Dear HeroCampers!

[Tara Hunt]

Hey all!

I'm very very happy to report that I finally got a chance to sit down with Austin Hill tonight...in person and everything...and talk about what we are doing and make sure it aligns with what he is doing and find out how and what we need to go forward...

All good news - and lemme tell you that Austin rawks in a seriously badass way - cause it looks like everything we want to do is do-able and we just need to figure out little intricacies here and there.

The stuff we need to figure out is:

- AKOHA.COM hosting of HeroCards - do the HeroCard holders have their own site or their own restricted group? A group will be easier to deploy and keep up to date - and will also give all sorts of opportunity to do more in the future, but there may be the occasional teen sneaking off to the other parts of the site that have the scary 'buy a couple in love a drink' mission. But as Austin and I discussed, teens and younger kids are already getting ahold of the cards and seeing these nasty, nasty messages (I kid).

***end result - probably have a group and Austin needs to figure this out for the other specialized decks he's creating so it fits right into his big plan.

- FACEBOOK - the Facebook app - as we discussed during the camp with Taylor and Chuck, the best way to spread the Hero Missions would be to tie them to a Facebook App. As I already talked to the fantabulous Nate Ritter about this, we may be able to work with Austin and the amazing Akoha API to make this happen! Austin would be tickled, too, because Akoha has a FB application on their roadmap and it would really help them out.

- PRINTING - the printing of the cards may be able to be covered in various ways - through a great deal that Austin is working with a printer on, sponsorships and/or charging a nominal fee for shipping (not much more than the cost of a ringtone, really). We also discussed helping Zim with his funding and seeing if we could offset the costs of printing the cards through the Heroic Imagination project. Creation of the cards once we get the artwork and design done (Austin will be sending me the template) will take about 30 days.

- FULFILLMENT & DISTRIBUTION - some options for fulfillment, as we recognize that having schools hand them out will have a lesser impact than having students distribute them: Austin is talking with a couple of organizations that have student groups on many high school campuses that could receive the cards and distribute them - namely Peace Games and Free the Children. We could also start with FB and gauge interest in each area, then send the cards out in bulk to a student ambassador to distribute. Sending the decks individually costs about $1.70/deck, so we could also charge shipping and handling upon sign up (although there is a barrier there). This is the biggest barrier, really. Maybe we could get all creative here.

- ACCOUNTABILITY - some of our missions make it difficult to confirm accountability, which may be more of an issue with kids than it has been with adults (and, as Austin says, there has been some 'gaming' of the system there). We need to figure out a good way to increase accountability. Of course, there will never be a perfectly ungame-able system, but trying to make it more accountable would be better.

- TIMING - Austin has indicated that he needs to have the template for these custom decks done in the next month done anyway, so this is helpful. He'll be creating a couple of custom decks - including one for TED - for early in the new year and the HeroDeck fits right into that. Therefore, our timing is good. We could probably have the HeroDeck come out in March or April, right after SXSW if we do our end of the legwork (design and illustrations).

Okay...that's a long enough email for now. Feedback? I've cc'd Austin and Zim here, too.

Tara

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tara 'missrogue' hunt

Book: The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business (http://www.amazon.com/Whuffie-Factor-Capital-Winning-Communities/dp/0307409503?ie=UTF8)
Company: Citizen Agency (http://www.citizenagency.com)
Blog: HorsePigCow: Marketing Uncommon (http://www.horsepigcow.com)
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/missrogue
phone: 415-694-1951
fax: 415-727-5335

[Nate Ritter]

Awesome!  Sounds like you've made some progress and I'm excited to be a part of it.  Thanks for keeping the momentum going Tara.  You're fantabulous yourself.  

Austin, let us know if there's anything we can do to help.  I'll contact you individually to talk about the FB app ideas.

Phil, thanks for being a big part of HeroCamp, even if in spirit.  Your studies and research have been a huge part of what we talked about during that week and have influenced our direction significantly.  Thank you.

Cheers team!

Nate Ritter

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