The Story of Stone Soup with a New Twist

– Mark Schmidt 28 June 2013

An old folktale tells of a traveler passing through the countryside, weary and hungry. No one would welcome him, for they had little to share. The traveler entered a village, and after being turned away from several doors spotted a large kettle in the town square. This sparked an idea.

He announced to all within reach of his voice, "Since there is nothing else to be had, I will make a pot of stone soup."

Soup from stones? Who had ever heard of such a thing? The villagers were at once engaged.

The traveler gathered stones, washed them, and put them in the pot full of water. He built a fire, and the water began to heat. The traveler tasted the soup and said, "This is good, but it would be much better with an onion or two."

One villager said, "I have a couple of onions in my root cellar." The onions were added to the pot.

The traveler similarly called for carrots, potatoes, cabbage, seasonings, and meat. Each villager had something to spare, and all were added to the pot.

When the stone soup had finished cooking, all the villagers and the traveler sat down to a heartier meal than any had seen in days.

We are launching a new program in the spirit of stone soup. Dialogs has a lot to offer and so do you as a member of your local business community. Look around our site – you will see that Dialogs develops powerful data-driven web and mobile systems that provide profound impact on our clients' operations. Our work is the foundation for strong businesses. We can provide the kettle for the stone soup.

As we worked on our new grant program, the thought occurred to us that each project was a business incubator:

• our clients will improve their operations and revenue with enhanced e-business tools
• we will generate work for local creative and development talent
• together, Dialogs and grant recipients will improve the local community.

With stone soup in mind, we considered what we could do to improve opportunities for local businesses and talent. Here's what we came up with:

• focus on communities that are often eclipsed or bypassed by local larger communities. Example: Choose Cedar Rapids over Des Moines; upstate New York over New York City (the hungry village)
• Offer a grant or donation of our Dialogs Framework software plus a portion of our development services to small- and medium-sized businesses and organizations (offer a carrot)
• allow local talent to build as much of each project as possible through internships (the village's meat and potatoes).

And so, digital stone soup. Join us. Build your business while feeding your village.

Learn more about the Dialogs eBusiness Community Grant.