This web page is designed as a storytelling venue where people involved in chain store site selection can share their tales of delight and woe and help build a repository of data that might provide some insights for the benefit of all.  As the host of the site I will use some text-based data mining techniques to try to find patterns in the data.  Naturally I will share these results with the group.

The library of stories will be available for all to view.  If you are concerned about privacy of data, you don’t need to share your chain name or the specific address of the site. However, all other fields are required in order to submit a story.  The story itself has no restrictions other than common decency and honesty.  The beauty of this approach is that we will truly let the data speak to us and even the categories of analysis (aka “semantic chunks”) will be generated by the stories.

We will need at least a hundred or so of these stories to be able to mine them for meaning, so please start contributing!  To provide a modest but meaningful incentive, the person who contributes the most stories by the time we reach 100 will receive a $50 gift certificate to the restaurant of his or her choice!

Please click here to see the spreadsheet with the stories.  The first one is a ficticious entry by me to provide an example of a simple story.  Your stories can be longer but probably not much shorter.

Here’s the form for entering your stories.  Feel free to share your comments about this idea below as well!