Rufington

I wanted to share a little bit about a small city I visited this week. It is the city of Rufington in the state of Washington. It is a very small city with only a couple dozen houses laid out in four rows. It sort of reminded me of the town of Hogsmede as portrayed in Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando. Every house in the city was unique in the way it was built and decorated. Every house also had a shop of some sort selling handmade (mostly) goods. All the merchants had creatively decorated their stores and displayed their wares. The shops were selling anything from stationary to children's toys.

The Mayor of the city greets all visitors to the city, which was kinda cute and welcoming. The city has a City Hall, Post Office, Pharmacy and a Bank among other things. The city was bustling with visitors and all the shops were doing roaring business. Looking at all the activity made me wonder why everyone is saying that we are in a recession!

The most interesting part about this town is that it is completely run by 3rd graders!

This is the classroom mini-city Rufington lovingly named after their class teacher.

My daughter's class is going through this immersive learning experience as part of their 3rd grade curriculum. The students design, build, run and sustain a mini-city within their classroom while learning about economy, local government, social studies, democracy, business and a host of other topics. The students plan the geographical and political structure of the city.

The students go through the process of electing city officials (Mayor, Vice Mayor and City Council). Every student who wants to hold office needs to announce the intent and canvass to persuade fellow students to vote for her. This teaches the students about standing for office, public speaking, elections as well as the duties of a public official.

There are elected and bidded positions. Elected positions are where the class elects a student for a particular position (Bank Manager, Police Chief, etc.) and bidded positions are where the students bid and pay money in order to secure the position (Land Baron, Trash Collector, Pencil Sharpener, etc.). The class goes through a silent auction to assign the bidded positions, teaching the students about auctions, silent auction and evaluating the value of a position or business (for instance, land baron needs to decide on the value of the bid based on the number of houses and their rent/week, the number of weeks the mini-city will be in action and the probability of someone defaulting).

Location of the houses are determined by drawing straws. The rent of the houses vary based on three variables: location, location and location! Just like in a real city. Once a spot is assigned, the kids (with the help of their parents) build a 'house/shop' out of fridge boxes (see pic above) and decorate them to their taste. The students will be 'living' in this box for the duration of the experience. Which kid doesn't want to live in a box? Given a choice, I am sure all the kids in the class would love to work out of their box the whole year.

Once the government is formed, businesses start taking shape. Each student comes up with ideas for a business and pitches it in front of the city council for approval. Once approved, they get a license to start the business and sell their wares. There are specific restrictions (like, no food items) on what can be sold and the city council enforces it rigorously.

Kids also learn about banking, handling money, loans and interest payments. Everybody takes a loan to start the business and they need to repay in the end. The bank issues check books and fake currency for the exercise.

All the students are given market analysis data from previous years on what sells and what doesn't. Based on this market data, the kids determine what to make and sell in their stores. Everyone starts making their goods and stocking them in their stores. This teaches the kids about the effort it takes to create something. They also learn about pricing, marketing, designing Ads and promoting their products. What you think will be a hot product may turn out to be a dud. In fact, this mini-city is a great place to test product ideas that are aimed towards elementary kids. Students also learn about inventory, audits, economy (supply and demand) and product portfolios.

The city also has a newsletter that gets published everyday. Students also get a chance to buy Ad space in the paper. Reporters get the opportunity to learn about reporting, composing articles, design and layout of a one page newsletter, and selling ad space.

When everything is going fine like a well oiled machine comes the 'Fate' card. Every Friday, each resident draws a fate card and it introduces the unexpected. It could either put a positive (winning prize money) or negative (paying hospital charges, fixing flooded house) spin on one's life. This will in turn affect the student's monetary situation. This lesson teaches students to plan for the unexpected (save $75 for the worst fate card). The city Health Officer also sells HMO cards ($10 each) which shield students from health related fate cards. What a wonderful way to learn about insurance!

Overall, this is a wonderful way to teach kids about a variety of topics that are useful in life. This controlled simulation gives the kids an opportunity to take risks, make mistakes and learn from them without paying a penalty. This not only increases their confidence to go out into the real world but also brings out their creativity, all while teaching them valuable lessons.

How I wish we had this when I was in 3rd grade.

Park and Service

I drive up to the parking lot and hand off my car keys to the valet. I had already filled out a brief form (about the fact that I want the car serviced when I am away, and what the problems are) when I reserved my spot online. I pick up my luggage and head over to the shuttle. The shuttle takes me to the terminal and after a quick security check, and a short wait, I am boarding the plane. Right then, my phone rings. I pick it up to find it is from the parking lot. The mechanic wants to let me know that the distributor is showing wear and may need to be replaced. He gives me a quote and I give him thumbs up. I board the plane and fly off to my destination.

Four days later, I land back home and head over to the parking garage to meet my serviced and washed car!

Doesn't this sound sweet? No more planning for car servicing. No more weekends spent going to the mechanic. No more days spent driving loaner cars.

Since I travel often on work, I park my car in long term garages for days. What this means is that I also have less time to be home, and take care of things. One of them is to take care of my car: get it serviced, washed and maintained.

The last time I parked in my regular covered parking garage, I thought how wonderful it would be, if I could have my car serviced while I was away. The car was anyway going to be sitting around doing nothing. And, I had already driven all the way to the garage. Since this garage is a valet only garage, they also had my keys. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the garage also housed a service station and offered service to anyone who parked there.

Looking forward to a day when this becomes a reality.

JIT grocery shopping

Of late, I have been observing that a lot of people order groceries online and having it delivered. I see a couple of companies doing great business. Don’t know if they are making money or not, but the delivery trucks keep rolling along.

