HTML5 mp4 https://david.vision.ide.earth/assets/workshop-web-videos/cid_bafybeidrpypiwicruzm4zk34fmrehtt3we3fontuslso7hrerrezwqrtae_declaration_brand_launch-420.mp4 Internal strategy session for the Hitchhiker / Game of 42 project — planning the gentle, teaser-style July 4th launch of Robbie's declaration and the brand.
# Summary An internal strategy conversation for the Hitchhiker / Game of 42 project, working through the imminent release — in two or three weeks, around July 4th — of Robbie's "declaration" and the brand identity, messaging and teaser campaign that wrap it. The team interrogates the launch with four framing questions: who cares, who is involved, what has changed, and what proof shows it is working. A central tension is pacing: rather than a splashy, in-your-face launch, they agree on a deliberately gentle, subtle, tonal rollout — a stealth/teaser manifesto distributed to the 42 "vision fish," with the bolder, splashier moment reserved for Burning Man in September and the Not Panicking Festival beyond. They map the audiences (the H2G2 / hardcore Hitchhiker community, the "no-gens" who may care most, academics, AI frontier labs, artists, coders, the OpenServe and web3 communities) and the people each member would personally invite, while flagging risks like Hitchhiker-community pushback over who speaks for them, impersonators, and rogue meme coins (with "Bushido" IP-defence jiu-jitsu as the response). Success is measured less by mass social reach and more by an increase in serendipity: a surge of one-on-one Zoom calls and meetings with potential vision fish, conferences and venues.
## Key points - Framing questions: the launch is examined through four lenses, each answered round-robin by the team — who cares, who is involved, what has changed, and what is the proof/evidence it's working. - Tonal, not splashy: consensus is a gentle, subtle, teaser-style rollout (a new X/Twitter account posting the manifesto, no paid advertising); the earliest justified splashy bold launch is Burning Man in September. - Who cares (July 4th audience): Hitchhiker / H2G2 hardcore community, the no-gens (who may care more than AI-proliferation believers), universities, AI frontier labs, artists, coders, the OpenServe community, web3/AI, plus BBC Radio 4 pickup; the date ties to the US Constitution's 250th anniversary. - Who is involved: the mice, Henry, and the prepared vision fish (front and centre, though 42 won't be reached by launch); the personal intro networks — Mitch's ~30-40 contacts in the City of Mages and agent-privacy Telegram chats, the lady who wrote the prophecy book, and Berlin contacts (the Swarm, Bonfires). - Robbie's invite list: figures who may take months to say yes — Larry Lessig / the Creative Commons + constitutional lawyer, the Swarm or Ethereum Foundation, a stand-up comedian, a theatre-arts group, and a push to invite more women to the mice. - Underground / viral channels: underground media, an NDA-gated first-look deal tied to the OpenServe campaign, a hardcore Turkish H2G2 spin-off (our man's group), and Alina's autistic-network and octopus/squid network as viral seeds. - Risks & defence: fear of memes landing in explosive situations before readiness; impersonators and fake Telegram accounts; rogue meme coins (pump.fun already hosts Marvin/Zaphod coins); the response is Bushido — defensive patenting / IP-defence of the commons with humour and martial-arts jiu-jitsu. - What has changed: network expanded beyond the core team, first social-media presence, press releases out, 42 events and podcast guests being booked, public association with Robbie and the Hitchhiker community, and the project being taken seriously with potential for virality in algorithms they aren't even aware of. - Proof it's working: retweets/redistribution/echo in the weeks after, increased confidence going into conversations, inbound tech-journalist contact, and chiefly an increase in serendipity — a jump in one-on-one Zoom calls and meetings with potential vision fish, conferences and venues (e.g. RSA, Don't Panic festival).
## Action items - Finalise the declaration plus brand identity, messaging and teaser-campaign materials for release in ~2-3 weeks, targeting July 4th. - Stand up a new X / Twitter account to post the manifesto in a deliberately gentle, subtle tone; no paid advertising at this stage. - Robbie to send the teaser manifesto to the prepared vision fish (toward 42) and draft his personal invite list (e.g. Larry Lessig / Creative Commons lawyer, Swarm/Ethereum Foundation, comedian, theatre-arts group). - Mitch to reach out to his ~30-40 City of Mages / agent-privacy Telegram contacts and to the prophecy-book author, announcing the Hitchhiker x privacy-research connection. - Max to give a lead to the Berlin contacts (the Swarm, Bonfires) similar to the OpenServe relationship. - Pursue underground/viral channels: NDA-gated first-look with OpenServe campaign, the Turkish H2G2 spin-off, and Alina's autistic + octopus/squid networks. - Inform the core weekly H2G2 community ahead of launch (interviews, podcast, branding) so the rollout isn't a shock. - Define a Bushido protocol for IP-defence of the commons — defensive patenting, the right lawyers, calling out trivialisation/fraud (rogue meme coins, impersonators) with humour. - Track success by counting meetings/Zoom calls booked with potential vision fish, conferences, venues and mice — measure the increase in serendipity rather than mass social reach.
