To interject some suggestions in this thread: Recruiting new members
requires a significant amount of work on the club officers part. You
don't want to be wasting your time with ineffective tactics so here are
a few suggestions:
* The most important recruiting time is in september when most
freshmen start their year. Make the the club booth is well
staffed at that time.
* Club booths should not only include give-away cds and creatively
designed flyers, but also use stand-out, in-your-face, crazy
attention getting techniques. I remember one year where I put on
some bell bottoms an afro-wig and we played disco music from a
booth boom box. Our theme was: "Unix: One of the best things to
come out of the 70s". I'd recommend hourly or daily drawings in
exchange for people's email addresses. T-shirts would be a good
drawing give-away.
* Email Unix OS and software vendors every so often such as
O'Reilly, Redhat, IBM, Suse, Sun, HP, Oracle, etc as well as local
software companies: Novell, Symantec, Omniture, etc, asking them
if they'd like to "sponsor" a club event by sending us some
t-shirts, hats, pizza, etc. Use those as binary-grab-bag
give-aways, along side computer related junk you can find at DI or
BYU surplus sales for really cheap. Advertise "FREE" in HUGE
letters at the top of fliers (followed by "give-aways",etc).
Students love the word "Free".
* Have crazy contests... For example, In december 1997, we had a
meeting to celembrate the birthday of the transistor. We had a
commercial copy of some Unix distro to give out... so we told
people to dress up like a transistor.. the best costume would win
the copy of the Unix distro.. Believe it or not, we had 5-7
people dress up... one with a huge spray painted cardboard box...
he one. I got a sheet cake from some place with "Happy birthday
Transistor!" on it.
* Have a good mix of meetings that include standard things to do
with Unix/Linux as well as off-the-wall things it can be used
for. This I think is already being done.
* Keep the meetings to 60-90 mins max.
* Dedicate 5 mins out of each meeting for someone to spotlight their
favorite new package seen on freshmeat that week.
* Fight with the other clubs for a good booth location...
* Do a club float at homecomming. If the club officers are willing
to organize it, I've got a Minivan, a Trailer and I'll spring for
one of these floating penguins:
http://www.gombergkites.com/plynn2.html#peng to fly behind it.
or Several of these penguins:
http://www.christmasradiance.com/InfIndoor2.htm or penguin
balloons:
http://www.wordit.com/catalog/product_info.php/products_id/63
Throw hard candy out to the crowd wrapped in printed labels
advertising the club. Have music and a large video display,
perhaps from someone's linux laptop? I've got an EVDO pcmcia
card/connection that gives me 700-800kbps down stream from the
net... so some streaming video or other cool online app could be
displayed. Have someone dressed up in a penguin and/or a BSD
daemon throwing candy to kids... hmm.. the BSD daemon... now that
would get peoples attention in the BYU homecomming parade.
* Aways post meeting notices in as many Physical sciences and
engineering meetings as possible.
anyway.. those are few ideas.
-matt
Andrew McNabb wrote:
>On Fri, Jan 20, 2006 at 10:55:19AM -0700, David D Turley wrote:
>
>
>>Sorry to jump in on this, but being away from campus for over 12 years I
>>had some ideas...
>>
>>
>
>When I mentioned freshmen and sophomores who are really enthusiastic, I
>was thinking of people that are already familiar with Linux. Certainly,
>many of the best members of the UUG became acquainted with Linux while
>at school (either through coursework or through the UUG). But if we
>aren't even getting the people who when coming to school are already
>excited about Linux, then there's a serious problem. I would imagine
>that an increasing number of students arrive with a familiarity with
>Linux, and even when I was a freshman there were two or three people on
>my floor in the dorms who used Linux extensively.
>
>
>
>
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>
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>http://uug.byu.edu/
>
>The opinions expressed in this message are the responsibility of their
>author. They are not endorsed by BYU, the BYU CS Department or BYU-UUG.
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--------------------
BYU Unix Users Group
http://uug.byu.edu/
The opinions expressed in this message are the responsibility of their
author. They are not endorsed by BYU, the BYU CS Department or BYU-UUG.
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