Mission Reports

[Agent Todd]

If you stage a local mission, bump this thread with your mission report!

[AltijdAndries]

Thanks :) Expect more... Things are going great! We have over 750 registered "Shoqers", mainly because we unexpectedly had media coverage of practicly every major national TV- and radiostations! I credited you guys for inspiration in every interview :)

Charlie, thanks for giving me the oppurtunity to start a similar movement here in the Netherlands! If you happen to visit The Netherlands someday, let me buy you a beer ;)

[Mission Singapore]

Mission:Singapore, reporting once again!!


'Calling Aliens' was our first official mission and we pulled it off successfully and our 2nd 'Sleepy Day' was just as successful. Yeah were calling aliens and now we're sleeping what could we possibly be doing next? No one knows....

Anyway, This is the report of the mission. By Agent DarkDome.

Mission: Sleepy Day

The objective for the mission was pretty simple, all we have to do was sleep around the fountain at Nee Ann city.
We had about 18+ agents for this mission. We actually expected twice that number as usual. Before we head to the mission site we gathered at one spot and were brief about the mission. We got some miniature-pillows to go along with our sleepy mission some brought there blankets , towels and even toothbrush! We had all our phones set to the same ring tone and our alarms properly synchronized and we were good to go.

Planning missions in Singapore still prove to be a difficult task especially with an escaped terrorist but we were still determine to carry it out. A possible reason why some agents were missing would probably be due to that terrorist running about our small country. BUT that did not stop us (^_^), we did it.

After the briefing, we all slowly made our way to the mission site which was quite a long walk so we filmed it for the sack of making a cool video. Once we arrived we gathered together and sit around the fountain as we arrived at different intervals and then when the time came, we got to out places we went to sleep.

As for my personal experience :
"i was sleeping on the ledge and it was all wet due to the fountain spraying water all over but i told myself it was just going for last a few mins. As i wanted us to look as if we adopt different position. My eye squint and glance the people around me as i tried to remain calm , i was the only one on the ledge. I was counting by the seconds till the alarm rang."

As planned, we started to wake up at about the same time. The first thing I noticed was that my back was all wet ,naturally , and one of our member overslept! Yup amazingly OVERSLEPT, the camera man had to asked one of the agents to kick him in the leg. Soon after we gathered we were told by the one of out video man that one of the fliers givers actually attempted to call the police which scared us a little, but we were kinda expected this sort of things, so we were alright.

On an end note, we would like to thank all our agents and improveverywhere for making this possible.



Mission was a SUCCESS. We got what we went there for.

The video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cit7TiRxz2w

[Agent Todd]

great job! putting it on the main site along with a couple of Scene Diego missions.

[Sarah]

Portland Mission AWESOME
Agent Miri reports:

So I went down town with my mom (because she was interested and wanted to come) to meet up with everyone at the elephant. I was pleasantly surprised to see how many people were there. I was also pleased to see we were already confusing people just by massing in a large group by the elephant. Anyway it was way awesome to see just how many people were involved.

After we got the official lowdown we wandered off to get coffee and muffins leaving time to window-shop in Anthropology. At 3:05 we walked through Powell’s and emerged at the (now very crowded intersection) at around 3:12 leaving us just enough time to get in position.

At 3:15 with the buzzing of my silent alarm I froze with a perplexed expression starring at the light post while my mom froze expecting the rest of her coffee. I was looking slightly down so I couldn’t see everyone but I could hear everyone.
Some of my favorite responses:

Little boy: “is everyone waiting for the bus?”
Group of teens that I couldn’t see as they were behind me:
“What’s going on?” “Look! Nobody’s moving! It’s happening across the street too!” “Maybe we should leave; they could be filming a movie or something.” “It’s kind of creeping me out”

Then there were the people who stared right into my face to see what was going on, I almost burst out laughing.

3:20 actually came too soon; I felt like we should’ve kept going or something, during the freeze I heard a guy call his friends saying “Hurry! Come to the Burnside intersect something crazy is happening!” Sadly I don’t think his friend made it in time. But still, when I felt the second buzz in my pocket I resumed the conversation I had been having with my mom and we walked into Powell’s to buy a few books. Inside people we confused, amused, and all together baffled.

I’d have to say it was a great success and I’m looking forward to our next “scene”

[Agent J.A. Riley]

Atlanta National Freeze a great success!

Atlanta had a fabulous first mission with the Freeze! Between 63-70 people showed up. We'll be putting together a summation and collecting what photos we can. Sadly our video pros got caught in a horrendous traffic jam on the freeway and made it about 10 minutes after the fact. The cell phone alarms worked fabulously for synchronization since it completely caught people slightly unaware so the poses were extremely natural. The fact that they were all synchronized for time by satellite was a major plus for instantaneous timing. Thanks to Seattle & Portland for sharing that tip. A fabulous turnout! We're looking forward to the national overviews. Thanks to those who showed up and participated!

Meanwhile, we will gather what images and comments that we can. We'll be posting comments from participants and observers for a mission overview. We will post photos or whatever we can on the Atlanta page:
http://improveverywhere.ning.com/group/atlanta/forum/topic/show?id=...

We were in an area in the city called Atlantic Station - a pedestrian oriented grouping of dozens of shops, over 15 restaurants and a huge movie theater. The area we selected was the central courtyard, which could be seen by people near windows of the two top restaurants there and a California Pizza Kitchen and a few others. Being right at dinner time made it great since there were quite a few people milling around discussing where they were eating or would suddenly come up on this as they crested an escalator from the lower parking deck. At one point a gathering of wait staff were all standing at a side door to a steak restaurant and taking cell phone photos and comparing notes. Look for other observations from participants on the Atlanta discussion page.

