A more nuanced analysis takes into account how much virality there is and how it persists.
If we train 100 people, now many will they train? And will that multiplier hold up in succeeding generations (it usually doesn't in marketing situations due to declining incentives). In the simplest case of constant virality, the ratio of indirect effect to direct effect (i.e. how many do the 100 train versus the 100 we trained) has some value k. If this value is greater than one, the number of people trained grows exponentially without bound. If k < 1, then the total number of people who are ultimately trained is 1/(1-k) times the number you have directly touched. To approximate the time dynamics, you need to know how long a generation is. If it takes time T before a new generation is passing on the torch, then your exponential growth will have an exponential growth constant of about k / T. The ASF itself appears to be an example where k > 1 and we have an apparent growth rate of 1.16/year. Cholera and measles are examples where k >> 1. In the real world with distractions and such, it is rare for marketing or organizational virality to extend more than 1-3 generations unless you have specific mechanisms in place to renew the vigor of transmission. With diseases, virality is limited by growing herd immunity. The whole point of the way we natter on about community is to build those renewal mechanisms into the structure of Apache itself. It isn't at all clear that we have succeeded since we still have 0-th generation individuals who are very active, although their focus has changed a lot over time so that they focus a lot more on community now. It is also a fact of life in strongly growing organization that these early voices are a smaller and smaller part of the overall community. On Thu, Jun 20, 2019 at 10:11 AM Awasum Yannick <[email protected]> wrote: > .... Now what you > might not see is that some of those people you have trained will go on to > train others..You see... Network effect. Growth here over 10 years is not > linear but exponential ... > > Every new Under represented person you empower is a potential data > point(noo...really a node) on a graph. They will go on to empower more > people like them maybe helped by unconscious bias. > For the $5000 spent for an Outreachy Intern, you are potentially creating a > whole new sub graph of its own which develops organically. > > I don't know if this makes any sense to you all? >
