Mobilizing #GoogleHaven: Yap’s Unofficial History

Mobilizing #GoogleHaven
This is the story of #GoogleHaven from our Ripple100 lens. How we got involved, met hundreds of great people (and counting), did awesome things for and with our city, learned more about our own technology, and ultimately became better at what we do. All because we got involved.

Happy Hour Monday, March 8. That was the first time I heard about Google Fiber. Catching up with Dan Blake and Mike Melvin, who had worked several CUBED start-ups with me. “Have you heard about New Haven’s campaign for Google Fiber?” Mike asked, adding a quick follow up. “It’s perfect for Ripple100.”

My reply: “No thanks, no time.”

Fast-forward 3 days later, I’m slogging through early evening traffic on I-95, right where Exit 42 becomes hell on earth. Debriefing my day’s meetings while Robert Siegel, Melissa Block, and Mee-chelle Norris serenaded me with All Things Considered. Then something just clicked. Mike’s right! Ripple100 would be perfect for Google Fiber. Weird, because from Happy Hour Monday to miserable drive Thursday I hadn’t given Google Fiber so much as a second thought.

Soon as I got home I googled “New Haven Google Fiber”, found references to SeeClickFix , a fellow New Haven start-up. Then did 2 things: I emailed Ben Berkowitz, SeeClickFix founder and CEO; and I sent him this tweet: @benberkowitz i’m in east rock, wanna help google fiber new haven. Maybe our app can help: http://bit.ly/9vlCYd

Next day, Friday 5:15 am I found Jack Nork’s tweet: @andreayap spread the word about highspeednewhaven.com.

I replied: @jcnork kudos to Retail Optimization for getting #GoogleHavenhttp://bit.ly/cCYacI started. Can we get together to see how we can help?

I alerted the team: @AmyDesmarais @jwierin @derekkoch heads up! How can we help New Haven win #GoogleHaven http://bit.ly/cCYacI Answer: E Pluribus Unum

A theme was taking shape, via Twitter: Out of many 1. Entreps, NFP, studes, pros, politicos – we’ll micromobilize to make New Haven #GoogleHaven. We got 14 days. #9Q #MM2010

By 6:05 am, less than an hour after Jack and I found each other, #GoogleHaven the movement and hashtag was up and running, via twitter: Let’s do it! @jcnork #GoogleHaven tweetup! Suggest @BruCafehttp://bit.ly/a63V2Y

After which, unkempt and barely presentable, I did a Ripplecast, using our own app to declare: I want my New Haven to be GoogleHaven!

5 hours later the #GoogleHaven gang showed up at Bru Cafe, which became (whether owners Curtis and Bill liked it or not) our de facto HQ. Meeting minutes were spread via twitter and Google docs, and it wasn’t long before Giulia Gouge, aka @shesosocial, referred to us as the Get It Done Crowd:

@jcnork @Becky_Lyman @kewingct @leecruz @jrlogan @AmyDesmarais @giuliag @jwierin @prolificbobby (armed with Google Fiber fliers) @cvelardi @TheDanHealy @SheilaMC7 @brucafe, and me, @andreayap

Two months later, we’re still at it. The gang has grown. In the next installments of this series you’ll meet some of them, see the face, hear the voice behind the @names. At Ripple100, we’ve used our app to produce 15 ripples (video microsites) capturing hundreds of faces and voices of New Haven, from residents and professionals to entrepreneurs, nonprofits, men, women, children, the students, teachers and staff of the New Haven Public Schools – all saying the same thing: We want New Haven to be #GoogleHaven! We’ve tallied 5,415 ripple effects, not counting all the activity via twitter, facebook, blogs, offices, schools, homes, cafes, restaurants, bars, parks and streets of New Haven. A month after Google’s official deadline passed, we’ve done another 7 campaigns and are in line for 93 more. We’re committed to GoogleHaven100 – 100 local establishments giving 100 gifts worth $100 or more, all in the spirit of 100x faster internet.

How many opportunities is that to get involved, to do well and do good, to change the world and build a company that makes a difference in the company of great of people? Sounds like a cliche, but isn’t all that what why we startup?

