Selling the FSP? your help please

[Landon Jeffery]

Hey some of you may remember my post earlier regarding this same subject but here goes again.

http://www.sellthefsp.com

I am creating a website for people to use as a resource to 'sell' the FSP to a friend, spouse, or stranger.  What do you think I could do to make it serve this purpose best?  What kind of information would you like to see on the site?  Are you better at web design than I(I only used paint, and notepad for this site thus far) and would you like to help out?  What is your opinion of the idea behind the website? 

[porcupine kate]

I know we are working on updating the FSP web site.  We are also working on putting more content on the website.  What were you thinking in terms of a site to sell the other spouse?
Does it need to be another site or can we get you to help improve the FSP's web site?

If you have ideas on things to help sell the FSP we would love to hear them.  I'm always looking for new ideas.
Kate

[Jacobus]

I would suggest writing user stories.  Ideally, you would collect these from real people who have convinced someone else to move with them or people who are trying to do so now (or maybe people who have tried and failed to do so).  You want to answer the following questions:

What are the questions people ask about NH and potentially moving?
What are the "pain points" people have to overcome about moving?
What are the "pain points" people have in trying to convince others?
What information have people looked for to convince others to move?
What information worked best in convincing others?

Once you have a collection of user stories that answer these questions, you can list the requirements for the contents of your site.

Then put stuff up, elicit feedback, iterate on the requirements, and repeat.

[Jacobus]

If you don't collect enough real user stories, yuo can make them up yourself too.  For example, I suspect one class of users would be husbands trying to convince wives who are not politically motivated and concerned more about the social aspect of moving.

Anyway, if you think this is a worthwhile approach, you can include my user story:

Currently, I live with my wife and 3 y.o. son in MA.  We are in the process of putting our condo up and once it sells we will move to NH.  Both my wife and I were somewhat ambivalent about the FSP and moving to NH, because of these reasons:
* past experience with LPMA and LPNH left us never wanting to be involved with LP politics ever again
* along with first point, impression of FSP activists as all being in-the-system
* career concerns (I like my job in MA and want to stay on)
* the difference in how oppressed we would be by the state governments really isn't that great.

But doing some research made us change our minds and favor NH:
* objective analysis of all towns within commuting distance to my job showed a few NH towns as being at least as good as ones in MA or CT border, in tems of what is most important to us:
** house /land affordability, with ability to get a few acres of land
** low population, non-wealthy
** close enough to shopping and areas I might find a job should my current one end
** geography, proximity to scenery and ability to take nice Sunday drives
* I got swept up a bit in the Ron Paul Revolution and was curious how FSPers were getting involved.  I saw that the FSP forum was pretty dead, but there was a link in someone's post to nhfree, and I've been here since.  Which leads to:
** Hanging out here has shown me that there are all types of activists in NH.  Thre are plenty of non-political activists which better fits my style.  But even among political activists there are all flavors.
** I see people here I might want to call my neighbor or friend some day

For town information, I derived my research from epodunk.com, realtor.com, property tax records, and some sheets from Coldwell Banker showing median price of single family homes (BTW, we are targeting Mason, NH to move to).

The rest has been hanging out on nhfree here.  I think a concern for many prospective movers is whether there are enough of "their kind" of activist in NH.  The answer for most people is probably yes, and maybe your site could be a tool for communicating this. 

In addition, the largest personal issue for us is homeschooling.  From what we've seen NH does not seem ideal (in terms of laws and organizations), but it is probably no worse than MA.  Your site might aggregate resources for this and other issues. 

[K. Darien Freeheart]

Friendly bump.

When discussing some of my ideals my wife said "What would you prefer, anarchy?" semi-jokingly. I'm not sure that she took my affirmative responce seriously.

I know she's open to several, if not every, aspect of liberty, but the word "anarchy" still shuts off her brain. The Free Marketeer term might be best but it hold little impact. All that aside, seeing real examples of liberty activism blended with real life might do quite a bit. My wife couldn't care less about the Real ID campaigns, but a couple of people at a coffee house that allows smoking indoors (OMG) or a testimonial about interacting with people where she doesn't have to censor herself to avoid revealing that she's a smoker can go a long way.

[Landon Jeffery]

If you don't collect enough real user stories, yuo can make them up yourself too.  For example, I suspect one class of users would be husbands trying to convince wives who are not politically motivated and concerned more about the social aspect of moving.

Anyway, if you think this is a worthwhile approach, you can include my user story:

Currently, I live with my wife and 3 y.o. son in MA.  We are in the process of putting our condo up and once it sells we will move to NH.  Both my wife and I were somewhat ambivalent about the FSP and moving to NH, because of these reasons:
* past experience with LPMA and LPNH left us never wanting to be involved with LP politics ever again
* along with first point, impression of FSP activists as all being in-the-system
* career concerns (I like my job in MA and want to stay on)
* the difference in how oppressed we would be by the state governments really isn't that great.

But doing some research made us change our minds and favor NH:
* objective analysis of all towns within commuting distance to my job showed a few NH towns as being at least as good as ones in MA or CT border, in tems of what is most important to us:
** house /land affordability, with ability to get a few acres of land
** low population, non-wealthy
** close enough to shopping and areas I might find a job should my current one end
** geography, proximity to scenery and ability to take nice Sunday drives
* I got swept up a bit in the Ron Paul Revolution and was curious how FSPers were getting involved.  I saw that the FSP forum was pretty dead, but there was a link in someone's post to nhfree, and I've been here since.  Which leads to:
** Hanging out here has shown me that there are all types of activists in NH.  Thre are plenty of non-political activists which better fits my style.  But even among political activists there are all flavors.
** I see people here I might want to call my neighbor or friend some day

For town information, I derived my research from epodunk.com, realtor.com, property tax records, and some sheets from Coldwell Banker showing median price of single family homes (BTW, we are targeting Mason, NH to move to).

The rest has been hanging out on nhfree here.  I think a concern for many prospective movers is whether there are enough of "their kind" of activist in NH.  The answer for most people is probably yes, and maybe your site could be a tool for communicating this. 

In addition, the largest personal issue for us is homeschooling.  From what we've seen NH does not seem ideal (in terms of laws and organizations), but it is probably no worse than MA.  Your site might aggregate resources for this and other issues. 

Thanks for you input!  It has been helpful and I am sure I will add a mover's diary/journal deal and I will actively gather from those that have already moved.  However as progress on my site is going very slowly for the moment as I have been very busy the last few days.  Expect things to improve on the site with leaps and bounds in the next month. 

[AlexLibman]

Ahh!  Frames!  I'm having a 90s flashback!  No Simba, don't listen to Scar!  He's trying to set you up in the way of a wildebeest stampede!