Naming

Thoughts to keep in mind as we are naming the competition project (and I do think it should be separated linguistically from GroupOne2)

Required reading from Seth Godin:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/03/a-dumb-branding.html

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/10/the_new_rules_o.html (longer)

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/10/the_new_rules_o.html

Highlights:

"Jewelry Central is a really bad brand name. So are Party Land, Computer World, Modem Village, House of Socks and Toupee Town. It's a bad brand name because Central or Land or World are meaningless. They add absolutely no value to your story, they mean nothing and they are interchangeable."

"If you want Jet Blue or ikea or some other brand, you're just as likely to type the brand into google as you are to guess the domain name. In essence, we've actually added a step in the process of finding someone online. (How else would anyone find Del.ico.us?) This means that having the perfect domain name is nice, but it's WAY more important to have a name that works in technorati and yahoo and google when someone is seeking you out."

"First, the main point: a brand name is a peg that people use to hang all the attributes of your business. The LESS it has to do with your category, the better. If you call yourself International Postal Consultants, there's a lot less room to hang other attributes. Some names I like? Starbucks. Nike. Apple. "

12/29 Meeting Thoughts

I had some thoughts on the drive home, and I'm going to keep this short:

1. I think the problem-solving competition web site is a good idea. I think we should try to establish that there is demand for such an idea before we put money into building it.

2. A way to do this is to host a competition online that could be a model for how we want the site to operate.

3. I still think we should try to enter a competition ourselves to get our work-flow ironed out, get our juices flowing, and keep us motivated.

Re: Realize Potential

Realize Potential...I like the concept. Everything has potential (i.e. the potential energy of my stapler), but most things need a catalyst (or an instigator, or insert fun metaphor for GO2 here) to help it be realized.

I think we could even expand it a bit. Think of it this way. An NBA scout's job is to evaluate potential. They decide if a kid is the next Charles Barkley or the next Kwame Brown. So if the kid has great skills, and succeeds, then at best that kid is as good as Charles.

I see this as a self-imposed ceiling. "The next..." comes around all the time. "The next Dylan." "The next Google." "The next Atkins." People feel compelled to compare the present to the past because it's easy, because people can relate to it, and because the past is concrete. I think our job is to help realize future potential. What kind of path can we help you blaze? What can we accomplish that will get people to spread the word? We could phrase this as "how remarkable can you be?" or "how remarkable can we help you become?" if we are focusing on consulting.

Basically, we are here to help avoid lazy thinking and foster. For instance, having a LEED platinum-certified house built for you should cost more than a regular one right? WRONG. Here's a theory by someone willing to use logic to challenge a crippling trap.

Thoughts?

Solar Project

After the break I'm going to build a solar hot water heater for my pool. I think I can get all my supplies for under $150 according to some do it yourself websites I've found. If anybody has some ideas we can draw it up over Christmas break and give it the GO2 touch. Here are some good sites for info...

http://www.motherearthnews.com/uploadedImages/articles/issues/1979-09-01/059-070-01pic.jpg

http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/hackleman65.html

http://www.thesietch.org/projects/solarthermalpanel2/index.htm

i'm underwhelmed

i was thinking about the bus-nass today while flying back to miami and came up with a reworded concept of what we are trying to do.

realize potential...

for instance i think just about every project we have started up is dealing with improvements. anytime you are underwhelmed by a situation or feel that something is under achieving, add it to the list. for instance while pulling up to the gate i was thinking about skywalks. they're a pretty awesome moment in travel but extremely underutilized in my mind. (simple white tunnels, come on we can do better)

so, thought and discussion on the elevator pitch...

since our world is completely under achieving in the issues surrounding sustainability we have put that as a major guiding factor of our projects. as noble as this cause is, we should let the clients know that this is inherent in our design and allow our true purpose to shine through. maybe we build the groupone2 business model for now and also for once the world has realized sustainability (2030, 2050?, or never) by not putting a movement in our slogan. that would be sustainable.

drumroll please,

Group One2 Realize Potential

thoughts??

Double Dipping Allowed! Turbines & Salsa!

alright so here's my question, why can we not double dip when it comes to energy creation?

everywhere we look there is energy being spent, energy being spent is potential for energy to be harvested...

for instance...

-rain falling, put some mini-turbines in your gutters, the whole way down
-water down the drain put a turbine
-micro turbines on planes to power passenger electronics
-they are starting to do this with elevators, capturing energy on the way down and heat recovery systems
-anywhere with movement, capture it, sure its on the micro scale and laws of energy say we can't create a perfect machine where we capture more than we spend but it has to help and maybe we can damn near close to 100% recovery

my latest idea, design a car with wind scoops on the roof, why not recapture some of the spent energy to make the car move and use it to say recharge the hybrid batteries partially. lets get some badass drawings of integrating turbines into a car design.

