Re: Modifying GNOME-About to count users

[Luis Villa <luis villa gmail com>]

On 7/6/05, Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org> wrote:
> <quote who="Luis Villa">
> 
> > If we seek to create a lower bound, perhaps we could focus on getting
> > lower-bound type numbers from our distributors, or (perhaps more
> > fruitfully) from mirrors? I'm guessing the Fedora torrent stats and ubuntu
> > turrent stats, summed, are a way larger lower bound than any opt-in system
> > we can implement :)
> 
> That's how the conversation (on #marketing) started, and where the "multiple
> data sources" line came from. I know of various data sources in Ubuntu land
> that would be helpful, but we do have to keep in mind that this is often
> seen as valuable data, not to be thrown about.

Oh, I know, which is why I suggested focus on mirrors, torrent stats, etc.
 
> > Seems like step 1 is 'implement a real member database for FOG.' I'd love
> > for someone (hello, web-team! :) to set up a civicspace[1] (or similar)
> > user DB for FOG, so that we know who has become an FOG, whether or not we
> > can contact them, how much they've given, etc., etc.
> 
> So [1], I would be a little bit hesitant to use it for the memberdb because
> that's a lot of infrastructure for a little bit of functionality.

Agreed that there is lots of extraneous stuff (ooh! web sites! blogs!)
and wheel reinvention in civicspace, but in the end, I'd like to see
FOG to become a fairly professional-ish non-profit fundraising arm,
reaching tens of thousands of established donors and potentially
hundreds of thousands of pre-donors or other affiliates. AFAICT, the
civicspace folks are the only people aiming to encapsulate that kind
of functionality into an open source project.

> Most obvious question: What is the base functionality the Foundation
> requires?

IMHO (long term, not all are 'required' but all would be desirable):
* basic member database- contact information, joining dates, etc.
* contact management- when did we last email this person? what are
their preferences with regards to contact? how much have they given?
what have they given? (time? money?) what are their hot-button issues?
* mass mailing stuff tied into the previous point- did you give the
previous four christmases? have you stopped giving altogether?
* event integration- being able to transparently say for GUADEC
registration 'oh, you're a FOG, here's a 10% discount for GUADEC', or
'you're a foundation member, GUADEC is free!', or whatever, would be
great.

civicspace has all of these in their roadmap, and serious funding to
make them all happen. That seems like a very, very big plus over
smaller-scale stuff (that admittedly is 100% ready now for limited
tasks) like the linux.au memberdb.

Luis