Poll: Team Objective

[trigggl]

Trigggl, I do agree with most of what you said, but I also hope you and everyone else realize why I even made this poll. This team is re-emerging, reinventing itself. If it weren't for some very lofty goals the first time around, this team would't even be in existence.

I mean, sure, we could all just throw our points together haphazardly, while sitting around the camp fire holding hands and singing Kumbaya together...but I'm not so sure that would get us to where want to be...any time soon, at least.

We're in a rebuilding year (NFL reference again). It's going to get ugly, but you always have hope and believe you can do better next year. I'm confident we'll get back in it as long as we keep a positive atmosphere. The bad atmosphere is what's been killing us. I think we're moving in the right direction. Believe it or not, I feel good about where we are right now. I think we're getting a good foundation again.

[Shadowlurker]

If we sing Kumbaya can we has cookies?

[DrPop]

Hey Shadow - if you bring the milk, I'll bring the cookies. You know, that would actually be a lot of fun to have a SETI.USA convention someday.

That's great. At least we're all on the same page. I'm pretty happy we've come this far myself! We even stand to win the 2010 PG Crown at this point! I think it's a good idea to do these every once in a while and just get a feel for what the membership is angling for. As I mentioned in the first post, it's like having a "staff meeting" type poll, not an official change of direction or anything. It's a litmus test to see how we're doing.
So, a big thank you to all who participated in the poll. Shows us where we're at internally.

We have a pretty good group of guys/gals (now that Possum's back! ) for a solid foundation. We will all help to build the walls up from here, and I know in time we'll be rocking the BOINC world again. Shoot...our daily output is looking very nice these days. Way to go team!

[STMahlberg]

I’m glad that DrPop has brought this subject up again and in a poll to see who is even voting; I am with Trigggl with not liking my options, so I voted NO and here is my reply.

I know that is was said about maintaining a positive atmosphere so I will apologize to all of you in advance that this response is probably not going to go along those lines. My intention is not to ruffle feathers but to simply make points that I have tried to make before in other posts; however, they seemed to have fallen on deaf ears.

I posted before in Growing the Team some of my thoughts and actions, I took it upon myself to start emailing members while the old board was still up, in hopes that we could get some of the old members to become active on the new board. I had hoped that it would start conversation and that we could have ideas about how to grow this team. That thread died on November 17th.

I have also posted more of my thoughts about not having enough people here to be able to do much of anything.

DrPop had brought up a topic about emailing people. From what I saw, three of us pretty much volunteered to take on that task despite the issues. The resolve, nothing as far as I’ve seen… I know that I’m not exactly in-the-know but it would be nice to know if someone was picked to take this on, if not, then what I have to say to the administration here is if you are going to be in command… then command!

I see a lot of talk from everyone but I see no action. As of this posting we have 18 people who have bothered to even vote on the Team Objectives and only 180 people on this board. Frankly, I don’t think we have the ability to be #1 in anything.

There has been talk about changing the Team’s name, which I think is a mistake for what my opinion is worth, about keeping up with the times. The Team was founded on being #1 on SETI and that this should be our core purpose, the problem that I see from what others have posted is that SETI keeps reducing their credits in a system whose projects seem to have little rhyme or reason for the credits they give in the first place. And then top that off with SETI@Home doesn’t seem to run efficiently from what I have experienced.

The big question is what if SETI@Home decides to fold-up shop or discontinue credits completely… then what is SETI.USA’s core purpose going to be?

I know the Team was founded on that project but I don’t think we should continue to try and be defined by that project.

I do agree that Team objectives are important but I think growing the size of this Team is more important at the moment and I haven’t heard of any ideas of how to accomplish this task. But if all we’re going to do is talk about it in the forums instead of someone making a decision and taking action, none of this is going to matter.

[DrPop]

Some good thoughts there. Some of which are exactly why I was advocating our main goal be #1 in BOINC and not #1 in SETI any longer, because for starters, SETI@Home doesn't care about "us" or points, or BOINC score, or MMs, or anything. The administration there just doesn't. Let's be grown ups about this and face that. The face of BOINC DC has changed. We can't win anything doing "it" how we used to do it. Secondly, the project is hardly the largest any more, and third, all the "growth" in BOINC teams is happening due to high paying GPU projects, and will continue to do so. Technology is not going to march backward, folks.

I think the name change is moot. We can't do it if we want to keep our 10bil points. Furthermore, I don't see us giving up 3rd place world-wide just to change our name. Not going to happen. Apparently, with the way BOINC stats are structured, we're SETI.USA forever, whether we like it or not, whether SETI@Home even exists or not.
Kind of strange if you ask me...but whatever. I'm just here to help rally this team onward and upward! I don't really care what the name is, I just care about the cool guys and gals that are the team!

As far as recruiting - well, we're adding new members daily. We do need to increase that rate, though. The hard part for me, is that I really can't see how to do what Crunch3r was so good at - going to various project forums and get people to join. I don't have that kind of IT / computer programming knowledge, to "Wow" someone into joining my team because of "help" I gave them. Heck...I don't even know what half of the BOINC projects are even about, let alone how to run them more efficiently! Anyone else have this dilemma?

[Harley]

If we sing Kumbaya can we has cookies?

Forget the cookies. I want smores. Camp fire and smores.... Kumbaya!

[STMahlberg]

Thank you for your response DrPop. You and Maxwell seem to have a knack for calming me down when I'm hopping mad.

I don't know how to do all of that stuff that Crunch3r is able to do either... hell, I needed your help to just get attached to WCG.

With recruiting, I don't know how to do that either. It's a shame that we can't get into contact with everyone that's obviously still crunching for SETI.USA; to be able to have everyone in a unified push would be awesome.

As far as the emailing thing, perhaps instead of saying I'm willing, I should say, I'm going to do that; unless of course someone has a problem with that stance.

[thepossum1]

Big smooch and a hug for you STMahlberg!! Thank you for taking the initiative to do what you've done so far--that is a HUGE help. Frustrating for you though also I'm sure. I know you've gotten few responses compared to the amount of time you've expended--but, as in crunching--every little bit helps!

As DrBob pointed out--we had the same problems before--a portion of the team cares to do nothing other than crunch in anonymity & will never become active here. But again--if we make up in quantity of members, maybe that percentage of active will increase. SO we're still in the same boat but need bigger oars. Perhaps all we can hope for is to keep this core group active & engaged and come together on specific projects from time to time like the challenges to get an extra burst of power when we can. Posting in the fora of projects we DO know and crunch can never hurt us.
Once RL settles down for me, I'll have some time to do that. hahahah I can't help anyone like Crunch3r did either, but I can trawl the fora looking for people to throw an invite to

And Oh Heck Yeah a convention would be cool--we tried to work that out once before too.

[STMahlberg]

Big smooch and a hug for you STMahlberg!! Thank you for taking the initiative to do what you've done so far--that is a HUGE help. Frustrating for you though also I'm sure. I know you've gotten few responses compared to the amount of time you've expended--but, as in crunching--every little bit helps!

Thank you so much for your kind words, they are a big help.

On a side note that every little bit helps, I will have 3 more systems online sometime this weekend; 2 of which I should be able to add a GPU too. I am very excited about that.

[denim]

If we sing Kumbaya can we has cookies?