Fix Our Energy Addiction

ANOTHER ONE WE WILL WIN AND PROCLAIM GO2 WILL CONQUER

http://www.metropolismag.com/nextgen/

$10 MILLION PRIZE

best idea in the world wins...

http://www.project10tothe100.com/index.html

I'm a dude disguised as a dude playing another dude

Thats right, I have many alias's and I've got gigs under each identity, here's an update on some freelance ish:

- Created a custom wine cellar door with emblam for a local family's personal cellar. ($75 or so)

- Creating a custom frosted glass panel for my ma's bathroom ($100 or so)

- Helping create the logo of a Boston Non-Profit group called HelpHeatMass.org, check it out. (non profit and a favor to a friend so probably not much but good content and advertising for us)

This calls for a meeting when Tim shows up and beer shall flow like wine!

Next Step: Floating Cities?

Google considering floating international data centers:

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article4753389.ece

This is economically and environmentally green...it's about time for someone to start the floating bank.

Logo Fun

I was sitting here doing some work on this crazy alienware stuff when I had a small revelation. Our logo is made up of 5 circles, two of which are incomplete or cropped in a way. I think we can start playing with the logo to start generating some fun content for our webpage whenever we open it. Here's what I'm thinking:

Andy showed us a dude he knows who uses a Flickr account to display a new photo ever day, resulting in hundreds of pictures, hence plenty of content for people to flip through. What if we used our logo in the same way. The simplicity of its circles allows it to be created pretty simply, it would be flippin sweet if everyone just started making go2 logos whenever they saw the possibility. Here's some examples I thought of which illustrate the point:

Coffee/Wine Circles (almost painting the bottom of a mug/glass or something to create the logo)
Orange Peels (you could cut cross sections and then cut them accordingly for the G and S)
drawing on someones dirty windshield

The possibilities are endless and each becomes a very individual, personal touch logo further emphasizing our versatility, we should start documenting them so we have plenty to kinda update the website daily when the time comes. Let me know what everyone thinks, or just start making some.

Re: I rode the school bus all my life

I like where this is going. A few points to steer conversation:

1. Confession: I have taken a ride on a public bus in the past year. I did not have a parking spot close enough to my building, so I caught the FCX bus from the Friday Center Park & Ride into campus for close to two months (until I was given a spot on Franklin St).

2. People ride the buses in Chapel Hill. They are free and go virtually everywhere you could want to go.

Here is my view: if the barriers to using public transportation make it more attractive than owning, maintaining and using your own vehicle, then people will opt for the public transport. The major barriers that exist in Raleigh that do not exist in Chapel Hill include cost to ride and higher distance to cover.

This is just hypothetical, but could it be that people opt for trains simply because they are faster and run more frequently? I was willing to bus from the Friday Center to campus (15 minutes max with traffic, buses every 10 minutes), but I was not willing to take the TTA from Blue Ridge in Raleigh to Franklin Street(~1 hour, one bus per hour). Now, if light rail could have taken me from the same point of origin to the same destination in 30 minutes with maybe one stop (at RDU?) then that would have been much more attractive. Taking the bus from Raleigh would have cost me time and flexibility (say I wanted to work out or have dinner with an acquaintance after work. What if I miss the last bus at 8 pm?). Also, there's something appealing about being able to skip all of that road traffic that others are stuck in.

That's not even considering the perception that since light rail doesn't run on gasoline that it is more energy-friendly (I don't know the reality, just perception).

I'm not saying this isn't a worthy endeavor, just trying to explore a bit.

I RODE THE SCHOOL BUS ALL MY LIFE

Alright, raise your hand if you have taken a ride on a public city bus or even know somebody who has in the last year?

Right nobody, as I learned from great acting in the movie Crash the reason buses have such big windows is so everybody can see the people riding to laugh at.

I think a good internal design competition and free public service we can provide for the City of Raleigh would be to design a bus that people want to ride. Studies have shown that when a light rail line is implemented on the exact same line w/ the same stops and frequency as a previously existing bus line the ridership goes up. Why? Why can't we design a bus that people will be proud of riding and cities would be able to implement. Bus lines are far less expensive than implementing light rail and easier to modify and adapt to growth. However, since it is so damn cool to ride light rail and so damn ghetto to ride buses cities are forced to pay the extra for light rail to get the ridership numbers needed to make a system effective and please society.

Buses are to light rail as Starbucks is to Maxwell House.

The idea would be an internal design process where one or a couple of concepts are produced/rendered over a period of a few months and then in some way form or fashion given to the City of Raleigh free of charge to grow our goodwill and hopefully produce publicity for GO2.

Struggs....

Hey Fellas,

So our first deadline of posting a bunch of article/design ideas by August has fizzled out to, well, one (thanks bash). I know everyone was busy, and seeing as how we have no clients, it really doesn't mean much to miss it, Yay! We do need to start posting and getting our creative juices flowing though, and most importantly we need to create some content. Saying that, here are my two possible proposals to start work on asap:

Cholls has a table we can flip and design with some kind of groupone2 styling which we could then photograph and try to make more like it. Beerpong tables, coffee tables, and other junk like that we could easily flip and sell to college kids or just keep for ourselves. The benefit is that we are actually creating things. Anyone who's interested let me know, im planning on checking out the table some time this weekend.

