Trying to run a pilot program in the community

[mhofner.livejournal.com]

Hi 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