How We Got #nhv Up to Speed for High Speed Internet
By that Friday when the GoogleHaven crew first met up, we had 14 days to Google Fiber’s March 26 deadline. We had up to the next two Fridays to mobilize an entire city*.

At that point, your start-up gear kicks in. All the instincts that make you thrive and survive as a tech entrepreneur – bang! Gears on or you have no shot. For GoogleHaven the gears went something like this…

First: Jack Nork (one of the top geeks at VC-funded Retail Optimization and the man who put Google Fiber on the New Haven map so that I could find it) kicked off the meeting, got us all on the same starting block – a common understanding of requirements, timelines, resources, all things Google Fiber.

Second and quickly to third: We had a choice – we could launch into the creative whambang of thinking up gimmicks along the lines of politicians jumping into frozen lakes, renaming our city, or the obvious hype and buzz of viral videos. Or, we could craft a substantive argument that shows Google why it should pick New Haven. Once we decided on the latter, our direction was clear, a working bond based on common values formed. The rest was execution.

Fourth gear: A good pitch is simple, easy to repeat and share, and answers the make or break question. Our pitch was that: Hey Google, pick New Haven because we’re diversity in action. Diversity in people, sectors, resources, and needs.

Why diversity? Because if you’re Google, you’re about to invest in a high capex game that’s great for your business if you win, but you don’t necessarily know how to play that infrastructure game because it has nothing to do with your incumbent business model on the cloud (in other words, you’re in danger of making big mistakes and losing big money). Thus, you’re looking for 2 things in your pilot venue: 1) a testbed to identify all the variety of kinks in rolling out high speed internet, and how to solve those variety of kinks; and 2) a showcase to demo all the variety of ways 100x faster internet can, will, and has made the world a better place. You want a test bed and showcase: to both the answer is diversity. If Google goes to a homogeneous pilot city, it miss all the variety of things that go wrong and right, which is the point of a pilot.

Fifth gear: We’re not going to tell Google about New Haven’s diversity so much as we were going to show it, in action, in ways that show “out of many, we are one” – and fast. It’s a germane point: For Google, fast internet is even better in fast community.

So, the next day we woke up to Saturday tweets that went like this: 13 days to go. I want my NewHaven to be #GoogleHaven . Say it: http://bit.ly/cCYacI. Shout it: http://bit.ly/cCYacI

“Say it” was in reference to a 60-second sign-up site – quick, easy, shows sheer numbers, all the hands raised for New Haven.

“Shout it” was a different game, for the win. It pointed straight to Google’s own form, a herculean 10- to 15-minute endeavor that asks the tough questions. Who are you? From what constituency – student, teacher, professional, business owner, resident, government, etc? Why do you care? How would 100x faster internet help you? Do you have a YouTube video to amplify your advocacy?

Our strategy played right into Google’s form. Diversity in action meant people from all walks of New Haven answering Google’s form. New Haven businesses across all sizes and sectors, nonprofits, schools, students, teachers, professionals, men, women, families – each making their case, and in the collective showing Google New Haven’s diversity in action.

How did we do it? That’s the subject of the next post, where this story really comes alive. Preview it here (and guess who Jack Nork is in the video!) 10 Days: The Story of How New Haven Became GoogleHaven.

* To be clear, there were two parts to New Haven’s campaign for Google Fiber: the city’s official submission and the community’s voice. My story focuses on community. But the City’s efforts were every bit as compelling and a perfect complement. By the time we got the community side going, Emily Byrne from Mayor Destefano’s office was well on her way – completing Google’s requirements, reaching out to key fixtures in the New Haven establishment. Yale, our hospitals and healthcare companies, the business sector via channels like the City Economic Development Council, The Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce, Science Park, and so on. The New Haven establishment was signed on to Google Fiber. Our job was to do the same at the community level, from the bottom up.

Micromarketing to Power #GoogleHaven
Eleven months ago I sat in Clayton Christensen’s couch at Harvard, talking innovation with the dean of innovation. The key question, as we prepped for late-evening call with an Asian client: what makes for disruptive innovation? Answer: when entire new customer segments hire a product to do a job they wouldn’t otherwise have the the skills or money to do – that’s disruptive innovation. More here.

Productizing jobs: it’s a simple framework that informs how we’ve approached GoogleHaven.

