I spoke with Biogents this week and they are floored by the response — over 1,000 households expressing interest in just one week!!! Needless to say, they’re in. Here’s what came out of the conversation: 

The overwhelming response from our community caught Biogents' attention in a big way and they're responding in kind. They're offering deeper discounts and more hands-on engagement than they'd typically provide because the scale of interest here is genuinely valuable to them as a European company working to crack the American market. Our participation and testimonials matter to them and in exchange they're committed to helping us actually solve our mosquito problem and not just sell us traps.

To be transparent: I don’t have firsthand experience with their traps beyond the reports I’ve read, and I don’t want to oversell them before we’ve seen results ourselves. That said, I’m genuinely encouraged by their willingness to not just engage with but invest in our community — and if it works, I think we’ll all be happy to sing their praises. 

Biogents has offered to come to Capitol Hill for a live town hall to answer questions and walk us through everything. We're aiming for sometime in the last two weeks of April, after DCPS's Spring Break. They’re also offering to visit some of our blocks to talk through optimal trap placement and strategy. 

One interesting thing they shared: you don’t necessarily need 100 traps on a block to get great results. With smart placement, 30 well-placed traps can outperform 100 poorly placed ones — and they want to help us figure that out. 

I know this time of year is tricky with spring break and planned activities, so we’ll make sure there’s a virtual attendance option and that the session is recorded — no one should miss out on this information because of scheduling. Biogents also mentioned potentially coming back for a second town hall later in the season, which is great news for anyone who can’t make the first one. 

By the time of the town hall, Biogents will have set up a dedicated landing page for our community to order directly, with heavily discounted packages. They’re working up pricing proposals now and will share details next week — they’ve assured me they’re being as aggressive as possible on price in exchange for the publicity. They’re also exploring sponsoring traps for some families if the numbers work out. I’ll share all of that as soon as I have it. 

For the 150+ of you (!!) who expressed interest in getting more involved — I’m aiming to hold a meetup on Saturday April 4 to start planning the town hall and put heads together on catch basin initiatives, block coordination, outreach and more. Still sorting out a location — if you know of a good spot (especially one that’s covered, since rain is looking likely!), let me know at ittybittymosquitocommittee@gmail.com. 

For the town hall ant the end of April, we need a proper venue — somewhere that can accommodate a good-sized crowd in the Capitol Hill area. If you have a connection or lead on a space, please reach out at ittybittymosquitocommittee@gmail.com. Any and all ideas welcome! 

I’m working on closing the interest form and replacing it with a bare bones website where folks can get information and subscribe directly for updates. This will also make it easier to manage what kinds of updates you receive going forward. I'm also ditching the Google Group in favor of Brevo for sending out updates -- there's just too many of us!!! More on all of that soon. 

Stay tuned! 

Michelle

The Itty Bitty Mosquito Population Committee  
ittybittymosquitocommittee@gmail.com