[vox] Advertising LUGOD on Unitrans?

[Bill Kendrick]

On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 01:44:54PM -0700, Alex Mandel wrote:
> I think we'd need:
> 
> 1. a really good ad

Indeed.  In one sense, I see the target audience as:

* Firstly: People who know about Linux
           Use it, or are interested in using it
           Don't yet know there's a LUG in the area

* Secondly: People who don't know about Linux

For the first group, an ad that simply says:
"Did you know there's a Linux User Group in town?"
would be fine.

For the second group, the ad would need to explain the
"what" and "why should I care" of Linux & open source.


> 2. some really clear goals for the ad campaign (ie:
>  a. Double our installfest attendance
>  b. Double our regular meeting attendence
> etc..

This is a good idea.  Mailing list subscriptions,
mailing list activity and IRC channel activity would
be other things to consider.

There'd need to be a "+/-" in the requirements, though.
Things like the talk topic, the time-of-year (esp. for
students), etc. all affect the meeting attendance numbers,
too.


Less detectable would be general knowledge of the club.
We had one fellow come to do a talk about research he
had done on open source, and I was amazed he had never
been at LUGOD before.  It turns out, he knew about us
for years, but just never came.  However, who knows how
many other people learned about the club because he
mentioned it!?  (Could easily be 'zero', of course :) )


> Of Course that also means ensuring that we have the capacity to
> handle those increases...

This was brought up last time we talked about Unitrans, I think.

Just to throw some random facts out (and because I had them all
summarized, since Explorit has been interested in the numbers), here's
some recent attendance:

   8/17/09 = 11
   9/21/09 = 10
   10/19/09 = 12
   11/16/09 = 24
   12/21/09 = 11
   1/2010 = at Veteran's Memorial Center
   2/15/10 = 22
   3/15/10 = 16
   4/19/10 = 14
   5/19/10 = 19
   6/21/10 = 11

So doubling attendance would bring us up to our early-2000s
levels of around 20-40 people per meeting.  We would certainly
be busting at the seams at Explorit.

However, it's summer right now, so student attendance will be down
since many are not in town any more.  I don't believe we'd be
on the buses right away, anyway.

_Eventually_, the Davis Public Library location will open up
again, and it has a much greater capacity than the space we're using
at Explorit.  We could triple or quadruple our current attendance
levels and still fit easily in the Blanchard meeting room.


And to briefly address Tim's suggestion about inviting Linus down,
I agree it's a long shot.  It would also be a one-shot special
event.  We'll get a lot of out-of-towners (much like many of us
from Davis trekked out to BALUG in San Francisco to see Linus talk),
but my guess is that after that, the attendance numbers would go back
to their current state.  With an ad staring at 1000s of students
all year 'round, we have a higher chance of getting locals involved
who might not have heard of us (despite our current best efforts :) )


-bill!