On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 9:34 AM, Rob Weir <robw...@apache.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 8:49 AM, RA Stehmann
> <anw...@rechtsanwalt-stehmann.de> wrote:
>> Am 13.11.2012 03:01, schrieb Rob Weir:
>>> On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 8:22 PM, Donald Harbison <dpharbi...@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>> {forgive top posting}
>>>>
>>>> First off, thanks for leading the charge at FOSDEM. On this side of the
>>>> Atlantic we need to gear up on ACNA and figure out what we want to do, and
>>>> who will be available. (excuses here, for a small delay)
>>>>
>>>> Let's get the devroom right as a priority. IMHO. Points 2 and 3 would be
>>>> nice, but let's really nail the devroom, and everything else will take care
>>>> of itself, so to speak (and I do not know how that translates, sorry!)
>>>>
>>>> So let's be laser focused on the 'series of talks' we want to ask our
>>>> community to step up and do. We can promote this CFP via our banner on
>>>> openoffice.org.
>>>>
>>>
>>> The openoffice.org banner would be totally wasted for that, reaching
>>> 750K people a day, 99.999% of them being users and not at all
>>> interested in this conference. I'd recommend a blog post as an
>>> intermediate approach.
>>>
>>> I'll be commandeering the openoffice.org banner for the near future to
>>> attract new volunteers, something we've so far failed to do by giving
>>> each other presentations at conferences.
>>>
>>> -Rob
>>>
>>>
>> I don't agree.
>>
>> I makes IMO sense to promote our aktivities at FOSDEM on our website.
>> Maybe some friends of OpenOffice will see it and will go to FOSDEM
>> because of the program in the dev-room or to meet our people at the booth.
>>
>> If only one of them becomes a submitter or supports us in another way
>> later effort has payed off.
>>
>
> It comes down to probabilities.
>
> I've demonstrated that using the website to call for new volunteers is
> effective. In just the weekend we've had three people sign up as QA
> volunteers. Similar, focused calls for volunteers on NL pages has
> increased our language coverage, bringing in translators for Danish,
> Polish, Norwegian, Polish and Turkish.
>
> We ran a call for papers and an invitation for ApacheCon on the
> website for 37 days. How many new volunteers did we get from that?
> Can any say we even have 1?
>
> Compare that to the opportunity cost of not running a call for
> volunteers directly, a technique that has proven extremely effective.
>
>> FOSDEM is definitely no event to reach new users of an office suite but
>> one to recruit new volunteers.
>>
>
> I'm not saying we don't advertise Fosdem. I'm just saying we should
> target that in a way that will be most effective. Running a central
> banner add for a month, like we did for ApacheCon will not be as
> effective as using that space for other recruitment purposes. I have
> the data to back up that assertion.
>
And so we're all on the same page, here's a quick review of the
promotional avenues we have easy access to:
-- news story on openoffice.org home page, 70K/day, predominately end users
-- banner on every openoffice,org page, 700K/day, predominately end users
-- blog post, a few thousand views, including broader Apache community
-- email to dev list, 300 hundred or so, but includes all core community members
-- email to announcement list, 9300, mostly users, but some press, etc.
-- Twitter, 850 followers
-- Facebook, 2000 likes
-- Google+, 1300 in circle
(There are other avenues like press articles, YouTube videos, etc.,
that may be impactful, but would require more effort)
Maybe it is an issue with the website design, or the copy writing, but
we're not getting a huge click-through rate on news stories or banner
ads. For example, our home page story on 20 million downloads gets
maybe 300 clicks per day. So a CTR of 0.4%. I this is because users
visiting the home page are task-oriented. They are looking for
something specific, like a download. They tune out extraneous
information. But when on Twitter or Facebook they are mentally open
to getting new stories of interest.
In any case, I think this suggests three things:
1) In any specific promotion we should think carefully about what
combination will reach the target audience.
2) We should cross-promote, e.g., primary announce via blog post,
followed by linking to it from Twitter, etc.
3) Getting above the noise threshold is essential. There is too much
clutter on there, including our website. Being heard is not easy. We
need to constantly experiment, measure, adapt.
-Rob
> -Rob
>
>
>> Regards
>> Michael
>>
