+1, love this initiative Noah! I am really curious about what comes out of this.
Thanks for the lively discussion around this, everyone. I’m seeing all my concerns addressed, so I can just thumb up :D Best Jan -- On Oct 5, 2013, at 19:04 , Noah Slater <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi devs, > > I would like to propose that we use Influitive to help us improve our > marketing efforts. > > I fully intend to execute this proposal myself. If you want to volunteer, > that is great. But if you are not interested in this, that is fine also. > Nobody has to participate if they do not want to. I am quite happy to run > it as an experiment myself. If it works we can continue, and if it doesn't, > we can stop. > > Unless anybody objects, I will assume lazy consensus after three days, and > let Influitive that we have the green light to move forward. > > = Introduction = > > Influitive AdvocateHub is an advocacy marketing platform. > > Think of it like Kickstarter, for marketing. You post a description of what > you want to accomplish, and then your community members pitch in and help > to make it happen. > > As an open source project, we struggle to market ourselves because we have > no budget. Where a typical company might take out ads, or pay people to > write technical content, we rely on volunteer time and word of mouth. But > this is typically disorganised. > > AdvocateHub is a tool that that will allow us to coordinate that volunteer > time and word of mouth. We can create a steady stream of challenges or > requests for help and people who are committed to the project can organise > around these, and help us spread the word of CouchDB. > > In return for doing these things, we reward them with prestige and swag. > And maybe a few other exclusive items, like conference tickets, or a round > of drinks on me. > > You should watch these two intro videos: > > http://influitive.com/introduction-to-advocate-marketing/ > > http://influitive.com/learn-more-about-the-advocatehub/ > > = Donation = > > AdvocateHub is usually premium service. However, Influitive has very > generously offered to donate an account to the project. This is the first > open source project that Influitive has supported like this, so I am very > grateful for the opportunity! > > AdvocateHub is designed for commercial companies, but I think we can make > it work for an open source project. Influitive will be monitoring our > progress, and if things are not working out, we’ll end the experiment. As > part of this agreement, I will be the account owner and will be responsible > for its operation. But if you are a committer and you want to help out, I > can add you as an admin. This is similar to how we run our social media > accounts. > > In return for the support, I am proposing to: > > * Promote the use of our AdvocateHub within our community > * Thank them from our website, wiki, and social media accounts > * Document our progress with the occasional blog or tweet > > Promoting the use of our AdvocateHub will probably take the form of > mentioning new challenges on the mailing list, blog, Twitter, Google+, etc. > Obviously, we will want to encourage as many people as possible to get > involved in the AdvocateHub as possible. > > As for documenting our progress, I am thinking that the occasional post > covering how we’re using the tool, and what sorts of results we’re seeing > would be appropriate. > > I have spoken with the ASF fundraising team already, and there are no > concerns with these plans at the foundation level. > > = Challenges = > > AdvocateHub is built around the concept of a challenge, or request for > help. We can design these however we want, and I will be looking for input > from the community. > > Ideas for easy challenges: > > * Retweet an official @CouchDB tweet > * Upvote a CouchDB story on Hacker News, Reddit, Google+ etc > * Publicly mention CouchDB on Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, your blog, etc > * Share an official project blog post somewhere > > Ideas for medium challenges: > > * Watch a featured video > * Read a featured blog post, or section of the docs > * Help someone out on the mailing list > * Answer a CouchDB question on Stack Overflow, Server Fault, etc > * Talk about CouchDB in response to a Quora question > * Talk about CouchDB in response to a submission on Hacker News, > Reddit, etc > * Comment on an official blog post, or a blog post about CouchDB > * Post a review on alternativeTo, or other review sites, blog posts, etc > * Provide an official endorsement or quote from your company about > CouchDB > * Complete a survey (I plan to actually make some surveys) > > Ideas for hard challenges: > > * Create a CouchDB client, library, or tool > * Produce early/mid/late stage technical content > * Produce a CouchDB white paper > * Give a talk or screencast about CouchDB > * Share a CouchDB success story, testimonial, or case-study > * Organise a CouchDB meet-up > * Organise a CouchDB conference > > And then, challenges for actually contributing back to CouchDB itself: > > * Triage X many JIRA tickets > * Fix up outstanding issues on a CouchDB pull request > * Contribute a fix for a JIRA ticket > > (This might be a little outside of the scope of AdvocateHub, as this would > request contribution back to the project itself. Still, it would be > interesting to see if this would work. As a volunteer organisation, > volunteer time and attracting contributions is our top priority.) > > = Rewards = > > Completing challenges gives you points, levels, and badges. I know that > many people love this kind of system, and are happy to compete with each > other for points alone. However, we also have the option of allowing > advocates to exchange points for prizes. > > AdvocateHub has an integration with a swag drop-ship merchant. Hopefully, I > can attract a third-party to help with the bill for this. It would mean > that by completing challenges, we can reward advocates with t-shirts, > hoodies, mugs, pins, stickers, and so on! > > In addition to swag, we could also offer: > > * Individual promotion for you > * Priority or free tickets to the regular CouchDB Confs > * Email support or advice from the committers (depends on who > volunteers time) > * Private call with one the committers (depends on who volunteers time) > * Drinks on Noah (though, you’ll have to come find me!) > > Promotion could be quite a draw. Imagine a weekly Tweet along the lines of > “Thanks to @ARandomPerson for supporting CouchDB this week. You should > follow her on Twitter!” We could also include a mention in our weekly > CouchDB news. (A blog idea that I have not executed on yet.) As far as I > can tell, we’d only be able to promote individual accounts, not businesses. > The ASF has very strict vendor neutrality rules that we must adhere to. > > Some other ideas of how we could provide return promotion: > > * Mention on our homepage that week > * Get on our weekly @CouchDB #FollowFriday > * Entered into a “hall of fame” > * Get mentioned in our Git commits, issues, or pull requests > > The @CouchDB account has close to 10k followers. And our homepage receives > around 8,500 page views per month at the moment. Those numbers are not to > be sniffed at! > > (This is heavily inspired by Hoodie, who allow people to sponsor the > project in return for promotion via different channels. I think we can > borrow some of this.) > > The specifics of the reward programme is unimportant at this stage. Like > the details of the challenges themselves, we can figure this out as we move > forward. > > Thanks, > > -- > Noah Slater > https://twitter.com/nslater
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