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davis_squareHi all. My name is Marc.
For a final project for my MBA, I'm working with a team of people to try and test out an opportunity related to personal outsourcing. The concept is basically to outsource mundane tasks (cooking, cleaning, shopping, whatever you can think of) to college students to free up your time for the more important things in life.
In order to test this opportunity, I'm trying to setup a pilot program in the Tufts/Davis Square area where community members would act as the consumers who are dictating what services they need done, and the Tufts students would act as the service providers. This seems to make the most sense since college students typically have more flexible schedules than local working professionals (a ha! assumption #1) and usually are in need of money (okay, who isn't?). In the end, I guess it doesn't really matter who provides the services, and who requests them. I'd simply like to see if a system that could facilitate transactions for such short-duration tasks would be feasible.
Of course, I hit the streets and tried the basic marketing tasks of passing out postcards in the area, but that proved highly inefficient. So I'm turning my attention back to the online community to see if anyone is interested in participating.
I guess, in a nutshell, if you're interested in participating in a 1- or 2-week study that would require only a few hours of your time, and you'd be willing to help out a local neighbor, drop me a line.
mhofner@kudju.com or 617.529.7288
For a final project for my MBA, I'm working with a team of people to try and test out an opportunity related to personal outsourcing. The concept is basically to outsource mundane tasks (cooking, cleaning, shopping, whatever you can think of) to college students to free up your time for the more important things in life.
In order to test this opportunity, I'm trying to setup a pilot program in the Tufts/Davis Square area where community members would act as the consumers who are dictating what services they need done, and the Tufts students would act as the service providers. This seems to make the most sense since college students typically have more flexible schedules than local working professionals (a ha! assumption #1) and usually are in need of money (okay, who isn't?). In the end, I guess it doesn't really matter who provides the services, and who requests them. I'd simply like to see if a system that could facilitate transactions for such short-duration tasks would be feasible.
Of course, I hit the streets and tried the basic marketing tasks of passing out postcards in the area, but that proved highly inefficient. So I'm turning my attention back to the online community to see if anyone is interested in participating.
I guess, in a nutshell, if you're interested in participating in a 1- or 2-week study that would require only a few hours of your time, and you'd be willing to help out a local neighbor, drop me a line.
mhofner@kudju.com or 617.529.7288
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A call for help
Date: 2007-11-08 04:02 am (UTC)I want to thank everyone for the great conversation. This is definitely along the lines of the feedback I'm looking to get from users of such a system. But as I mentioned earlier, what people say and what they actually do are often quite different things, and that is why we're trying to setup this pilot program to get people actually trying such an idea out, seeing what the actual process would be like, what the kinks are, what's good, what's bad, etc. Going through the actual process would provide much more to this conversation than just theorizing about it.
So what's it gonna take to get each of you to sign up? You may think you don't fit the mold, or your views would be slanted, or you just don't have the money. Well, you represent the very people that may eventually use a system like this, and your opinions matter to me. I still need to get several people signed up, and this has been the most lively discussion thus far, so I would love it if you'd consider sparing a few hours over the coming weeks to help me finish out this school project (less than 5 weeks to go!).
Thank you. Marc.
mhofner@kudju.com
617.529.7288