Hello all, I'm not an so active member for some time now due to personal reasons and free time shortage but I still try to follow the mailing lists and do some testing when I have the chance so I don't consider myself elegible for any of this. But I remember when I got the 11.1 T-Shirt and the DVD box for contributing on beta testing and doing translations over the 11.1 cycle. That was really welcome and the feeling that I was part of something and I could show that to my coworkers was special. I really enjoyed the flashlight as well with the geeko logo. So from the options bellow I would say that tshirt or the mug would be amazing with "openSuse member " inscribed on it or even the iContribute. Something that you can use on you day-by-day and display on your working cube and show your passion for the project. From a Software perspective I was elegible for a SLED 11.0 license because I was part of the Testing Core team but using it was just strange. I was on it for the openSuse not the SLED (but I felt that helping Novell was a way to show how much I appreciate their sponsorship on openSuse). For when and how to send I believe that a welcome package is a really good idea, but rewarding those who works to get openSuse out there on every cycle is important as well. So I would say early or on every cycle would be a good thing if budget allows. Best regards, Gabriel Em qui 20 out 2011, às 18:08:23, Christian Boltz escreveu:

Hello,

[please reply on the opensuse-project mailinglist!]

Some time ago, we collected ideas for contributor gifts on http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Contributor_gifts and also decided who should receive a gift - see https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=682098 (basically active members + GSOC students + an option to propose someone who contributed a lot, but isn't a member (yet)).

I discussed with AJ today which items on the list would be possible and would make sense. That made list much shorter ;-)

The contributor gifts should be something special/exclusive IMHO, not the "usual" stuff we hand out to visitors at conferences or stuff you can order via shop.o.o. I'd say the symbolic value is more important than the price - no gold bar with geeko embossing needed ;-)

The narrowed down list contains these proposals:

a) things you can touch

- coffee mugs - caps - T-Shirt (not an exceptional idea, but people like them) - USB memory sticks (with bootable openSUSE) - openSUSE playing cards

The design should be something special that is only available to contributors/members and should contain a hint that the person who wears/owns item is an openSUSE contributor/member. (Take the 11.1 "iContribute" t-shirts as an example.)

The openSUSE playing cards are an idea on its own. While the easiest way would be to create "normal" playing cards and just replace king and queen with Tux and Geeko, having a special "openSUSE game" would be even better. (But that would probably also mean it won't be ready when we release 12.1.)

When we send out a parcel, we can always add things like stickers, some promo DVDs and a cheat sheet poster. And of course a "thank you" letter.

b) Awards at openSUSE conference for contributions in a few categories

There would be some categories (for example marketing, packaging, development, bugreporting etc.), and the top-contributor in each category would receive a price. This price would be "bigger" and more personal compared to the items in a)

The handling could be done similar to how KDE does Akademy awards: Winners from last year choose winners from next year; would only need 'starting up' for us (categories and winners). The only risk is that not everybody might love that sort of "paperwork" to choose next year's winners so we might need some volunteers as fallback.

c) software

SLE* license for free or at least a special price (a restriction to "updates only, without support" if you do it for free would be OK). The problem with this option is that not everybody needs a SLE* license.

If we decide on one of those, then the next problem comes up: money ;-) At the moment there isn't a budget available, but AJ sees at least chances to get one. (We'll probably have to discuss the details after deciding which of the above we want to do - or if we spend the money for something totally different.)

Beside the costs for the gifts itsself, we also have to keep shipment costs and customs in mind. This leads to another question:

When/how often do we send a gift to a contributor? The options are: - at every release - once a year - (could even reduce shipment costs - people visiting the conference could get it there, so we have to ship only to those who can't come to the conference) - once when you become a member - call it a "member welcome package" ;-) (and of course the current members would also receive it)

I'm open for feedback. What of the above do you think would make a good contributor gift? When/how often should we send one? Or shouldn't we send one at all and spend the money otherwise?

There are also some good ideas in the wiki page would make good giveaways at conferences, trade fairs etc: - geeko-shaped paperclips - geeko/openSUSE pins - key fobs - lanyards - jellybaby geekos - someone (Klaas?) mentioned this idea at the conference, but the problem seems to be that producing the shape/form is expensive. The jellybybies itsself are quite cheap compared to that.

