Here is how I plan to go about accomplishing my goal for the subway.
Stage 1:
I will be on the Manhattan-bound F train every weekday making my pitch. [For now I will be getting on at 8:45am at 4th Avenue / 9th Street. I will get on at the last car and move up one car each station until Delancey St, then I will get off (around 9am) and get on the next F train, enter at the second car and move back each station until 42nd St. I will never be in the first car, so if you want to escape me that's where you should go.] I plan for you do get comfortable with me by seeing me repeatedly and knowing that I am serious about this. I will hand out green flyers describing what I'm doing. And the flyers will contain the instruction, "If you're interested in what I'm doing and want to support me, keep this flyer, and hold it up next time you see me on the train." Next time when I get on the train and see people holding flyers, it will give me a sense of who's with me and how this is progressing, and it will advertise to all who's in on this. How cool will it be when 5 people hold up green flyers and everyone can see everyone who's partaking. I plan to use SCVNGR to get people motivated to bring the green flyers.
I will be on the Manhattan-bound F train every weekday making my pitch. [For now I will be getting on at 8:45am at 4th Avenue / 9th Street. I will get on at the last car and move up one car each station until Delancey St, then I will get off (around 9am) and get on the next F train, enter at the second car and move back each station until 42nd St. I will never be in the first car, so if you want to escape me that's where you should go.] I plan for you do get comfortable with me by seeing me repeatedly and knowing that I am serious about this. I will hand out green flyers describing what I'm doing. And the flyers will contain the instruction, "If you're interested in what I'm doing and want to support me, keep this flyer, and hold it up next time you see me on the train." Next time when I get on the train and see people holding flyers, it will give me a sense of who's with me and how this is progressing, and it will advertise to all who's in on this. How cool will it be when 5 people hold up green flyers and everyone can see everyone who's partaking. I plan to use SCVNGR to get people motivated to bring the green flyers.
Stage 2:
I will assign small specific missions daily (perhaps posted online) that get everyone in the group doing some kind of interaction. I expect after a few weeks I won't need to be present, and the interactions can keep going on their own. Perhaps we'll make up to all ride the same car so this works out. I plan to make use of SCVNGR in some way here too to make a game out of our daily interactions.
Stage 3:
I will repeat the process on a train one earlier, i.e. take the 8:40 train instead of the 8:45. However this time I will ask a couple of you from the 8:45 to help me seed the 8:40 so we get new people involved more quickly. In truth there will be some overlap between these 2 trains anyway, since not everyone's schedule is perfect, mine included, not to mention the train's. I will then repeat the process on the 8:50 train again bringing some of you along with me. And keep branching out until we have the rush-hour uptown F covered. Then I will move on to other lines that are near or overlap the F so I can tap my biggest fans to help me out on those lines for a few days. In this way we can tackle the A, C, B, D, N, Q, R, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
Stage 4:
At this point we have 12 lines covered with maybe 7 time slots per train and say 12 people per train involved daily, so as a group we are 1008 people strong. I think that's enough to have momentum build on its own in unpredictable ways. People will start hearing about this, there will be press about it and we can go from 12 per train to perhaps 35, and then spread to other lines like the J, Z, M, L so that's 16 lines and with counting both directions is 32 lines, with now maybe 10 time slots each. So that's (35 people x 32 lines x 10 timeslots) over 11,000 people! At this point the group can become far looser and branch out organically. We can start connecting with others in the group whenever we ride the train, anytime. How? Armbands! Whenever you get on the train and are interested in connecting with someone random just put on your armband and there's a decent chance that someone else on the train has one too. Since your colors signify your objective, it makes for an easy icebreaker, e.g. wear blue if interested in talking about food, green for seeking advice, purple for help with your business/career, you get the idea. And then we can move this off the subway, to the bus, to the supermarket, to infinity and beyond.
