrius

I have only just come across this but wonder if a school is not a group that you might target ? Is the cereal aimed at young people ?

Great idea by you and Len. Isn't the web incredible for innovation

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