@marketing team: feel free to use any of those ideas ;-)

Regards,

Christian Boltz -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Thu, 2011-10-20 at 22:08 +0200, Christian Boltz wrote:

Hello,

[please reply on the opensuse-project mailinglist!]

Some time ago, we collected ideas for contributor gifts on http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Contributor_gifts and also decided who should receive a gift - see https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=682098 (basically active members + GSOC students + an option to propose someone who contributed a lot, but isn't a member (yet)).

I discussed with AJ today which items on the list would be possible and would make sense. That made list much shorter ;-)

The contributor gifts should be something special/exclusive IMHO, not the "usual" stuff we hand out to visitors at conferences or stuff you can order via shop.o.o. I'd say the symbolic value is more important than the price - no gold bar with geeko embossing needed ;-)

The narrowed down list contains these proposals:

a) things you can touch

- coffee mugs - caps

There is some talk about reviving nd rebuilding our openSUSE Shop with more stuff and this is the kind of stuff we would be selling in the Shop. I'd like to avoid these items so we don't take away from the Shop.

- T-Shirt (not an exceptional idea, but people like them)

T-shirts that indicate you are a contributor is an excellent way to wear with pride and also advertise the Community to the world. Logistically somewhat of a challenge because of ensuring we have t-shirt sizes (and those sizes do differ between US and Europe unfortunately so in the past my Contributor shirt didn't fit me because of European size differences.)

- USB memory sticks (with bootable openSUSE)

I got a SUSE USB stick last week which was cute and getting a similar one for openSUSE or even a Geeko-shaped stick would be cool. But this can be quite pricey too.

- openSUSE playing cards

The design should be something special that is only available to contributors/members and should contain a hint that the person who wears/owns item is an openSUSE contributor/member. (Take the 11.1 "iContribute" t-shirts as an example.)

The openSUSE playing cards are an idea on its own. While the easiest way would be to create "normal" playing cards and just replace king and queen with Tux and Geeko, having a special "openSUSE game" would be even better. (But that would probably also mean it won't be ready when we release 12.1.)

Actually, by playing cards, it should be that there is some openSUSE design for the back of the card. I think making Geeko face cards is also a nice addition to it. I tried to print up some openSUSE playing cards not too long ago as gifts for a handful, but the setup fee was too high to make it worthwhile for handful of cards. But for the number of members we have, the setup fee is neglible. It has the advantage that this would not be expensive to ship and in large bulk, can be very cheap to print up. Of course, if we want to create a game, I guess we could also create Geeko poker chips, but I think that gets too expensive and has a bit of limited appeal.

When we send out a parcel, we can always add things like stickers, some promo DVDs and a cheat sheet poster. And of course a "thank you" letter.

I think adding little bits like this to the package is a good idea. I think we can also definitely come up with some more creative ideas for gifts. Come on folks! :-)

b) Awards at openSUSE conference for contributions in a few categories

There would be some categories (for example marketing, packaging, development, bugreporting etc.), and the top-contributor in each category would receive a price. This price would be "bigger" and more personal compared to the items in a)

The handling could be done similar to how KDE does Akademy awards: Winners from last year choose winners from next year; would only need 'starting up' for us (categories and winners). The only risk is that not everybody might love that sort of "paperwork" to choose next year's winners so we might need some volunteers as fallback.

Honestly, I have broached the subject of awards several times over the years and always met with stiff resistance. Many in the community feel (and I think rightly so) that awards would be distributed in an unfair way and doesn't really support the concept of a free and open community. How do you judge someone who spends 20 hours a day because they have the time versus someone who spends 1 hour a week because they don't have time but miraculously give the time anyway? It becomes a very arbitrary thing. And besides, I think the scope of this topic doesn't fit about awards. This scope is about general gifts to all contributors broadly and evenly.

c) software

SLE* license for free or at least a special price (a restriction to "updates only, without support" if you do it for free would be OK). The problem with this option is that not everybody needs a SLE* license.

I don't see the need for giving free SLE to everyone. And in fact, I think it wrongly takes bussiness away from our primary sponsor, SUSE. However... I think it is a good idea to offer special pricing automatically for anyone who is a contributor and receives this discount as a member. I think that discount is a very fair offering becuse it says thank you to those who contribute and their work ends up in SLE eventually plus it creates a new appeal to bring more SLE users into the community as contributors. So yes, please do offer this as a Member Benefit (Perhaps this is something that should be proposed directly to the Board?) I don't think this should be a "per-release" gift. It should be something anyone can claim at any time as long as they are a member.