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transcript
# Transcript here you go so what this is is the release of the decoration plus all the messaging around it the brand launch all the different sorts of ways that we send out various things we've got a whole pile of things that we discussed there and this is literally in a few weeks time okay so the first thing to do is ask who cares who cares well Hitchhiker fans care around the world they H2G2 community cares they also care that is being done properly but all of the audience members that we just discussed should care it's people who care about AI it's people who specifically don't care about AI the no-gen community it is it's the universities again and it's the it's the people that we're going to be reaching out to with the with the messages so it should be the the candidates for vision fish it's apart from the the candidates for vision fish it's the mice it's literally everyone that we've whispered yeah about this too yeah and and it's the open serve community um you know and then by extension quite a lot of the web 3 uh AI okay but let's let's think about this we're not talking about the whole communication of the whole project we're talking about what we can release in two three weeks time on that day by that time there'll be lots of other bits and pieces that we stagger and we start teasing around but i'm particularly thinking of like july 4th and the release of robbie's declaration and the branding around that so who do we target at that time who cares for you at that time and it would have probably also be bbc radio 4 right you know it's going to be broadcast i think it'd be picked up but the bbc would probably say you know there's been a new record uh so you'll go on this now who cares right yeah i said everyone that we've been whispering to so all the group chats that we're a part of should care because it is a line in the sand that we've decided to make yeah and a signal to the world um i agree that like the hitchhiker like the hardcore hitchhiker community like the hd2s and the people who hitchhikers is already in their algorithm to so to speak um and then i also think with the declaration what's interesting is it's almost i think the declaration might be how do i put this it's almost more no gens would care than the the people who have already assumed ai proliferation and dominance yeah so it's yeah exactly they they will really care yeah okay so my take is a a little bit uh different from what you said max and i'm thinking of robbie coming here so i think we need to talk through this away um uh we are genuinely nervous about the various um at the very early stage some of the pushback in the interactions we get particularly from the sort of let's say the hitchhiker community right because we can't just make go on we can maybe if we get really confident with the overall branding and everything go really fast and hard but what we're worried about are things like um who says you can speak for the whole hitchhiker community because they're we've been doing this and we've got more members than you and there's all this kind of thing or it's the pushback if we go too too quickly too fast um we damage this the i don't know what the name for this sort of teasing campaign marketing campaign coming out so what i would say is for me who cares is um precisely the people that we we sort of want to drop the business card to so when we want to reach out to this academic from um a university or from a leading person at an ai uh frontier lab or when we want to talk to an artist or a coder to get involved those are the people that the manifesto will send out that the branding and the messaging on july the 4th so that we don't turn up anymore uh um and so that we get invited to some conferences and stuff but we we we we stage the bigger messages and the bolder things for sort of later on um is um is is is that so i'm really thinking who cares in july the 4th also because the date and the time of that and the date is really around the constitution and the 250th anniversary of that it's quite nerdy like who will care and um uh burning man is very different who will care when we start the the other things is very different but there's that kind of feel to the the stealth viral marketing the the the prompting at that point in time are you are you sort of suggesting here while we will have our identity and our story and all that you know done we're not doing a big splashy in your face launch this is more of a kind of we are we're going to go gently but that's the whole thing we've all been talking about that's what when we talk to open serve it's like there's this teaser campaign here there's this here no no no it's a it's a tonal thing because my um i think it's a no-brainer that we are going to have to have a twitter account yes that is doing a post but then it's the tonality of how that's done i i would say that in to me the earliest that i feel that we would be and validated in making a splashy bold launch would be burning man in september right but before then before then we do the teaser manifesto robbie sends it out to 42 vision fish so so but when you say teaser yeah because i'm just specifically saying like are we going to be publishing on an x account that's new yeah a manifesto yeah so okay so we are yeah but it's gentle yeah it's subtle yeah we don't necessarily start we're not paying for advertising yeah right exactly yeah okay good yeah um okay so that um for the decoration brand launch is who cares now who is involved in that decoration and brand launch that's the next thing let's go the other way around now just our fun to you yeah so who's involved well um yeah so there's the mice there's the henry henry there's the um the vision fish that are front and center and have been prepared um whether or not that's 42 is another question we won't have 42 by then no um but it will be a moment to gather the rest um because the ones that are prepared have been told and they will be this like advertising without us paying for it so they'll like repost the declaration and audrey might write a thing about it and then all of a sudden we have polarity people um being interested in caring um so i think yeah it's that who is involved is that intro network that let's personalize it imagine who you will um invite to get involved okay um so or expect someone else to invite to get involved so imagine pestering someone like names like yeah yeah get as direct it's only two