Growing the Team...

[STMahlberg]

I know that I posted this over in Dr. Pop’s SETI.USA Bash Brothers Group in response to a post about our losing ground. This was off topic for the thread so I thought that I would pick it back up here. It started with upgrading and recruiting and I had thrown in a few thought of my own and I would like to see what your thoughts are. Think of this as brainstorming.

Upgrading: Won’t exactly grow the team but it will enhance our position. This one obviously takes money for the most part except for making sure all of the software and drivers are updated.

Are there any ideas where we can get cheap or free equipment?

Are there any speed tweaks that can be made to any of our current equipment?

Recruiting: Frankly, I have no idea on this one. I’ve posted and talked with family & friends about BOINC and what it’s about and the consensus so far is they all think I’m out of my mind and it’s a complete waste of time and money.

Retention: I know that people will come and go but on the other board I saw a few join for awhile and then just disappear. I don’t know if this just wasn’t for them or if we had personality conflicts.

Any ideas how to keep people interested in coming back?

Reacquisition: Also I think we need to make an effort towards reacquisition of old members; we should try and contact them. I know this would be a painstaking task but I believe that it would be worth the effort, so much in fact that I am willing to work on this myself.

I PM’ed Mr. Hankey and got his blessing on this one already; he said that I should get a hold of Crazy Bob’s Son to coordinate our efforts since he was working on this already. Last night I started collecting email addresses from the old system and sent a bunch of email. I started at Z, Y and X for user names; there were 111 users only 69 of those have email. Out of 69 I sent, 4 came back as undeliverable and I already got 1 response this morning from Wendy1847 so I am optimistic.

Assimilation: You’re probably going to think I’m crazy for this one but like I said there are many smaller teams out there, how about we open dialogue with them and see if they would be willing to be incorporated into SETI.USA.

Any ideas?

[Mr. Hankey]

In our previous discussion on this topic, I really liked Crunch3rs idea about using google adds to promote the team. I think once our site move is complete we should seriously look in to that.

[STMahlberg]

For those interested... Here is my progress so far. The members are the ones I've gone through from the other board; unfortunately, not all of them have email addresses listed. The emailed number is the ones that actually have email addresses and how many I have sent. The rest is self explanatory.

As of Date 11/11/2010

Members 190
Emailed 121
Undeliverable 10
Responses 1

[DrPop]

Assimilation: You’re probably going to think I’m crazy for this one

Actually, no. I quite like this idea. JerWA and I had discussed this at some length over on the other board by PM. The idea would be to let smaller "USA" teams still keep their identity in a sub-forum here, and he has said that if we tell the stat makers (Free-DC, BOINC Stats, etc) about it, they could list those folks' totals under our banner, but also as a separate group as well.

Definitely something to consider. The USA is clobbering every other country in BOINC output - I mean handing them their rear; it's not even close. The problem is, OUR total score is only a mere 9.4% of USA output.
Compare this with LAF: their output would be 65% of all France! S.G. would equal 28% of all Germany.
Anyone else see a MAJOR problem here? Our recruitment of USA BOINC members sucks compared to any other major team's recruitment in their own country.

Now...this could be due to the fact that the individualism that makes this country so cool, also means we'd rather each be a part of "OUR OWN" little BOINC team, as compared to other countries who are more conformist, and will just join the "country team".
Interpret the stats any way you want, but bottom line is we need MORE of the USA folks to come aboard. There would be NO STOPPING US if that happened.

[zombie67]

LAF figured it out. No reason to reinvent the wheel.

[DrPop]

Do you have some inside information on how they went to a "one of 3" best teams for several years to "undisputed #1" in a VERY short time?
I would like to hear it, myself.

[zombie67]

Do you have some inside information on how they went to a "one of 3" best teams for several years to "undisputed #1" in a VERY short time?
I would like to hear it, myself.

No inside info. Just what I observed. There is no way to merge teams with BOINC. One team has to give up their team scores and start all over. That is generally a non-starter. But they did it somehow. The only thing I can see, is that each member has their old team/region/whatever still in their name. I guess it helps get them over the hump.

[DrPop]

Interesting. I wondered if that was part of the deal. Well, wouldn't be too hard to have that here - like JohnDoe.USANavy [SETI.USA]. For one sub team's example.

[Bok]

Interesting. I wondered if that was part of the deal. Well, wouldn't be too hard to have that here - like JohnDoe.USANavy [SETI.USA]. For one sub team's example.

I did try to lobby the BOINC devs to include a new free format field (subteam) which could be exported and picked up in the xml to allow a much better aggregation of subteams, but it got turned down. I have put some thought into doing it semi-manually using a pre-set string within the username much like LAF do, but there are some fairly major obstacles to doing it. Not impossible though.

[Beerdrinker]

I took the liberty of posting a link to our new MB on the SETI.USA facebook page....Lastest news on that front where posted in 2008...