For Discussion at AGM: How can IOFFL increase membership?

damien

While there are many things IrelandOffline should be discussing, two which I feel are important are getting new members and motivating the people we have.

Of the almost 2000 people on our membership list, only 40 or so have come forward to volunteer their time, and of that list of 40 perhaps only 12-15 partake in any work we've asked our members to do. Of that 2000, only a very small percentage are going to turn up at the AGM.

Last July when the new Committee came on board we stared from scratch. All we inherited was a mailing list, a forum and a name. Over the past 12 months we built up relationships with all the telcos, Govt bodies and media while at the same time figuring out what areas needed our attention and what we needed to highlight to the public and the Govt.

While the IrelandOffline organisation has been around for a while and has a good reputation, the current IrelandOffline is really just over a year old. As things are starting to click into place and we are honing our skills we need to start concentrating on more administrative things which we didn't have the time and resources to do in the past 12 months. Things like having a bank account, working on the website, and more importantly working with the members to have them work with us more.

If we have time at the AGM I'd like to have a discussion with everyone, a brainstorm of sorts, on how IrelandOffline can get new members and more people motivated to make a change.

For example, what should we be doing to increase membership so that we have 4000 or even 5000 members by this time next year? How can we get 200 of them to be active volunteers who take on some of the massive workload the Committee has? We had 1400 people fill in our survey, how do we get these people interested in getting broadband for all?

TimTim

Three things that would encourage people: fame, money, women.

I think the odds of that are quite slim but you can gain notoriety in eircom if you attach your name to enough posts slating them Or even a picture in phil nolan's office... on his dartboard...

But if IrelandOffline started fresh a year ago why did you inherit the bulk from the old committee, cull the mailing lists and get people to sign up again if they are interested. That should give you a list of x amount of people who actually care enough to re-add themselves. Then target them for the work load, there is no point of having a giant mailing list if nobody reads the releases on them.

I'm out of ideas for the moment but that would be a start.

AndrewMc

Looking around the IrelandOffline website and wiki, I couldn't find an obvious list of stuff that needs doing. Something I've seen before are wiki pages listing tasks or goals, where anyone can quickly see what jobs there are, an approximate difficulty, who (if anybody) has started work on them, and their current status.

It encourages people because rather than blindly volunteering (and not knowing what they're getting themselves into) they can review the list and see that not everything is rocket science. From the committee point of view, it'd be easy to keep updated, and should work as a nice reference if a job needs regular redoing (like reading foreign-language websites, etc).

damien

Good points TimTim and Andrew! Keep em coming.

Blaster99

I contribute on occasion but I'm not a member. Why should I be a member?

I'm sure it's more difficult get members or contributors because a lot of the most urgent problems have been solved for most people. I'm sure at the membership peak, there was no broadband available to the vast majority of people.

Is there any particular point in increasing the number of members, other than to increase the number of volunteers or contributors?

I also think there's a potential problem with IOFFL as far as the masses go and I don't think there's a good or easy solution to it either. That is that IOFFL doesn't actually do anything concrete for anybody. IOFFL basically produces press releases that complain about the state of various things, but if I'm Joe Soap with a problem, what relevance does IOFFL have for me? It's quite possible that you guys help a lot of people, but it's not immediately obvious from press releases or otherwise, that IOFFL does this. I can understand why this is not publicised, as IOFFL doesn't have the resources to chase things up for people. It's possibly a catch 22.

I've nurtured a thought/suggestion, which is to track USO/FIA issues. Ideally without doing a lot of work, but it would be useful, I think at least, to allow people to register the fact that their phone line does not meet the minimum requirements or that they can't get a phone line at all. IOFFL can then issue reports to ComReg and media stating that "100 people have been waiting for a phone line for more than 6 months, what's the story", type of stuff. This stuff can be automated and allows IOFFL to gather statistics without relying on ComReg's usual "commercial sensitivity" bollocks.

Another thing I think would be useful is an ISP speed tracker. I've suggested this before, but it essence it would be a speed checker that also stores the result so people can see the actual speeds gotten from various ISP's. This would cut out a lot of uncertainty when people look around for ISP's and it would draw traffic and it would put IOFFL in people's minds as an organisation that does something concrete for people.

And yes, I'm willing to put in some amount of time to help out with these things if they're considered useful.

damien

Nice one Blaster99. We have a few plans for our new site: BroadbandForAll.ie, one of which is a register of sorts, though we have not really discussed this in public because it is still vapourware.

EDIT: Sorry, should have said the USO/FIA tracker is good, along with the speed checker.

TimTim

I do really like the idea of a speed tracker. The only issue is what can we call a definitive result? Do we take irishisptest at face value and yet despite others get better results of adslguide.org

Personally I think there needs to be an independant company involved in hosting this speed test who peer directly at INEX. Thats the really only definitve way of showing attenable within Ireland. Getting this done would be a mammoth task I believe. I see the issue as following: Blacknight host it. Blacknight don't peer directly at INEX but use COLT for backhaul in turn who peer with INEX (The peering matrix is wacked atm, not exactly sure about who peers with who)

If any one of those links is slow or congested its going to affect your result. The only way you can really get some sort of a result is a box directly plugged into INEX. Which is never going to happen unless we pay/drug/get drunk/sleep with/etc a member of INEX and procure funds for a server. (Or will a old 800Mhz box do at the end of my bed?)

