[wplug-plan] membership and pizza funds

David Ostroske eksortso at gmail.com
Wed Feb 1 15:42:38 EST 2006


On 1/31/06, Patrick Wagstrom <pwagstro at andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:
> > Also, the collection of pizza money serves as a recruitment incentive.
> > I'm not planning to push it hard. I'm just saying.
>
> So Dave's post makes me think about something.   Right now we frequently
> sell newcomers on membership by pointing out that $5 gets you just pizza
> or $5 gets you pizza and membership.  It's great, we get lots of new
> members.
>
> But is that good?  Stay with me here...I'm not saying that we need to
> kick people or anything, but it's a concern.
>
> Here's the main two issues where it comes up:
>
> 1. The size of the board scales with the number of members
> 2. The number of members needed for a quorum increases with the number
> of members
>
> As we get more members it necessarily make it harder for us to do
> business -- all while a lot of people are never heard from again.

That's all crossed my mind, too. It's also one of the reasons I don't
bring up membership actively anymore when I troll for pizza. (Is
"troll" the right verb here?)

Not that we need to. I'm more interested in bringing people in and
letting them experience Linux and OSS first-hand, rather than urging
them to get involved in organizational politics, which is pretty slow
as it stands. Can you really blame anybody for not getting fired up
over boring stuff?

Perhaps we should slow down recruitment drives and focus on what's
interesting to folks. The lattter would naturally support the former,
and have excited people will bring them to do interesting things.

> Generally on the wplug at wplug list it's the same 20 or people posting.
> Meeting have the same 30 or so folks in attendance.  That leaves a lot
> of folks who are members but never do anything.
>
> I'm glad we have their $5 and all - but this is a concern I've thought
> about.

That's about the size of it. I wouldn't dismantle any of our machinery
just yet. Just let people know that it's there when they need it. Or
when we need it!

But right now, what we need is adrenaline.

> --Patrick

--
David Ostroske <eksortso at gmail.com>




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