[opensuse-marketing] Contributor Recognition - how can we do it? - openSUSE Marketing

6 Apr 2011

      The board in our project meeting asked me to discuss with you and come up 
with an idea on how to recognize contributors to openSUSE (say thanks to 
them), so here's my email that I sent initially to the board and let's 
discuss what we can and want to do.

Basically, I seek a fair process and one that's easy to implement and 
execute. ;)

I've spend quite some time thinking about this and discussing it and 
therefore this email is a bit longer and list several options and ideas.

I already send the contributors on our existing list an email telling them 
that we're not going to send them anything for now - but seek alternatives. 
I got quite some positive feedback and have appended it at the end in 
anonymous form.

Btw. especially the marketing team is one of the teams that  I guess never 
made it on the list of getting a box - and I consider this really unfair - 
so let's find a fair process (or decide there is none and leave it). So, 
don't ask my why you never before heard about it - this is especially a 
reason to rethink the whole program and start it new from scratch and 
that's why I need your combined wisdom,

Andreas

Background
============

In the past, Novell had a list of contributors to openSUSE. Novell
send them one openSUSE box product as thank you. That list has grown
over the last 15 years and includes upstream authors of some projects,
beta testers and translators.

Right now that list contains around 300+ entries. Looking at the list of 
contributors, I see that it is a pretty unfair selection of folks. There're 
people in it, that haven't done anything for openSUSE 11.4 and there are 
people missing.

So, this whole concept of who gets a "Thank you" needs a reevaluation.

On top of that, we have sent out openSUSE Boxes in the past. With
openSUSE 11.3, this was a joint present by open-SLX and Novell, before
it was Novell only.

The price of the box has increased (official selling price from 59 to
69 EU but we get them far cheaper) - and the shipment of a box world
wide is a logistics nightmare with doing the right thing to get them
through customs in a cheap way - and then shipment costs a lot as
well.

Additionally, the collection of the email addresses is an error prone
and time consuming process.

So, summing up the three different points, we're not going to send
contributor boxes out with openSUSE 11.4.

As usual, there's a but. I know some people look forward to them - and I 
would  love to send out an individual "Thank you" to those who actually
contributed.

But this needs:
* a light weight process
* people that help with it
* and an idea on what to do

Once we have that, I can go to my management (who urged me to seek 
alternatives  with you - so Novell is interested in sponsoring, we just 
need a good way!) and ask for sponsorship money.

Goals
=====

Novell has done in the past the Contributor boxes as a way to say
thanks to contributors. openSUSE as community project depends on
contributors and this present was also an incentive for them.

Our goal is to thank openSUSE contributors for their participation in
openSUSE at the time of a distribution release. We want to recognize
contribution in a fair and objective way.

Where does contribution happen in openSUSE?
* bug reports
* fixing bugs
* packaging
* development
* system administration
* user help in forums/mailing lists/IRC
* marketing
* translation
* ...

Question: Do we want to recognize all kind of contributions or only
specific ones?  Some of that you can easily be scriptable - others
not, and that's the part that will lead to another "members committee"
and discussions. But only giving it a subset won't work really either
- so, what do we want?

Some of that you can easily script - others not, and that's the part that 
will lead to another "members committee" and discussions.

Note that only giving it a subset won't work really either - so, what
do we want?

From Jos:
"A suggestion from your friendly community manager would be to send all
 openSUSE *members* a small gift. It gives people a little reward for
 going though the effort of becoming member, can be used for some
 publicity (I'm a media whore, I know) and the membership is a
 self-selecting group of contributors. Sure there are more contributors
 but anyone who contributes CAN become a member - not applying is one's
 own choice. It's the most fair and simple solution, too, and makes
 sure the members will add/update their address in their userpage in
 Connect ;-)"

What to give?
=============

We'd like to have something that really recognizes contribution and
people are proud to receive it.

Shipment needs to scale so that we easily can send out e.g. to 300
people.