That is what got me thinking about efficiently managing the deliveries. I went back to the days when I was growing up in India. Not everyone had refrigerators in their homes. Farmers markets could be found around the corner on a daily basis. Fruits, vegetables and milk (and other perishables) were sold on the road (home delivery). A cart would come in front of the house with all varieties of seasonal and non-seasonal vegetables, and you would just walk to the cart, pick whatever you wanted, pay for it and buy it. So, buying vegetables, fruits and milk was a daily affair. Milk was delivered (in some cases, milked from the cow) right at your doorstep every morning. Remember those glass milk bottles? When fresh produce is delivered to your doorstep on a daily basis, who would want to store them in a fridge? You can't get any more fresh than that!

Let's apply the same principle here and try to see if it yields us a way to make this planet much more green. Consider this scenario:
Order produce/meat/milk online (on a daily/weekly basis)
Delivery truck drops it off at your door step everyday
Use the produce for the day
Repeat the cycle

Now, there are a few problems with this model. For one, when does the delivery take place? It is going to be inefficient to deliver to every house at the same time. So, there is a lag, and some people may receive their goods in the afternoon. Then, there is the issue of the unused produce. Where do we store it?

There are several ways to solve this problem. Let's take a look at an already present infrastructure for delivery: USPS.

Have you noticed that the USPS truck rolls down every street every week day. There you have it. Deliver supplies along with the mail. The manufacturer supplies produce/supplies to the distribution (aka, local USPS post office). The produce is packaged appropriately for individual delivery. Remember, we are trying to deliver on a daily basis, so, the individual packages are not going to be huge. USPS personnel load these boxes into their trucks along with the mail. Of course, the trucks are going to grow in size and acquire a refrigeration unit. The postal worker delivers the boxes along with the mail to every household.

The next step in the equation is to design the delivery boxes (reusable, of course) so that they can maintain a constant temperature for 3-4 hours. The assumption is that mail will be picked up within this time period and the contents transferred into the house.

What this does is that it removes the necessity of every home having one huge refrigerator inside the house and another smaller one in the garage (like most of us do). This new arrangement will be a paradigm shift in the way we shop, get things delivered and store it. Once we get used to it, the amount of energy consumed by every household would come down, and the supply chain would be streamlined so that manufacturers do not need to add preservatives in our foods.

For now, the closest we can come to getting rid of the refrigerator is to reduce its size considerably. JIT food supply is the mantra here, and it will take some effort on everyone's part to make it happen.

Of course, Amazon Fresh, Safeway and others would love to ship on a daily basis.

Chicago Bears: Superbowl XLI champions

What do they do with all those sports merchandise (t-shirts, caps, mugs, etc) printed with the above mentioned banner?

That is what I was wondering when the Colts won the Superbowl last Sunday. As soon as the Colts won, someone came and gave Tony Dungy a cap that had the Colts insignia. Wow, that is fast delivery, I thought. Did someone print it (or embroider it) within a minute and get it onto the field? Nope.

If I were the manufacturer of those apparel, this is what my plan would be:
- Come up with a ballpark number "b" for each item. This would be derived from historic data of merchandise sales ON the day of the event.
- Manufacture that many of each of the merchandise with logo of each team in the finals as winner.
- Of course, make tonnes of generic merchandise that doesn't proclaim a winner (T-shirts that just say "Superbowl XLI winner").
- Spread this loot around for sale.
- On the night of the Superbowl work overtime (and on overdrive) and produce the actual required number of items (again, use historical sales data) for sale in the coming days. Roll this out the very next day.

Now, after the game, we end up with lots of merchandise with the loser team's name on it. What do we do with these? Discard it as trash?

Turns out that the scrap merchandise is sent to under developed countries as donation. NFL has inked a deal with Gifts-in-kind, and is donating the merchandise. Isn't that a wonderful idea! I can now see this happening in a lot other areas too.

I only hope they are not doing the same with banned/expired materials/drugs and shipping them as donations to needy countries ("Here you go. Here is some extra asbestos that you can use").

Movie challenge

I was reminded of Mark Cuban's challenge, asking for ideas to attract people into movie theaters, when I visited the PVR Gold Class movie theater.

I had the privilege to go watch a movie at the PVR Gold Class theater at the Forum Mall in Bangalore. My friend with whom I went had to make advance reservations in order to get into it. At Rs. 500 a pop, it is commendable that they run full house. To compare, movie tickets in India start at around Rs. 30 and run up to Rs. 75 or Rs. 80 for balcony tickets. I agree, the demographics of movie goers in India is totally different. But still, being able to charge more than a 10x premium AND getting it, is a model worth looking into.

For those who haven't heard about or experienced the Gold Class, it is a typical movie theater with a big screen and great sound system. Where it stands apart is the 'experience'. As soon as you walk in, you are greeted into a lounge area (check this for a rendition of one such lounges). One can order drinks and snacks at the bar and relax in this plush lounge. A few minutes prior to the start of the movie, you are ushered into the theater. This again, is another area where Gold Class stands apart. The theater consists of 32 plush individual recliners with lots of leg room to spare. The recliners are operated using an electric switch and can literally get into a sleeping position. A switch on the recliner summons a steward who serves you a variety of drinks and food. You can stretch out, relax, enjoy the movie while experiencing the great service. Their Ad promises to treat you like a star, which it does deliver.

I think this unique experience is what draws crowds even at such exorbitant prices. What is lacking is the service and unique experience in the US movie theaters.

With today's Plasma HDTVs, movie projectors and state-of-art sound systems in people's homes, the theaters need to offer something much more compelling than just a big screen and a good sound system.