[plug] What would encourage membership of PLUG?

[Scott Middleton]

I probably send 3 or 4 people per month to PLUG.

My suggestions based upon encouraging new members.
1. remember potential new members are also probably new to Linux. So promote
FREE tech support.
2. Talks don't have to be high level.
3. This sounds silly but so many ask for a phone number. Maybe someone with
VoIP can offer some recorded information service via phone.
4. Maybe easier access to the mailing list. Many newbies may find it
difficult to subscribe or they don't subscribe at all. Maybe a forum
instead. Mailing lists are a bit aged nowadays.

Anyway these observations are based upon the people that ring me weekly and
ask for free tech support.




On 18 February 2010 09:31, Tim White <weirdit at gmail.com> wrote:

> My wife and I were talking about PLUG after our failed AGM last week. She
> wanted to know what are the benefits of joining PLUG and why would anyone
> bother?
> Well, here is what the website says.
>
> *Benefits of joining:*
>
>   * Being a PLUG member entitles you to borrow CDs and books from the
>     PLUG library <http://www.plug.org.au/resources/library>.
>   * You get an account on the club's computers (kettle.plug.org.au and
>     spark.plug.org.au), including web space for your own web pages and
>     an e-mail address @plug.org.au. (See our terms and conditions
>     <http://www.plug.org.au/resources/shell-account> for shell access.)
>   * Free coffee (or other drink) with a kebab at Plaka Café in
>     Northbridge.
>   * PLUG members get a 10% discount at Linux IT
>     <http://www.linuxit.com.au/>.
>   * You also get spiffy card with a penguin on it.
>
>
> So my question is, what more could we offer as a group, for paid members,
> that would encourage membership? It's not expensive, a year's membership
> costs $10 (full membership) or $5 (concession). So what would stop people
> from being paid members?
>
> On a technical side of things, I know with the new server, when it is
> running, we hope to be running Xen, so we can have a number of Virtual
> Machines available for people to play with. Is this something that would be
> attractive to members? On the webserver currently, for less than a $1 a
> month, you get more hosting space than most cheap hosts give you for $10 a
> month. (Having said that, it's not an invitation to start hosting large
> websites with lots of traffic, as all our traffic is kindly donated to us
> and we wouldn't want to cost our host large amounts in traffic, but I think
> WAIX traffic is generally acceptable if larger quantities than non-WAIX).
>
> Anyway, I just thought I'd put this out to the sleeping list, and encourage
> some discussion about it.
>
> What would you want PLUG to offer paid members, that would encourage your
> membership?
>
> Thanks
>
> Tim
> p.s. I would love it if someone could check about the discounts we
> advertise that you can get, with Plaka and Linux IT, to see if we can still
> get them. Also, any other business owners/managers that want to add a
> discount, please do!
> _______________________________________________
> PLUG discussion list: plug at plug.org.au
> http://www.plug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/plug
> Committee e-mail: committee at plug.linux.org.au
>



-- 
Scott Middleton
Managing Director
Linux Consultants Pty Ltd t/as AssureTek
Email - Scott at assuretek.com.au
Phone - 1300 551 696
Mobile - 0400 212 724
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