Hi folks, SUMMARY
I'm currently working on the rewards for the CouchDB AdvocateHub. (See bottom of this email for a refresher.) One of the rewards I'd like to offer is the ability to "name" a CouchDB release. We'd mention the name in the release announcement and in the changelog. But otherwise, we'd continue to talk about releases using the release number. Primarily, I see it as a bit of fun. And a great way to reward advocates. I'm cross-posting this to dev and marketing because it's both a release management proposal as well as a marketing proposal. DETAILS The way I see it working: - Advocate redeems the "name a release" reward, and picks a name - The name is vetted by the PMC (for brand protection) and put on a queue - The next release picks the oldest name on the queue I'd probably actually want to separate this into three rewards: - Name a bugfix release - Name a minor release - Name a major release Each one would be require more points than the last. REFRESHER Our AdvocateHub is a professional tool that has been donated to us that will allow us to mobilise fans of CouchDB to talk about, promote, and advocate CouchDB to on social media, and to their network. For a project like ours, with limited to no financial budget for traditional marketing, this is a huge opportunity for us. The AdvocateHub has two important concepts (for the purposes of this email): challenges and rewards. Advocates complete challenges (like "leave a review" or "write a case-study") and in return, we give them points. Collect enough points, and they can redeem rewards. The rewards are a thank you helping to advocate CouchDB. RATIONALE There are four main categories of reward: - Stuff (t-shirts, mugs, tickets to conferences, etc) - Access (dinner with a committer, promotion on our blog, social media, etc) - Status (recognition on our website, hand written thank you note, etc) - Power (name a release, ... what else?) Struggling on the "power" category, because everything we do here is decided by the community. This category would be much easier to fill out if we were a regular business. But I figure that naming a release is a fun approach. Thanks, -- Noah Slater https://twitter.com/nslater
