This is a quote from makoto1337 explaining a great idea he has regarding NEM (https://trello.com/c/6ERRDAZy/45-nem-cooperative-village):
"With the sudden success of Aurora (even it if is a bubble), it is apparent that crypto needs to have an impact in the physical world.
From this, one idea is to donate NEM to start a cooperative village where people use NEM in their daily lives. This should be a remote area that is self-sufficient. Even if there is not internet access, we might be able to set up satellite internet infrastructure. I think that would be an amazing demonstration of how crypto could be used anywhere for secure, decentralized transfer of money.
Another thing to keep in mind is that we wouldn't want to interfere with the local culture of the area. I envision setting up some NEM access points (places with internet) and then people can go use those, with minimal interference into their language and culture.
The question is, where could we do such a thing? It should take a lot of time and dedication from people working locally in an area.
Some ideas are:
1) Bhutan. I think I have seen users from Bhutan on bitcointalk. We could set up solar satellite internet access in some remote village and have everyone in the village conduct transactions in NEM using iPads or something similar. There are some villages that are quite a few days walking from any large city and people are mostly self-sufficient. We would need to have someone local there to run things.
2) Japan. With so many people moving to big cities, there are places in the countryside that are extremely secluded and people grow their own food and make a lot of things themselves. Even in the countryside, though, there is ample electricity and cellular infrastructure, so people would be able to access a P2P network. Also, the government here does not consider crypto to be money and it is currently not regulated.
3) Ukraine. I know people that I definitely trust in western Ukraine near Poland (Lviv). There are some small villages in the Carpathian mountains that are fairly secluded from outside influence. The people I know in Lviv would probably be willing to help or maybe run this full time for us if we provided the resources.
These are some ideas, but as a community, it would be great if people could come up with ideas on how to establish a NEM co-operative. If done right, NEM could make all the major news networks and generate some great publicity. The more important thing, though, would be that we could help real people improve their lives, while respecting their culture (for example, people in a remote village could sell goods online using NEM)."
Please contribute your ideas regarding this. We can make these things real if the community works together!
Very interesting idea.
Hi erkki, I saw your post and saw it as a great idea to promote NEM. I tried to think for a while about how to make it work well and this is what I came up with.
Mazacoin said they would give Maza to the Indians. They got great press. Auracoin to the Icelandic people. As far as I am concerned, these are pump and dump coins with just a race attached to it. I think it was just an easy way to fakely legitimize the coins in the eyes of the bitcoin community and thus have the developer get rich for what amounted to a lot of free publicity. But I think there is a HUGE lesson to be learnt, because it was indeed actually working in a way.
The idea of helping a community in need is great, but all of these poor communities lack the infrastructure and ability to really use a coin. What NEM needs is people ACTUALLY using it. There is still a chance to become the FIRST coin that is being used, so I would propose the following idea.
The air drop is not a bad idea, in that if you want a community to use a coin, then give a little bit to everybody, but
I've been thinking myself also that the way to go for NEM would be to promote it in the universities. Your writing really had a good point, and I think we have some American nemsters to promote here so this could actually be done!
I think we should start by first getting a agreement from the university to cooperate with us. After we'd gotten that it wouldn't be hard for us to get vendors on board!
Any Americans here ready to go promote :)?
very cool idea, but maybe $1 is too insignificant for students to use NEM, $5-10 and everybody including the mascot and dean would be on it.
Hi Ashapasa, Your right $1 is on the low side for sure. Anything that will get it going is okay with me. A currency spent is a good currency, but a currency that is paid is a growing one! To me… the real test of a currency is whether people are willing to get paid all or part of their salaries in that currency. If they will do that or even request that, then a currency has won over the hearts and minds of the consumer.
I like the college idea! Marketing to young spenders is a sure way to create mindshare. Young consumers are more likely to try something new. What if we could give away some Nem? Like, sign up for email updates and we'll give you five free Nem? The community would have to donate the Nem for such a marketing push. Maybe if they install a wallet app on their phone, and then the person that's running the "booth" transfers from their personal wallet on their phone to the student… Then the student can see how easy(hopefully) and quick(again, hopefully!) it is to transfer money between two people. Plus, the NEM rep can be like, "Hey, see there - I just took five of my own Nem out of my wallet and put it in yours! Pretty cool, huh?" Of course, it won't matter much to the student if they have no goods(tangible or electronic)to spend their Nem on! lol Maybe we try to get Nem accepted as a currency for digital goods first? Kids are all about digital goods - music, movies, games, items in games, etc. There's a lot less risk for a digital goods vendor to accept a digital currency than there is for a tangible goods vendor to accept it. They're probably the first sector to start marketing acceptance to!
Digital currency for digital goods - that's the way to go for sure!
Hi erkki, I saw your post and saw it as a great idea to promote NEM. I tried to think for a while about how to make it work well and this is what I came up with.
Mazacoin said they would give Maza to the Indians. They got great press. Auracoin to the Icelandic people. As far as I am concerned, these are pump and dump coins with just a race attached to it. I think it was just an easy way to fakely legitimize the coins in the eyes of the bitcoin community and thus have the developer get rich for what amounted to a lot of free publicity. But I think there is a HUGE lesson to be learnt, because it was indeed actually working in a way.
The idea of helping a community in need is great, but all of these poor communities lack the infrastructure and ability to really use a coin. What NEM needs is people ACTUALLY using it. There is still a chance to become the FIRST coin that is being used, so I would propose the following idea.