At Ripple100, our product’s job is to grab a big marketing campaign – such as mobilizing the New Haven community to tell Google to choose us over 1,099 other cities – and break it down into bite-size pieces (hence we call it micromarketing). Our app uses video microsites to get the job done – to turn big marketing into stories and personalities that move people to act. It’s a big job that small businesses, nonprofits, political campaigns and grassroots initiatives like GoogleHaven need done, but have neither skills nor resources to do. Ripple100 gets that job done: story-telling.

The result is 10 Days: The Story of How New Haven Became GoogleHaven. We did a campaign a day in the 10 days left to Google’s March 26 deadline. We held no fantasies about mobilizing New Haven as a monolithic bloc. Instead, we micro-mobilized so that on Day 1 we pitched to residents, Day 2 to entrepreneurs, Day 3 to nonprofits, Day 4 to women, Day 5 to schools, and so on – one audience, pitch, and call to action at a time. Or, as we say, one ripple at a time. Each one a story.

This is how each story happens:

1. Cast of characters. Each day’s pitch had a different audience, so we picked between 1-20 people from the day’s target audience. E.g., to pitch to nonprofits, we chose 3 members of that community.
2. Tell the story. Good stories start from questions that need resolution. In this case: how is the web commonly used in their constituent group? and thus, how would 100x faster internet change their game?
3. Pack into bite-size pieces. We used video microsites for a short (elevator) pitch that prompted audiences to watch the video, hear the story, and respond (click) on specific calls to action. Key is to keep it short and sweet, because of #4.
4. Share the story. We gave the video microsites to each target audience who saw one of their own telling their stories, which increased resonance and conversion rates.
5. Measure. Each story had ripple effects, which we tracked, how many views, shares, actions taken, connections made.

The best thing about stories is they tell themselves. Here’s a sampler of what we found: 3 Big Reasons and a Song, What Women Want, and a 60-Second Hero. GoogleHaven is a story that didn’t end with Google’s March 26 deadline. It’s still being written and we are, all of us, its authors.

The Birth of GoogleHaven100.
I can’t recall exactly when it happened, but I can perfectly recall why. March 26, 2010 was the official deadline, but with 1,200 cities vying to be Google’s choice, that date could not possibly be the end. For the eventual winners, it was only the beginning. I don’t care what kind of technology company you are: sifting through 1,200 community applications would still come down to a human process. Which meant two things:

1. Time was on our side – because we could continue to make our case, and to the extent we did and 1,199 others didn’t time really was on our side.

2. Stories had a central role in this process – the human decision is going to be made not on raw qualifications, but on the stories that made the most sense.

Out of this two-fold logic, GoogleHaven100 was born. 100 New Haven establishments give 100 gifts, each worth $100 or more, to 100 winners – all in the spirit of 100x faster internet (Google Fiber’s value proposition).

Here’s the launch video for GoogleHaven100 proclaiming that “Google isn’t coming to New Haven. We have to go get it “.

A catchy promo? Yes, but far more important, it was our best response* in a high-stakes competition.

The 100-part series gave us a go-to campaign for New Haven, one we could pitch over an extended period of time, but without having to recreate the wheel. (How exactly does this work when Google shut off the application process way back in March? Ah, the secret sauce – this one we’ll keep to ourselves.)

Behind every one of the 100 promos is a different, but recurring story – thereby showing Google 100 different looks, but reiterating the same theme over and over again: Here are 100 more faces of New Haven, each one shows how our diversity of businesses use the same web to create and nourish community in such a way that it’s good for business and good for New Haven. If our 10-Day campaign was about mainstreet new Haven, GoogleHaven100 was about the nooks and crannies, the small streets, the eclectic, idiosyncratic charm of New Haven’s restaurants, boutiques, spas, services, entrepreneurs, etc. and how we can make them come together for the same cause.

GoogleHaven100 needn’t be the only answer or the best answer or even the answer that gave us the prize. The point is it was an answer. The existential question had been: what do we do with all this energy and community after Google Fiber, or if we don’t get chosen, which mathematically speaking was the overwhelming odds (1 of 1,200). GoogleHaven100 kept the ball rolling on a community initiative that had snowballed from a tiny handful to the true grassroots. It reignited highspeednewhaven.com, inspired similar initiatives, brought people together, evangelized the social web as part of our everyday lives. The process has become its own reward. More on this in the next and last installment of this 5 part series.