And if an ISP hosts it, it will show you the speed within their internal network which can't be held with total face value either because its within their network and will not reflect internet conditions.

The only viable alternative I can think of is someone outside Ireland host it as it will you a pretty damn good idea of what your ISP/connection is capable of. I can loan you some disk space on my dedicated server hosted in one of The Planets Dallas, TX data centre...

Just a thought.

Edit: And using an average figure from ist could just work as well. I can be far too nerdy at times.

jwt

Diskspace isn't the issue bandwidth is.

You would need to use a large file to even out the bumps say 1 Mb.

If 500 people test 20 twenty times then you are looking at serious bandwidth in total not to mention a fat enough pipe on the server end to handle at least say 20 users at once.

I have some servers sitting on 300 Gb per month and while I'm confident that they would handle large numbers of users at once doing speed tests, I couldn't guarantee that you would get the same result every time depending on the loads on the server at that moment in time.

That said there are some neat scripts out there for speed tests.

John

dahamsta

No offense intended to anyone here, but won't IrelandOffline have more important things to be doing? There's already a tracker out there, not a perfect one but one that's sufficient for people's needs. If it needs to be improved, I've found the operator very receptive to feedback.

adam

TimTim

dahamsta wrote:

No offense intended to anyone here, but won't IrelandOffline have more important things to be doing?

Probably true but I don't think the entire IO volunteers should be aim at one thing. Except ASAI complaints etc Have the work spread out over different project so everyone feels like they are an intergal part of this orginisation.

But everyone has their own part of IO they'd contribute to, since this would be in my area, this could be my little contribution and who ever else joins in.

Too many chefs spoil the broth adam.

Edit: The server I have is on a 100Mb pipe with unlimited bandwith.

cgarvey

I'm with Adam .. I think that's a waste of time. No matter how much effort is put into it, the results are completely worthless anyway (you can't seriously go to IBB and say "37% of our users are getting sub-standard speeds, can you do something about it.. there's too many variables involved, and there's nothing authoritative about those figures).. Researching DSL failure rates, and more hard facts would be a better spend of time, IMO. I'm sure the committee would have lots of things they'd like done too.

.cg

jwt

True, but if someone wants to do something that we dont feel is worthwhile it doesn't mean the person cant go off and do it anyway.

I'd rather have a 20 people doing something, even it isn't a priority on our agenda than have no one doing anything on our agenda. (if you get what I mean)

However, said persons should note that just because they've gone off and poured their heart, time and effort into a project they feel is worthwhile, doesn't mean the committee has any burden on them to accept, endorse or support the project.

And the straight answer as to whether this is a worthwhile project that the committee will run with? No one knows. (Some may guess )So either put it forward at the AGM, or mail to info@irelandoffline.org.

After the AGM the new committee members can vote/argue/whatever but until THEY say it a non runner, everyone elses opinion is just that, just an opinion.

No such thing as a stupid question?

John

dahamsta

A very sensible response JWT. What happened?

jwt

i get these blinding flashes of inspiration every now and then "Flowers for Algernon"* Syndrome I guess.


John

a Book by Daniel Keyes better known as 1968 film "Charly"

dahamsta

Damien must be rubbing off on you. So to speak.

I have that book, thought it was great, brilliantly written. Couldn't see it translating well to film though.

adam

jwt

1968 version was best, 2000 version was cr*p

The "Lawn Mower Man" was also loosely based on it.

Superb book.


John

cgarvey

Agreed if they want to, do it, regardless of what I think.. but it's a question of if you're offering to do something, it'd be much more valued if you did something from this list, rather than what you thought was valuable.

Like I say, I can't see any value in the speed check for IoffL.. or very very little at least.

/me hopes the picture of Damien rubbing off you stays gone from my brain forever.

DonegalMan

dahamsta wrote:

No offense intended to anyone here, but won't IrelandOffline have more important things to be doing?

That depends on how many people are doing things. I agree it is well down the list of priorities but it's back to Damien's point that the more people who get actively involved, the more things *could* be done.

I also think there's a point here that if someone doesn't want to be a committee member or get involved in general IOFFL affairs, but they have a personal interest in doing something specific that could be useful to IOFFL without distracting attention from more important issues, then the committee should and will encourage that.

That sort of thing would fit in very nicely with Damien's concept of 'volunteers'.

damien

dahamsta wrote:

Damien must be rubbing off on you. So to speak.

This is the comment everyone refused to tell me about at the AGM then?

TimTim

damien.m wrote:

This is the comment everyone refused to tell me about at the AGM then?

Which went quite well if I may add.

We're like the Illuminati for Broadband in Ireland. Except we plot in pubs.

jwt

TimTim wrote:

Which went quite well if I may add.

We're like the Illuminati for Broadband in Ireland. Except we plot in pubs.

It went very well, thank you to everyone that attended, for the constructive comments and proposals, and super thanks to all who put their hand in their pocket to contribute towards the cost of the room. (well worth the cost, in particular the automated lights, curtains and overhead projector arrangement, )

The new committee will be announced forthwith, as will the agreed proposals and objectives for the coming year.

John

TimTim

jwt wrote:

(well worth the cost, in particular the automated lights, curtains and overhead projector arrangement, )

You had far too much fun playing with the controls.