Oook oook! Dagorath - some good suggestions in there. You're a salesman right?



So that's how I get it going at work...


Of course: use the IBM name!

A critical point: I know that - but they might not know it.

Now I realise that its me that's going to have to call the TV station!

My idea was to get corporate sponsors to pay for a free CD installation campaign, lots of sponsors each contributing a little money = a big campaign, all around the globe. Something like this...

1. Work up some graphics, nothing complicated, in jpg files, something to show what a display will look like and that it looks nice, something you would not be embarassed to put in your store. So far you've built only 1 display and photographed it or created images of what the display will look like when mass produced. The display could be a simple corrugated cardboard affair that folds into shape with tabs that lock and hold it together. You might convince a cardboard box manufacturer to provide them to you at his cost or slightly below or maybe even gratis.

2. Determine the cost of producing, oh say, 1K displays and 500K CDs. Now figure the cost of a kit consisting of 1 display and 250 CDs. Notice that leaves you 250K CDs left over.

3. Tack on cost of shipping 1 display kit. Maybe fudge the number up a bit to cover the cost of the 250K CDs remaining from step 2.

4. Contact BigBox Computers Ltd., tell them yada yada yada, show them the pics of your nice display and ask them how many displays they would like to buy, they've got 200 stores, they'll commit to 200 displays and write it off as charity or work WCG into their new ad campaign with phrases like "we help fight disease by partnering with WCG" or something similar and write off the display cost as advertising.

5. Contact a bazillion other stores, banks, etc. get committments for displays.

6. 1 month later tally the number of committments you've obtained. If the numbers work then manufacture the displays and ship them, if the numbers don't work then abandon the project or contact your committments and tell them you need X% more $$ per display to make it work.

7. A month later BigBox Computers requests more CDs, you send more for free because you paid for them in step 3.

8. Requests for CDs from your distributors dwindles to almost zero, you've got 20K CDs left but they're paid for in step 3 so send them to Tiger Direct or other mail order houses and ask them to drop a CD in each order they ship out until they're all gone

9. 2 Months later contact BigBox Computers and request 3 free server boxes, network components, Cat5 cable, etc. because now your servers are overloaded and you can't pump out the work fast enough to satisfy all those new crunchers.

10. Have big party!!

11. Rev up your resume with details of how you took WCG from 160K crunchers to 300K crunchers with corporate donations.

12. Send email to ol' Dagorath thanking him for the cool idea.

Challenge: someone send me jpgs of a display and the projected cost of a display kit and I will obtain committment for 30 displays here in the Province of Alberta, Canada, within 3 months.

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I visited my barber today and cleaned up the computer shack. Make that call Snowlizard, you know you want to be on TV. Who knows? Today the news, tomorrow Hollywood and a cameo beside Angelina Jolie. Mmmmm.

The problem with the executables is a tough one, yes, but remember that those who don't know usually want to know. If you can dumb it down for them a little they can walk away with a better underestanding or at least confidence that you know what you are talking about when you tell them it's safe. It's easier in a 1 on 1 conversation, much harder to do in a few short paragraphs in an FAQ.

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I second that. I had earlier thought "how do I get one on CD to hand out?"


So - you advise we need to wait for all this to happen first? Do you have dates, contact names so we can push this along?


If they have bought into the "responsible corporate citizen" concept, as many companies have, they will have a budget for it.

Dagorath has give us a credible scenario: although I am not sure about the scale. If we piloted it small scale beforehand we might even get the 500K CD costs underwritten by IBM, say.

Umm....I just realised something: do any of your newspapers give away film CDs? They do in the UK. they are usually ones everyone has seen, but its made me realise that there is a practised mass-distribution system out there that can be hitched onto.

By the way - did anyone estimate how much more computation time was needed to finish the currently-planned tasks? How many more members can IBM's server handle? Planning for sucess means we don't want to find we quadruple the membership & then run out of computation tasks to do ... they'll all join SETI (Don't worry - I know they are out there... but they're so far away from me)

All of these ideas are great!!!!!!!
No doubt about it.
Now I know why I'm apart of this great big group of dedicated people from around the world.
I just check out the partners page and didn't see American Cancer Society among them which made me think.....How about them joining us?
Has anyone asked? Not sure if anyone thought about having them join us here at the WCG so I dropped them an email to see if they were interested in joining us here at the WCG. I figured why not, it won't hurt to ask. Nothing to lose and a lot to gain.