Friends of GNOME session notes

["Jason D. Clinton" <me jasonclinton com>]

Friends of GNOME

Stormy opened the session by giving an overview of the target: users who feel that they would like to contribute but don't know how because they aren't technical.

Objectives:

• 400 new subscribers
  
• Use a progress bar on the web site similar to the sysadmin campaign
  
• Any dollar value
  
• New t-shirt
  
• Videos of developers talking about how funding helps hackfests
  
• Track referrals from people
  
• Track referrals from online advertising

Someone asked if there were any demographics about donors from the past year. Stormy replied that the data is there--based on country--but someone would need to compile the data.

There was a discussion about getting academic communications departments involved in this and other marketing departments. Everyone loved this idea but it was decided that we're too close to the end of the year (the target for this campaign) to specifically try to involve an academic project.

The floor was opened to a discussion of rewards for contribution in addition to a T-Shirt: foam GNOME foot trinkets, stickers, a membership card.

We discussed implementing referral tracking by integrating our PayPal data with our CiviCRM installation. The action items out of this discussion were

• Text for ruler (Paul)
  
• Clean up Friends of GNOME landing page (Og)
  
  • Fix subscriptions
    
  • One time
    
  • Ask for location
    
• Annual subscription (Og)
  
• Merchandise
  
  • New t-shirt (Joey)
    
  • Community assistance for distribution (Vincent)
    
  • Collectible doodad with year on it, 300 qty (Joey) (maybe Andreas?)
    
  • Membership cards with member number (Og)
    
• Map mash-up of contributors
  
• Getting the word out
  
  • Design 2 ads (Joey)
    
  • Social networking (Og)
    
  • Radio jingle (Joey)
    
  • Google
    
  • LWN (Stormy)
    
• Email current subscribers (Paul)
  
• Videos of developers talking about hack-fest funding via Friends of GNOME (Jason/Joey)

Dates:

• Launch new Friends of GNOME site - Nov. 16th
  
• Annual item per year (doodad) - Nov. 18th
  
• Map mash-up - Nov. 21st
  
• Launch promotional avenues - Nov 22nd
  
• Membership cards - Nov 22nd
  
• T-Shirts - Dec. 31st