three weeks away so we've got to action in it so henry wants to know who who is going to get involved who do we have to reach out who do we have to contact when do we do it that kind of thing and who does the contacting that sort of concrete crunching is when we're talking about who is involved okay so i think who would you contact who would i contact for that declaration who would you want to send the declaration to i think like i've got uh at least 30 to 40 people in the um like city of majors and the agent privacy um telegram chats so would you feel that that material that we're thinking of getting together the marketing is ready and right for that then you're good to go i would be comfortable with that um they are my experimental community they're my like closest contacts that i have intimacy that i feel comfortable sharing something that doesn't have okay and outside the existing people you know that you would feel emboldened to reach out to who would that be i would say that um that lady who wrote the prophecy book this to me like waiting three weeks to have come to her with something that's more genuine yeah so i would probably feel emboldened to um announce the connection between hitchhikers and all of my privacy research as like it's it's it's being validated um i'm emboldened now uh check out all of this hitchhiker stuff and then i can share with you i'll be the guide to privacy because that would kind of be my empowerment after this moment of who to involve and then any last thoughts on who cares from your point of view um who who is involved who will get involved for that stage um yeah so i i think like some of the people that we met in berlin recently so like the swarm and the bonfires and these sorts of projects that are uh close um working on something similar right i think at least like giving them a lead similar to the way that we would interact with open serve in this sense um is also true okay so let's go the reverse way around now so you get the last say as well so um for me um who gets involved first of all the h2g2 community right so they are kind of you know in the hinter ground of this we're rewilding their project the key people who meet every week for a while they've got to be informed about this because otherwise they'll kind of go what the fuck kind of thing we have been doing that but i haven't been spending as much time of this and this will all come as quite a big shock to them that's what if that's to do with the vet would sort of go out to keep people in the hitchhiker community and sort of like them they should get involved maybe interviews branding uh podcast what have you so that they again quite gently but teasingly why uh the delegation then it's who i would like to invite to the vision fish so robbie's going to invite some people so who's who robbie wants to invite to the vision fish and these are sort of people who who may might take a few months to say yes to right you know they might say no initially because who are you sort of thing but there's people like i don't know larry lessig i really want to invite the lawyer from creative commons and the constitutional lawyer and what have you i'd like to send him this um and i'd like him to get involved and maybe consider being a vision fish there might be some particular programmers and and people uh like the swarm foundation or the ethereum foundation or there might be um the stand-up comedian that i really want to um get involved or there's a theater arts group that i want to get involved i want to be able to have this packet send them the decoration and invite them to get involved in supporting the vision fish also the people that we want to extend our group the mice so let's say we've got a mission to uh invite three women to this group or strengthen some what's that is that two one yeah yeah cool um so uh that's who uh would like to get involved there who else wants to get involved with this i would say some nation underground media channels so there might be something to do with the campaign with the open serve that it would be good to see these thoughts here right and we might make an agreement like this is a steal thing this is the whole picture that's an nda but now you can see this story here and you'll get first right at this story then so there's a sort of thing there there might be some particular underground community right like uh for instance i don't know an underground indie gaming community that we want to get involved for that turkish yeah group that our man was talking about like the um that news group so we look at the whole timeline if we want to get involved in the next 12 months and we say oh this people if we want to get involved with them it's going to take some while let's send them them the manifesto and the brown and it would be cool to have these like very disparate groups like i mean i think that our man idea is actually really sound because it's turkish and we've never heard of it before but they're really hardcore yeah that would be nice to bring them together in those ways those will also emerge i which is kind of like answering the following question so you you'll go have you got anything else to add to uh basically who gets involved um well uh alina uh would be a an immediate go-to um with the extension of what she was talking about with either both the autistic network that she had and then also the octopus network i think they're two different things one's part of the other okay yeah so so that might be a good uh kind of underground viral marketing thing potentially with this sort of squid connection if we wanted to bring that back in as well um that's definitely yeah yeah the mice have decided yeah okay what i would say is we've got to be careful at this stage of getting memes into potentially explosive situations right you know um so like i could imagine something exploding and lots of people sort of like you know starting to like you know get really energized and getting involved and we're not quite ready yet but um but um but yes yeah what would you say just to troubleshoot that right now yeah what would you say if a meme coin was launched claiming to be the declaration of pitch actors uh i would say that um or like there was if it wasn't us and nothing to do with us yeah it's kind of funny it's okay okay right but if it is us and then i don't know the h2g2 community find that we did there and they're not quite ready we're in trouble i i agree so so it just so happens pump fun has a whole