Just to throw in another perspective: Back in the day I was a founding sponsor of the organization. At the time it seemed like USENIX was getting rid of SAGE, and there was a battle raging, and hurt feelings on all sides. I don't know if I was picking sides so much, but USENIX annoyed me at the time, and LOPSA seemed more in tune with my career. I wasn't sure if the goals would be reached but I was hopeful so I threw my support behind the organization and was a proponent of people joining.
The following year I was less financially capable but still hopeful, so I put in for a bronze-level sponsorship and everything was good. Until 3 or 4 months later when I got a notice that my membership had expired the previous year and would I like to renew. This surprised me and led to an argument with a (then) board member about how sponsorship didn't include membership. The TL;DR is that I haven't renewed membership or sponsorship since, nor have I suggested that anyone else join. At this point I don't have any of that original hope anymore. As far as I can tell, nothing happened. https://lopsa.org/why_join looks the same to me as it did back in 2004. Has anything substantively changed? The main benefit of membership seems to still be the mailing list and community. Is there anything else? Pitching a free membership isn't hard, but there doesn't seem to be anything available for an upsell to paying member, let alone sponsor. /me goes back to lurking On Sat, Feb 7, 2015 at 5:03 PM, Kent C. Brodie <[email protected]> wrote: > Matt- thanks for the info. Still early, in discussion mode- perfect. > > MY input, for what it's worth: > > First, making base membership free - GOOD. I'd recommend offering basic > membership benefits for free- such as info on our activities, user groups, > mentoring, perhaps access to the lopsa site so new members can blog, etc > etc. The huge win here is-- growing our membership count, and exposure. > Free is good. > > Second, consider what would be beneficial to "paying" (or "supporting" or > whatever you want to call it) - members-- such as access to > training/books/etc discounts, USENIX membership discounts if possible, > etc. At least some true, tangible, financial incentives/rewards. I also > would recommend that only 'paying' members be allowed to VOTE in > organization events (elections, etc) - wheras the rest of the members be > offered the ability to participate in the lopsa-live events and so on. > > The primary decision to be made IMO is what free members vs paying members > receive. Make sure to make it an incentive and not a penalty. > > O! Lightbulb just went on: You might want to think along the lines of > some of the successful kickstarter campaigns and benefit levels (or for the > older crowd, PBS benefits during pledge drives). You could even have > MULTIPLE levels. Thinking out loud: > > * Free: Welcome! Join the dicsussions! Come to our user group > events! etc > * $10: Here's your LOPSA login id and password > * $25 ....and some storage along with that ID, and the ability to VOTE. > * $50 ....and a huge array of financial discounts useful to sysadmins > * $100 ....and an ugly Hawaiin shirt signed by a certain member of the > board :-) > * $1,000 .....and a seat on the board. :-) > > OK, kidding on the last two items, but you get the idea. I hope this > makes sense, in any way this works out, I think it's a win. > > --kent > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss > This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators > http://lopsa.org/ >
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