It was March 13, 2020, and the messages being sent by our politicians, the stock market, and the world were one of - GET PREPARED!
Supplies out-of-stock, lots of coordination
It started with a couple of back-and-forth phone conversations between myself, and my two brothers who are more than 4,000 miles away from me. What's the "list" of supplies that we need for our own households, and what does mom need? More importantly, where do we find them!
We began by identifying which online and local stores still had toilet paper, N95 face masks, electrolyte powder, nuts, and bottled water. This was not an easy task and even forced us to make ebay purchases in some cases.
Then came the discussion between us siblings regarding who would pay for what. One brother is a small business owner who had already shuttered the doors to curb the spread of the virus, and our mother had been let go from the movie theater where she worked. Everyone wanted to chip in for their part, and we needed a way to formalize and track the agreements, including the "divvies", and who paid who back.
Divvz Saves the Day!
Call it dumb luck, or destiny, that my team and I had been working on a mobile app that validates, tracks, and coordinates divvies amongst groups of people. So we jumped on Divvz, in it's pre-release state, and put it to work.
In a matter of minutes, I created a group called "Covid-19 Supplies for Mom" and invited my two brothers to join it - just like I would have done at my day job with a slack workspace and channel. My brothers and I got to work populating the group with items we agreed to acquire for mommy dearest. We communicated, negotiated, and tracked:
how we were going to split each item's cost
who had purchased it, and
who owed who what amount
And we did this all inside of a single mobile app!
First - The Setup
Next Step - Negotiate and Track (N95 Masks)
And don't forget the TP...
Kainoa had to decline his divvy for the nuts, and modify his portion of payment for Electrolytes - but that's okay, we're family!
Stock up on your Covid-19 supplies today by visiting Amazon for some of these things.
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