Another possibility is my brother...ironic i know but hear me out. My brother and his friend make glass under the name Euphoric Glass. He's also in a band called The Lamping Shades. Him and 3 of his friends are trying to create a brand which would sell tshirts, glass, and other stuff around the wilmington area, kind of like a local "lifestyle" brand. It sounds a little crazy but they need a bit of intro leadership...perfect for a crap load of consultants like us. It would be as simple as tracking down materials/printing places in wilmington/pricing and so on... We couldn't charge them that much but its some entry level research and consulting which could look really good for us. And considering my bro and his friends are very "green" to say the least, it fits under the GO2 name pretty well. Let me know what everyone thinks.

Meeting #4 Notes

Good Wednesday peoples. We had our fourth meeting of the summer last night with Myself, Brooksy, Cholls, Andy, Schriebs, and Bash. At the previous meeting we laid out the 3 steps needed to start creating content so step one (brainstorming) was our first initiative last night. Heres what we came up with for short term goals:

1. written articles on relevant material
- go2 members write articles/blog postings dealing with sustainable issues that are interesting and relevant to the company.

2. furniture and bike restoration
- gathering free/cheap furniture and flipping/artistically refurbashing for profit

3. design competitions
- entering a number of design competitions under the go2 name

4. product "nutrition facts"
- creating a carbon/materials fact list for products similar to the nutrition facts on food items to tell the consumer about the amount of materials that go into a product (carbon, mileadge, water, etc...)

After going through the who, what, when, where, and hows of each of these ideas the first two we are going to try and start are 1 and 2.

So our first project deadline is as such:

By July 31st:

I. Anyone interested in writing an article dealing with a topic releavant to go2 to write one or more rough drafts and post on the blog. When it's on the blog anyone else interested in the topic can chime in/offer criticism or insight and hopefully create some sweet ass articles.

II. Refurbish a table Colin has into something creative and interesting for sale or just to generate interest. There is also the possibility of creating a beer pong table for corey to take with him to ECU and gain even more publicity.

So our first goals are set! hopefully by the end of the month (2 weeks) we will have our first bit of content and be closer to launching the website but we need everyones input and help on making this happen. Let the groupone2 revolution begin!

Cameron Sinclair

Hey we talking about TED the other meeting, and this guy did the same thing we want to do, but with disaster relief. He started off with a friend and a website kind of like what we want to do. Check him out if you all got a chance.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4456076614071928368&q=Cameron+Sinclair&ei=5s53SIrhCYT-qgL4pLjOBg

Carbon Count for Maintaining your Front Yard

I was thinking the other day how much energy it must take to keep all the lawns in Cary in pristine conditions. I would need some help with calculations (thinking Brandon or Bash) on how much energy is used to maintain the typical America lawn. We can also include water and money to show people how much they can save if they switch to drought tolerant native landscaping. We could also include some renderings of potential successful lawns and research the best plants. With this initial data for one lawn the total for America would be ridiculous!

The end result could be a very simple comparison. An image on the left with total energy water money and an alternative showing how much they would save. Could be humuourus, Andy whats the famous painting of the couple farmers w/ pitchfork in front of their house?

(On the defense of lawns however there are few things I love more than a fresh cut yard, the act of mowing, the smell, the pattern are all American symbols. However, it may be the price we pay for drinking water in some parts of the country.)

American Density Visualized

I want to produce a couple of images of the United States, simple renderings showing how much land in urban development we take up. The first will show all the current development centralized in the middle. Then there will be a series of others, if we continue at our current densities, what if we built like Rome or we all lived in Manhatten? I think this will help people visualize the density and development of America and realize that we can not continue to build at todays suburban densities.

Feedback? I'm thinking simple handdrawn and scanned images...

Welcome to groupone2's temporary blog

Alright, the creation of content which our webpage is dependent on is underway. After a solid meeting between myself, Andy, Schriebs, and Cholls we came to a few final decisions:

1. Bio's are complete, thanks for the info
2. Mission Statement: we created one using the most frequently used words or descriptions from all the examples given on the facebook thread, thanks:

groupone2 is an interdisciplinary collection of young professionals dedicated to producing innovative designs and solutions rooted in the ideals of sustainability. We are a modern-day renaissance firm.

3. Steps to producing content:
a. Share ideas (individual ideas that as a group we will comment on and try to enhance)
b. Choose ideas that represent the company and critique/research/further explore
c. Produce/Write/Render/etc. ideas to show as content on website

We are officially beginning Step A on this blog so everyone spend some time and try to contribute ideas. These could be anything from articles people are interested in writing to product designs to future goals of the company. The sooner we start brainstorming the sooner we can create content and launch the website. Website = Money which is also good. We can also post up links/books/articles that seem relevant or deal with some of the ideas put forth. This is our internet whiteboard so Create!