Some ideas:
- exclusive dinner at openSUSE Conference
- distinguished award
- put it on shelf/wall to show others what/something to put on
- target 300 people

Other Ideas:
* Add lists of translators for this language to slideshow
* Add list of packagers to Release Notes
* Self-nominating kind of deal, e.g. to print a poster

Our suggestions:
* Send something only to recognize (active) members? For example, the
  openSUSE 11.4 poster with a letter. Sending a letter avoids problems
  with customs.
* Awards at openSUSE conference for contributions in a few categories
  (KDE does Akademy awards: Winners from last year choose winners from
   next year; would only need 'starting up' for us)
* A welcome present to new contributors (members?) instead of a
  regular effort. Just send every new openSUSE member a T-Shirt!
* How about a file on the ftp tree called just that - Contribiturs
  Listing all by name ? One would have to have an opt-out for those
  that don't want to be named.
* Special price for openSUSE shop, e.g. for T-Shirts or mugs -
  basically a voucher.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Feedback from contributors about my email:

--
I think a simple thank you mail is enough, or a contributor hall of
fame website.
If possible a t-shirt is great but not necessary.
Contributing openSUSE is fun for all of us. If there is no more fun we
will not continue the contribution anymore... even if you send us
something.
So I would like to thanks for the boxes I got so far.
And keep create the best distribution ever.... together.
--
 have to admit that sending DVD boxes has always been too expensive
and in my opinion it was a tricky way to honour contributors. Tricky
as it is extremely difficult to measure and compare contributions of
each individual (for example a dev vs. translation team member vs bug
tracking person vs artist and so on) so some people might have a
feeling that their effort goes unnoticed as they did not recieve any
phisical.. er... I mean a touchable gift.

If you insit on sending some items I guess it could be more cost
effecient to contact some TRUSTWORTHY and RELIABLE local leaders and
send them something small in large quantities (pins, stickers, etc)
and ask them to distribute it some reasonable way. That might help in
organizing meetings among local openSUSE users as well - cool
giveaways typically go with some nice recollections. ;-)
--
Don't worry, I could download OpenSuse, avoiding cost and logistics of
shipping boxes world wide.

To honor contributors, may I suggest something like Apache Foundation does 
?

http://www.apache.org/foundation/members.html

A contributor could be member of something like OpenSuse Foundation
(for example), active or emeritus.
---
Hi Andreas!

Many thanks for your note. I have valued my copy of OpenSuSE over the 
years; after all I've been receiving it since the very beginning :)  I have 
always considered it a priviledge, not an obligation that SuSE and later 
Novell were required to fulfil. I feel grateful and would like to take this 
opportunity to thank, through you, the organization behind this program.

As for being part of OpenSuSE, I feel fortunate to still be in that role as 
an OpenSuSE member (handle: dbouras), continuing with contributions to 
setup and bug-fixing as time permits.
--
the nice OpenSuse boxes always had more of a symbolic value. Of actual use
was the promotional stuff with it, e.g. the "iContribute" shirt or
the led flashlight.
If shipping is too expensive now, it is simply better to sponsor
and be at community events, and give contributors some present there
e.g. in exchange to coupons sent to them by mail. Then people still see
that you recognize their contribution, they can decide themself whether
they want to pass by, you have some way to advertize your sponsoring
of events, and the mails do not look like spam.
--
In the past when the ISO images wasn't free for download it was THE BIG 
DEAL. 
Now the only convenient thing to me is x586+x86_64 on one DVD, but it 
arrives 
loooong after I've downloaded both images. The printed guide is fine for a 
newcomers, unfortunately not in my language and I'm aware that it can't be. 
May be in some countries downloading is a snail business, but here in 
Sofia, 
BG, most of the Internet users have ~20-50 Mb/s international and ~100 mb/s 
intrastate connectivity.

In the same e-mail to Karl I've mentioned that a t-shirt is far more 
desirable 
to me (the LED flash light from the 11.2 box was killer item too). 
Unfortunately, in this case the shipping remains as with any non-virtual 
item. 

May be you should consider seeking for any virtual goodies to grant to 
contributors. Three months installation support (as it comes with the box) 
is 
irrelevant as most of the translators are experienced susers.