Probably over 2/3rds of those who participated heard about it from Agent Flaschen's Facebook page. Many will likely join the Atlanta group. Everyone seemed to have had a blast. The weather didn't cooperate like we had hoped, but at least we didn't have rain to deal with since that’s what it has been doing here for the previous 2 days. Hope the others all went well and we look forward to hearing about them.

Oh, and in keeping with the classic style of NYC events, we broke up our recap just as the security people showed up trying to figure out what this large group standing near one of the stairways in the parking deck was up to. We assured them it was nothing. Just passing on some info and people were on their way out.

-- Agent Riley

[caboosUKIN]

Mission:Singapore, reporting


'Calling Aliens' is our first official mission and we pulled it off successfully, Thanks to the wonderful Pioneer agents that took part in the it.

Mission: Calling Aliens

The objective of the mission was pretty simple, point your phones up at the big giant red lantern and keep looking up for 5 minutes.
We had about 14 agents for this mission. We actually expected twice that number. Originally, we had a different mission planned for that day but because some backed out on the day before, we had to come up with a back up mission. As it turned out, the back up was much better than the original. (The original plan was actually to snake around the library with a line of 50 people)

Planning missions in Singapore prove to be a difficult task due to the potential legal issues. We have a law here that prevents us from gathering in groups larger than 4 people (usually they get groups of more than 20). So we had to really planned it as such to avoid too big of a group at any one location. Despite the planning, we ended up with just 14 agents, so no big worries there about being suspicious when we gathered.

After the briefing, we all slowly made our way to the mission site. We actually had a warm up prank at the Mac donalds there, but it kinda screwed up. We had all our phones to set to ring and the same time and the plan was to pick it up and speak very loudly as we leave, but our phones we not properly synchronised so it turned out bad, besides, the whole place was too noise for our loud conversation to have stood out anyway. So after the Mac donald cock up, we went on to the second part of the whole mission which is the Calling of the aliens.

As expected, were started to do the act at roughly the same time. The first thing I noticed was the mall's security guard which looked pretty clueless on what to do with us, we didn't do anything wrong but what we were doing was just plain weird to Be right. Haha. Since he was doing anything other than just standing and watching, we just ignored him and continued admiring the large giant decoration. Immediately after we started, the others started looking up too. The looks on their faces were priceless. One even approached Agent Zul and started asking question.

Stranger: “what are you guys all looking at?”
Agant Zul: “can't you SEE that? It is there!”
Stranger:”where? I don't see it!”
Agent Zul: “It is so prominent. Right there, there can you see”

Most of us went with the standard response which was, “we call aliens....” He went creative on the poor guy. After 5 minutes of doing the act, I claimed that i have gotten 'it'. I then i pretended to start calling the alien and everyone else clapped and cheered. And as you can see in the video, I went off soon after i got the call.

Mission was a SUCCESS. We got what we went there for.

The video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qTMbV4Y_KM

[vordo]

there was a sort of impromptu mission last night in LA. almost 60 of us showed up at taco joint in hollywood for the first group meeting wearing hoodies and dark glasses. funny thing was there were about 8 cops there having dinner. oops bad location planning I guess. anyway. after a bit a talk about what we want to do and how to go about it as group, things like what are we going to call ourselves what kind of leadership, etc. this swedish accordion dude sees all these hoody'ed hoodlums through the window and he comes and we spontaneously applaud and he plays and it's good fun. then he leaves. then he comes back and is like, 'what are you guys doing?' and we convince him to go to Ameba records with us (a really big music store in h'wood - think the old tower on 4th and broadway) and most of us go in and mingle and he comes in a few minutes later and we bum rush him. suddenly the whole place is like WTF? there were about 25 or 30 agents that came out of nowhere and just making a lot of noise and not long after the cracking up security escort him out and we follow like the pied piper down the street. not bad for no planning...

[avidd opolis]

We staged our first real run of Muni Therapy on four separate buses tonight. It's like an AA session where we tell our strange stories about why we ride muni. Each performance was very different depending on the bus. The first one was not too packed and turned into a conversation between everyone on the bus. The second one Agent Opolis got derailed immediately be a crazy woman who went on a rant about her family dying, and everyone had to improvise around her. The third bus was too crowded but got a lot of attention, and the fourth bus was too empty so we called it quits. We'll be getting people together for more therapy sessions sometime soon.

If you're interested in the story:
Agent Opolis kicked off each session by standing from his seat and announcing his muni addiction. Furthermore, he suffers from low self esteem and social anxiety, and has been riding Muni every waking hour since he lost his job last week, since he can only open up to people he knows he'll never see again. Agent R confesses that he's a bike messenger without a bike, living a lie. Agent Sandwich only rides muni cause it's the only place she can study. Agent Tiff rides so she can drink. Agent Skippy can't park her car outside her lover's house, since her husband is catching on. Agent littlesister is suffering welbutrin withdrawles, Agent J gets motions sickness and appreciates muni's slow crawl, and agent hippy mike is there to give a hug. Agent Khmer is only on the bus to meet girls. The act would end with different agents would end up hooking up with other ones, getting into a fight, or inviting the whole bus to drinks.
Pretty fun. More later.

[Agent Kite]

That is so awesome. I wonder if I can get enough people to stage this on my campus bus system. We have 1 hour, 30 minute, and 10 minute runs. How much time did you use for this?

[avidd opolis]

The longest run was only 15 minutes. You can do a lot of character development in that time. It could be really fun to stage with a captive audience on a bus for an hour, but you'd have to plan gaps, let it unfold over the trip.

[Agent Kite]

The thing about the 1 hour run is that there are several stops, with people getting on or off. In that way, it would be like doing the performance on the street - with a changing audience. Still, some people would have to stay on for at least 30 or 40 minutes.