If we decide on one of those, then the next problem comes up: money ;-) At the moment there isn't a budget available, but AJ sees at least chances to get one. (We'll probably have to discuss the details after deciding which of the above we want to do - or if we spend the money for something totally different.)

Beside the costs for the gifts itsself, we also have to keep shipment costs and customs in mind. This leads to another question:

It's hard to determine actual costs to propose until we come up with a hard conclusion of what it is we want to do. Until that point, its a reasonably moot discussion when SUSE has no idea what we will be asking for here.

When/how often do we send a gift to a contributor? The options are: - at every release

People are used to this concept so let's do it this way.

- once a year - (could even reduce shipment costs - people visiting the conference could get it there, so we have to ship only to those who can't come to the conference)

Not crazy about this idea, even with the apparent cost savings. It gets confusing IMO and again, people are used to per-release gifts already.

- once when you become a member - call it a "member welcome package" ;-) (and of course the current members would also receive it)

Actually, I think a membership welcome kit should be a different thing. I've thought in the past that we could send a wallet-sized card saying you're a card-carrying member of the openSUSE Community, and a nice lapel pin to go with it. Part of the "Membership Benefits."

I'm open for feedback. What of the above do you think would make a good contributor gift? When/how often should we send one? Or shouldn't we send one at all and spend the money otherwise?

There are also some good ideas in the wiki page would make good giveaways at conferences, trade fairs etc: - geeko-shaped paperclips - geeko/openSUSE pins - key fobs - lanyards - jellybaby geekos - someone (Klaas?) mentioned this idea at the conference, but the problem seems to be that producing the shape/form is expensive. The jellybybies itsself are quite cheap compared to that.

@marketing team: feel free to use any of those ideas ;-)

Regards,

Christian Boltz -- [Loadbalancer vor Mailservern] Ausbauen, bei Ebay verhökern und die frei gewordene Zeit zusammen mit dem Ebay-Erlös in eine große Betriebsparty mit Cocktails anlegen. [Peer Heinlein in postfixbuch-users]

-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 5:08 PM, Christian Boltz wrote:

The narrowed down list contains these proposals:

a) things you can touch - coffee mugs - caps - T-Shirt (not an exceptional idea, but people like them) - USB memory sticks (with bootable openSUSE) - openSUSE playing cards

Out of these, I go 100% for the t-shirt. You can wear your pride in and out of FLOSS events which gives it a pretty broad use, and shipping seems to me easier than sending out a coffe mug, just an example. It could go with one or two stickers and the thank you letter in the same package. I wonder how many of us enjoy playing cards and wear caps most of the times. In size, a t-shirt is something much more visible.

The design should be something special that is only available to contributors/members and should contain a hint that the person who wears/owns item is an openSUSE contributor/member. (Take the 11.1 "iContribute" t-shirts as an example.)

Agree, 11.1 design was great but we might need to improve, as everything evolves so should it be.

b) Awards at openSUSE conference for contributions in a few categories

That's great, but how many of us would be in the position to attend the conference year after year? We could have some sort of "wall of fame" in the openSUSE website too.

c) software

SLE* license for free or at least a special price (a restriction to "updates only, without support" if you do it for free would be OK). The problem with this option is that not everybody needs a SLE* license.

An "updates only and no support" licence seems interesting, but again I am not sure how would that work from the developer point of view, will they need to add any special script to validate something or even from the business view point I have no idea if that'd be possible.

When/how often do we send a gift to a contributor? The options are: - at every release - once a year - (could even reduce shipment costs - people visiting the  conference could get it there, so we have to ship only to those who  can't come to the conference) - once when you become a member - call it a "member welcome package" ;-)  (and of course the current members would also receive it)

I think once a year is the way to go and ship only to those who cannot attend the Conference, having in mind a lot of members/contributors live near by and can go there, chances are we can lowe the shipment costs. The "welcome package" can be given at the Conference itself or sent out by then, that still makes it a "welcome package", doesn't it? Bests regards. -- Ricardo Varas Santana http://ricardovs.wordpress.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org