Here is an idea: I would be intrigued on a special price quote for SLES. 
--
This was good decision. Most of us doesnt need shipped dvd, we can download 
it 
etc. Those dvd's were waste of money. 
---
Thanks for the notification and huge thanks for sending me all the
goodies. I am using SuSE Linux since the early days and am a keen
supporter of the Linux Desktop.

Perhaps you might make use of my feedback (or simply ignore it):

For myself, it was always easy to download openSUSE online; thus the
boxes were not really useful for myself anyways.

However, I was using the boxes to give them as a "gift" to "convert"
users (and some of my business clients) to use the Linux Desktop. It
makes a far better impression to hand over a nice serious looking box to
install compared to a burned noname DVD and a bunch of pro-Linux
arguments.

The openSUSE T-Shirt I received was a good promotion for the
distribution though since people asked me quite a lot about it when I
wear it. :)

Anyways, thanks for your hard work and thanks for supporting the
contributors.
---
So far I have typed about stuff for events, and now about how to honor
contributors. I have always thought that one t-shirt is great, not
sure if it is cheaper than sending the latest version on DVD in a box
(as for 11.2 and 11.3), but a t-shirt is pretty much what the world
will see under any circumstance. I recall the one from 11.1 as the
most awesome one, high quality stamped and the lines in the back show
your pride :) Of course, the letter is pretty valued as well.
So, in resume, a t-shirt for a contributor is what I would like to
have, instead of the DVD, which often comes very late around here
(Southamerica). Also, the @opensuse alias for every contributor would
be great.

---
Since the problems about shipping openSUSE boxes are related to cost and
logistic, the only way to avoid them is to provide some online service
reserved to contributors.
However, at the best of my knowledge, at the moment there is no online
service that can be reserved to contributors: high-speed dedicated
repositories are useless, since current mirrors are fast; the build
service is available to everyone (but in any case it is not a good way
to honor contributors since not everyone wants/is able to use the build
service); similarly for other online services.

At the moment I have no idea on how to honor contributors, since there
is nothing interesting for me in openSUSE online services as well as I
do not care whether my name appears somewhere in openSUSE as
contributor.
---
No worries... I can understand the cost issue; meanwhile I imagine most 
contributors downloaded the DVD from day one and know enough about openSUSE 
to have no use for the printed manual.

As an alternative, here are two ideas:

1- Send something (box, DVD, t-shirt..) to openSUSE Members only
    => Pros: reduces the number of eligible contributors, thus reduces the 
cost (at least I suppose so)
    => Cons: can be seen as unfair for non-members, logistics might still 
be an issue

2- Offer a discount to buy something from the openSUSE Shop (t-shirt, cap, 
mug, etc.)
    => Pros: good for marketing, less expensive than the traditional box 
(14€ for a t-shirt, instead of ~60€ for the box), logistics are handled by 
the shop provider
     => Cons: none?

I would personally prefer the second option.. as I work in software 
development, showing an openSUSE mug or t-shirt at work would inevitably 
raise questions among colleagues, and help promote openSUSE :-)
 Hope this helps anyway.

-- 
 Andreas Jaeger, Program Manager openSUSE,  aj@{novell.com,opensuse.org}
  Twitter: jaegerandi | Identica: jaegerandi
   SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg)
    Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany
     GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F  FED1 389A 563C C272 A126
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[opensuse-marketing] Contributor Recognition - how can we do it?

Andreas Jaeger

Kostas Koudaras

Andreas Jaeger

Kostas Koudaras

Andreas Jaeger

Kostas Koudaras

Andreas Jaeger

Chuck Payne

Ricardo Chung

Andreas Jaeger

stuart＠bolin.org.uk

jdd

Kim Leyendecker

Andreas Jaeger

jdd

Kim Leyendecker

Andreas Jaeger

jdd

Andreas Jaeger

Kim Leyendecker

Jos Poortvliet

Kim Leyendecker

Manu Gupta

jdd

Jos Poortvliet

jdd

Jos Poortvliet

jdd

Rajko M.

Tony Su

James Mason

Kim Leyendecker

Andreas Jaeger

Kim Leyendecker

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