bunch of meme coins for marvin and zapot and all of these random communities as long as we didn't cede it to them in some way and we could even uh you know try and stop it or have some fun suing them not really suing them that kind of thing because mock sort of horror at this sort of thing and that kind of thing that's actually a good thing for us to have thought about too is you've mentioned it before but it's not mentioned here it's like what is that kind of protocol for like suing people yeah yeah in a nice way yeah well it's the whole kind of ip defencing of the commons defensive patenting getting the right lawyers but also doing it with a sense of humor this jiu-jitsu thing that i call um bushido it's like when someone is trivializing the content or whatever you can call bullshit on them in a martial art way i mean it's getting that tone of right thing right okay so we have done who is involved we're now going to answer the question that once we've launched the declaration and and hopefully it's this uh polyvalent multi-perspectival coolly branded uh uh thing in a few weeks time what has changed and let's go the other way to start with you this day what has changed after we make that declaration um well we've we've actually we've expanded the network of who we are out to outside of just the core team so we will have had some vision fish coming in which will um uh make it feel real that would be good um we will we will have for the first time a presence on social media and people messaging we we may have some impersonators um we will also have um kind of sent out these press releases um and and starting to arrange um uh the events that we so the 42 events hopefully we'll start booking those events and people start inviting us to uh to appear uh additionally podcasts so we will we will begin arranging the podcast guests for us and we may in turn start being invited to to participate in in these events as well so yeah i just think that i can just imagine it being a lot more um active on that sort of talking and and networking space i'll just say quickly to me there will be a sort of unblocking of hesitancy and uncertainty we'll have kind of launched the ship out robbie will be on a journey and reaching out to people when i go to events i won't be sort of saying it in a little kind of funny interesting teasing way i'll be able to be and just say have a look at that and have a look at the website i'll feel more emboldened and unblocked and i think everyone else will and get more confident i think what will have changed is the world will start taking this project seriously yeah what's changed what would you say what's changed um well i think um what has what's changed is also like our relationship of the mice and has been made public so that is just a very direct change um including all of a sudden we're associated to to robbie and the hitchhiker community and it's it's almost like an inclusion um that will definitely have changed um which comes with the brand us like working that out and making the brand launch um and being responsible for that uh i think what else what has changed is an echo of what you've said it's become serious it has something to point to um and it could it has the potential to have like moments of virality as it gets discovered by different algorithms so we actually what has changed is we're no longer like we're like we're no longer aware of our um presence everywhere so now we're present in many places that we're not aware of which is kind of like that example of we didn't know that the turkey h2g2 spin-off thing was going on i think that after the declaration comes out people will make themselves aware to us um which will be a change great so let's move on to the next one um what proof or evidence that this is working uh should we um monitor or um think of so we send out the declaration and the branding material what um evidence what proof and i start to do the request um so what is evidence that it's working um i think the like the retweet the like redistribution the like echo that we find in the weeks after the declaration that keeps happening um is evidence uh i think the comfortable what the the confidence that we have going into these conversations like that feeling is evidence um yeah i'm just gonna say those um yeah uh what what about so for instance my mum just messaged me saying can you put a paragraph so i can explain to my friends what it is that you are doing with hitchhikers and i imagine that pretty soon it will be coming back the other way around so you know hector has just found this thing is this yours yeah so that will be happening will be getting reached out to by tech journalists a lot i imagine um i imagine there might be a in like a fake telegram account that will pop up pretending to be us um that might and that's the pump.fun examples too so just chatter some of it you know slightly fraudulent will be appearing um yeah those those kinds of things all right so for me what i would measure as evidence of success is the number of zoom calls or meetings that i have with people that we send out this invitation to so the number of meetings with potential vision fish the number of meetings with conferences that we might get invited to the number of um meetings with um uh mice that we're doing the number of meetings zoom calls for venues that we want to sign up for the don't panic festival or whatever it is that's right there's these one-on-one sort of meetings i'm not really thinking too much about the wider audience um of uh social media and all of that i want that to be sort of quieter at this stage but i want to be able to when i send when i talk to the RSA and i talk to watch the meeting um i want that meeting instead of me just a message and it takes two three weeks for them to and i don't say too much about it and it's just like i'm a cool person so meet me sort of thing it's more like i send that and straight away i've now got six meetings this week right because of sending this out and it's been easy to do and they're all now interested in oh half of them are interested in signing up so an increase in serendipity yeah yeah that's nice yeah okay the last one is uh becoming real um what would make it feel that it's becoming real um to you and that's kind of a no-brainer it just send it out feels it's going to become real i don't know what else to say to me well it's just yeah step one yeah yeah yeah i agree okay let's uh close that one um should we have a coffee break