So 69 days after Google’s deadline, we’re onto GoogleHaven Gift #12 of 100. We’ve brought 12 more New Haven establishments into the GoogleHaven cause, and each in turn has brought along their diverse audiences – a true ripple effect. My math was way off: GoogleHaven100 isn’t just 100 more faces of New Haven, it’s 100 times an awesome multiple. Gift #9 from The New Haven Symphony Orchestra, for example, tallied more than 1300 ripple effects! GoogleHaven now has an official cafe, cupcake, jewelry, spa, handbag, spring jacket, app, and we are looking forward to soon having our official beer and sushi, among many many other things. See the complete list here.

That’s the good news. The better news is that we have 88 more to go to GoogleHaven100. We put time firmly on our side, and the story is being told and retold of business, community, and the web coming together in a great city. This story unfolds everyday, and we are, all of us, its authors.

* Best response is a Game Theory (Economics) function that plots a competitor’s best move given what other players are likely to do.

And the Winner is #GoogleHaven
Google hasn’t announced it yet, but we won. New Haven by a landslide. Like a snowball into an avalanche, our GoogleHaven initiative to win Google Fiber for New Haven has triggered an irreversible revolution from which there is no going back. People have joined from all walks of New Haven, and now Connecticut. We’ve been to the mountaintop, we’ve seen a shared vision of what our cities and state can be with the social web.

The process is its own reward: we knew that, but now it’s point of fact.

Just from our vantage point at Ripple100, here’s what we’re seeing in the New Haven landscape:

• Our original 10-Day campaign has become GoogleHaven100, now on its 13th leg, with 87 more opportunities to bring 87 more New Haven businesses into this common cause – to turn them on, along with their audiences to the everyday possibilities of the social web. To date GH100 alone has spawned more than 10,000 ripple effects (measured views, shares, actions taken, connections made) for New Haven, not counting all the airtime via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and news media both print and TV.
• Meanwhile, from among the GoogleHaven gang, we got together with the marketing types and asked: what can we do to better the intersection of social media and marketing in CT? And so the Left to Right Movement, born and bred in New Haven, happens every Wednesday – without fail since we started in April. Set like a reality show (but real!) the Left to Right Movement features live case studies of real marketing campaigns, with real owners and managers, real audiences, real budgets and constraints. Left to Right refers to the challenge of moving audiences from Awareness & Interest, to Trial & Acquisition, to Retention & Lifetime Value, all the way to Advocacy – a progression we trace via weekly episodes, or office hours, leading up to a Finale – all captured in video. Our vision is to grow Left to Right as a CT movement – to brand CT, with New Haven at its epicenter, as a destination for world-class social media marketing that works. Less hype, more results.
• Then there is the first ever PodcampCT happening in New Haven October 16, 2010. As it has in dozens of cities across the world, so this 1-day unconference is finally coming to CT, hosted at New Haven’s Cooperative Arts & Humanities Interdistrict Magnet School. COOP is one of the crown jewels of the New Haven Public Schools, it’s PodcampCT role a reprise of NHPS’ turn at mobilizing our teachers and students for the original GoogleHaven campaign. PodcampCT slogan: the role of social media where we live, work, play.
• A quintessentially New Haven moment is about to happen, and it will have social web as its central theme. Except instead of a moment it will run for 7 days across 22 events, and counting. The first annual Social Web Week Connecticut kicks-off July 10 to 16, 2010 – where else, but in New Haven. A direct offshoot of a recent Left to Right episode, Social Web Week CT is but a 20-day old undertaking. But in true GoogleHaven fashion, involving many of the same cast of characters, swCT has already exploded into a full-on movement, completely grassroots for, with, by the people of CT. As we speak we are T-23 days from bringing the social web down from the clouds and into out streets, indeed where we live, work, play.

A revolution, I say? Here, take these 140-character peeks at history in the making: #swCT #L2R #GoogleHaven #pcCT

See a city swirling in a revolution from which there is no turning back. Better yet, jump in. This a story that is still being written, and we are all of us its authors.