Image credit: Rory McCann

Following on from last week’s excitment around our application to Google’s Project 10^100 and the associated ColaLife video, there is another significant development.

True to his word, Salvatore Gabola of Coca-Cola has invited me to a 2-day stakeholder meeting in Dar Es Salaam on 25-26 November to discuss the findings of their research into their distribution network which Adrian Ristow has been reporting on here. The meeting will make recommendations for the pilots* that will be carried out based on the research findings.

This is hugely significant. I’ve re-arranged my diary and suspended my no-fly pledge for this trip. Like the original interest and coverage from the BBC, this would never have happened if we hadn’t all been able to get together here, on the Facebook Group, in the Flickr Group and using Google Group Mailing List.

At this stage I only have limited information on the meeting, there’s been no agenda issued yet. But I do know that about 20 people have been invited, mostly local stakeholders. International invitees include DfID and Oxfam and someone from Harvard (who were involved in the research) will be facilitating the meeting.

Anyway – I need help with the planning. I’m going to stay on for a couple of days after the meeting to gather information and materials the ColaLife campaign needs. Your thoughts please! What should be on the to-do list?

* The main idea of the pilots is to see how the growth of Coca-Cola’s distribution network could be done in a way that maximises the impact on poverty reduction. This means we are going to have to work hard to get the ColaLife idea as part of the pilots but that’s our objective.