My name is John Hibbs and I have been lurking for quite a while, with
a growing interest in cybercafes. I run an Institute which sends
motivated American college graduates abroad where they work at
brokering intellectual properties - mostly courses from accredited
universities or outstanding independent professors. I encourage
those people to "hang out" in cybercafes as I am convinced they can
develop trust relationships with the kind of people who are
innovative, upscale and "different".
In this regard, I would very, very much welcome comments and advice
with respect to these questions -
1. I believe cybercafe's would be a good place to recruit students -
how many owners know there are more than 100,000 courses offered by
Web delivery from accredited institutions, worldwide? Not only is
the cafe a good place to recruit, it is a good place, especially for
non-Americans, to actually take their courses - generating new profit
sources for the owners. True?
2. I would like to find "stuff" that very innovative cyber cafes
think *all* owners should take a look at. My intent is to broker
this "stuff" by way of the people we recruit and send abroad. What
vendors have "stuff" that you guys think every single cafe owner in
the world should have and profits from?
3. Internet telephony is becoming truly wonderful, cutting overseas
calls to a fraction. How many cafe owners can take advantage of
this? Has any outside of the USA put up a London type telephone
booth where a customer could make a call anywhere in the world?
Would that work?
4. Catalogue brokering. Would cafe customers be the ones likely to
do some on line shopping. There is a great cafe in Santa Monica with
a wide screen area where customers sit in very comfortable chairs
with some kind of hand held device that browses the net and allows
easy, cafe assisted, shopping. It seems to me that non-American cafe
owners would have print catalogues on hand and be the mechanism to
ease the delivery of the goods - taking payments, web ordering, even
pick up point for the product?
5. Matchmaking/Greeting cards - Have any of you visited
http://www.starmatch.com/? Is there a business selling memberships to
this kind of matchmaking service, combined with some kind of
localized offering? Including greeting card print outs and
emailing/snail mailing of same?
6. Morning Newspaper? Afternoon Magazine? Is there any interest by
cafe customers in reading publications that would otherwise be "too
expensive"? Front page of, say, New York Times, Wall Street Journal,
London Times, or any other source your customers could not easily
get..even a service where the customer when ordering coffee could
order today's front page of _________ which could be in his lap in
the time it takes to browser point, download and print.. Special
article search? Special customer services? Comment?
7. Themes - I love the themes you have recently suggested. Most
seem of the "fun" variety. Would "business" theme nights work how
about these? - Distance Education Night? Investor Night? Franchise
Night? Business Opportunity night? Shopping Night? Matchmaker Night?
8. Cybercafe mailing list. Do any of you have a complete list of
owner's address'. Yes, I know there are sites where could find
address' one by one...but does anyone have a mail list?
I'm sorry. I particularly know that these should be shorter, and I
promise in the future to be more brief. But, this has been on my
mind.....
Thanks
John Hibbs
Director
www.bfranklin.edu/champions
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