It's called "JimVentions", right?

I have this great relationship with Paul Sebastien - we get eachother started on "big ideas" and we bounce them back and forth and see if one of them might be a million dollar one. A couple of years ago, we actually took one to the proposal stage and met with Venture Capitalists to assess it's viability. We got some interest, but we got some pretty good industry insight from a friend of a friend of a family member, and we decided to drop it before going much further. I can say that nobody has successfully created the service we were about to... which I think speaks less to the technical issues and more to the political issues in the industry we were exploring.

That's the idea that led to my having that Roamfi email address... and since then I've used Roamfi as a catchall fake company to brand any of my big ideas.

I've got a lot of them, and I believe that every single one of them has a degree of merit. We are getting to the stage where our idea sessions are less about the viability and possibility of an idea, and more about whether the idea sounds interesting enough to actually dedicate ourselves to. I'll give you an example:

Paul came home after a week of visiting his increasingly fragile parents and was abuzz with ideas for services to help the elderly get along in life - some sort of intermediate step between having dedicated home help and using the internet to reach out to the world. We sought some intermediate idea.

I thought about the current trend in call center outsourcing: Why not give people a number they can call, and they can talk to a human who will get them what they need? At first it was the idea of saying you want a book, or some groceries. You tell the person, and they take notes, and then go to Amazon or Simon Delivers, and they place the order for you. They call you back if they have questions. These people could be in Kentucky, Bangalore, Spain, wherever. But they need to be VERY helpful.

But how much would people pay? Probably not so much actually. So where does the money come from? We got thinking: What about if this call center was really the front end for a new Same Day Delivery service - call them the "Green Caps" - they drive green microvans, have snappy suits, have green caps, and big badges with their names and pictures on them - very clean. Old people could trust a Green Cap courier is the real deal, and would open the door to them.

The call center gets calls for groceries, and the Green Caps run out to Rainbow or IGA and buy what you need and run it over. Or they run to Best Buy to get your CD for same-day delivery.

THEN, the Green Caps are actually funded by the STORES that they frequent - Best Buy or Lunds or Walgreens offers a "Green Cap 2 hour delivery" option for, say $10 an order. AND the Green Caps can be a delivery option ON the Internet version of BestBuy.com or Walgreens.com (where products are local - can't work with Amazon).

So really, we're creating an internet-based same day delivery service as the FUNDING vehicle to support a call center created to help old people get products over the internet by talking to a real human.

The idea is really cool, but here's the problem:

DO I WANT TO RUN A CALL CENTER AND COURIER SERVICE? This is low-paying, high management requirement work... and honestly I have enough trouble managing a team of highly paid consultants. Is this a skill I have beyond the technical/process flow architecture?

So we hit this final point, and decided, yes, it is a good idea. But it's not the idea we're going to pursue. But I hope somebody does it. So here you go, world. Find this on Google, and make it happen, someone.

And that's what I do with my spare time when I'm not remixing step aerobics CDs or pretending to be a 1980's synthpop supergroup or working out or playing with my daughter. Welcome to JimVentions.