One of the items on my original list of things to do during my working sabbatical from corporate, in-house experience design was to start up some personal research projects. I wanted to spend time with feel-good topics and to try out new techniques of interviewing and analysis that simply didn’t fit well with the requirements of my company’s projects.
The list of “things-to-do-with-all-my-reclaimed-commuting-time” is spectacularly long. I figured that simply recapturing two hours a day of car commuting time would allow me to pick items off this expansive list at blazing speed while leaving plenty of time for consulting work.
Umm. Yeah.
A year and a half later, I find my long list still quite long indeed. The demands of independent consulting have easily filled much of that commuting time. And yes, I confess, enjoying the luxury of cooking decent, soul-nourishing weekday meals has filled in a lot of the rest.
Today, finally, I would like to introduce one project that I hope to keep going over the next few months: a series of interviews and case studies of how and why producers and consumers in my local farmer’s market community communicate with each other.
Originally my statement was much more tech focused “Identify how small independent family farms and CSA’s are using technology to reach individual consumers directly to extend their markets. Research will include a competitive review of websites, interviews with local (Chester County, SE PA) farmers and end-users. Intended result of the research is to produce a report reviewing of the research findings and recommendations on tools that might help link consumers directly to food producers.” Very. Official.
I still hope to glean some insights around the tech focused part of the original statement, but I already see that the richness of the ecology around just my local market makes this a hopeless constraint. In the end, I think that I will mostly be telling stories of the market with the occasional interlude of geeky, “digital tomfoolery” (to borrow a phrase from one interviewee.)
About “My” Market
The West Chester Growers Market was conceived of in 1994 by a group of local farmers – 4 of whom are still selling at the market. It is distinguished by being a strictly producer-only market ; vendors must live locally and make or grow themselves anything that the sell at market. It is also somewhat unusual in that it is producer-run, rather than being sponsored by a locality or non-profit, and so is not responsible to a governing body or board. The market takes place from 9 to 1 each Saturday in a parking lot just a block off the center of town from May to December. 2010 saw a first foray into monthly winter markets. In addition to a web site, the market has an e-mail newsletter, Facebook page, Twitter stream, and market blog.
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