The air drop is not a bad idea, in that if you want a community to use a coin, then give a little bit to everybody, but
erkki12 and i will be developing a packet to go to approach universities. info on NEM, use case examples, etc etc. we'll also be looking for student Brand Ambassadors to promote NEM on campus. If anyone would like to help, just PM your e-mail and i'll add you to the team.
spaw
I still like the idea of a NEM collective/NEM-using district. Doing something like this in a rural area would be totally awesome.
I dont know if this is such a great idea. The whole airdrop thing has become a bit gimmicky and as we now know Aurora and Maza are worth close to zero. So I think it should be more of working towards building something like venus project rather than airdropping on a village of rich collage kids who already use fiat. The venus project, kind of helped the zeitgeist movement stay alive and drew in a lot of forward thinkers.
In general I do like the idea of a physical implementation, there must at the VERY LEAST be a marketplace, even if it is just selling ebooks or something because if NEM has no real world function it will just be dumped and fizzle out.
What you are talking about is giving stuff to people who use fiat and who will then go to an exchange and dump their NEM for pocket money. Being tech savvy or educated did nothing for siliconvalleycoin. What we need is a community started from scratch who will agree to use the currency as a primary currency. Or even just to get people to accept it for things like bread/milk etc. Or even just among ourselves.
Let me try and word this a bit better.
Ideas like airdropping are nice but don't work in reality because the people who are airdropped don't know about crypto or give a damn about the movement. They look online and wonder what they can do with it. The first thing they find is that they can do nothing with it except dump for fiat, so that is what they immediately do. This leads to a huge price decline and more dumping and a perpetual slump that is worse publicity than if you never did the airdrop in the first place. We know these wishful thoughts lead to zero adoption too by also looking at Aurora, Maza, silliconvalleycoin etc. Noone uses these coins, they just lost a lot of value that is all.
Also universities and students aren't such a great target. I'm pretty well educated and in my experience some of the dumbest, most establishment minded (and mindless) people I ever met were at university. I've met tramps with sharper instincts than your average degree holder. Many of them just love to swallow any propaganda they are fed by their institutions and struggle to think outside the box. Another example: Jed McCaleb gifted millions of Ripple to MIT and they immediately dumped them on the open market, they didn't even bother looking at the tech other than to work out how to dump. Unfortunately these things sound nice on paper but the reality tends to suck.
The best way is for US people here, NEM to create the movement, WE need to build an ethos and a philosophy and economy among ourselves and WE need to set an example, so others hear about US and think 'hmmm something interesting is happening in that little club', and seek US out and wish to join US and become a part of US. Not dropping on a set of people who are already part of and brainwashed into some other economy and establishment and expecting them to magically do the work and create a new world. They won't believe me, they will simply dump and NEM will suffer. Gotta get the roots right if you want the tree to bear fruit.
@robbieboy
I totally agree. Great summary of the current state of air dropping, btw. It is really well written.
If anyone goes back and reads my original idea 
I originally suggested that we take a village somewhere in a remote area and give them NEM in exchange for them using NEM fully instead of using fiat. Basically, we would subsidize them at first so that they will use our currency, but hopefully a critical mass could be reached in the future. If the people are remote, they are already fairly self dependent, so I figured that would be a fairly sustainable way to do it.
When I suggested this idea, NEM was planning to give 10% of shares to charity (this idea was abandoned because too many stakeholders didn't care about helping people and the 10% was redirected for promotion, ecosystem, and post-V1 work), so my idea was a way to use the funds provided for charity. The idea was to help poor people who can barely subside, and transform their economy to make it based on NEM.
@spaw One thing that might work would be to start a club at school for NEM and maybe get fraternities to accept NEM for parties, etc. Basically, there needs to be an ecosystem in place so that people don't just dump.
@robbieboy
Another way is to create a stabilized sub-currency, design an altcoin black hole and suck every crypto coin in, especially the major crypto coins, so much so that people have no way to resist but to join the ecosystem.
NEM has all that criteria to do so!
@robbieboy
I totally agree. Great summary of the current state of air dropping, btw. It is really well written.
If anyone goes back and reads my original idea :) I originally suggested that we take a village somewhere in a remote area and give them NEM in exchange for them using NEM fully instead of using fiat. Basically, we would subsidize them at first so that they will use our currency, but hopefully a critical mass could be reached in the future. If the people are remote, they are already fairly self dependent, so I figured that would be a fairly sustainable way to do it.
When I suggested this idea, NEM was planning to give 10% of shares to charity (this idea was abandoned because too many stakeholders didn't care about helping people and the 10% was redirected for promotion, ecosystem, and post-V1 work), so my idea was a way to use the funds provided for charity. The idea was to help poor people who can barely subside, and transform their economy to make it based on NEM.
This would be better but might be expensive. It is possible if they don't need outside goods. But I definitely agree to the principle that there must be people willing to trade NEM for physical goods.
@robbieboy
Another way is to create a stabilized sub-currency, design an altcoin black hole and suck every crypto coin in, especially the major crypto coins, so much so that people have no way to resist but to join the ecosystem.
NEM has all that criteria to do so!
Do you mean a kind of currency-agnostic network similar to ripple? I'm not tech headed so I don't know if the NEM protocol has that kind of ability built in.