Re: getting new members

[Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>]

--- Arafat Medini <lumina at silverpen dot de> wrote:
> I really have a very simple idea, which I myself will do:
> 
> contact EVERY arabic site related to linux and ask them about offering
> us the possibility to post an announcement, make some pub with a banner
> or a thread in their forum to ask ppl directly to help us. Believe me I
> don't know how good this is OR if it was done before. But as a very
> simple thing everyone can do this and so it can be done by the core
> members. And as said this was MY intention to recruit new ppl as well so
> that you don't think I am asking for things I'll not do...
>
> so what do you think?

Sounds great - do post a list of the sites you find and let's divide-up
the work and start posting.  We also had a banner (that was on l4a (that's
linux4arab in short :-)) which we could use (the banner needs to be
imported to our gallery !!).

Are there others out there that are good at banner creating ?
 
> Second would be bounty hunting, offer some money on very crucial
> projects, here as core you know better then me what is crucial and
> what's not. And how much to offer and if some ppl want to like the Saudi
> ppl who wanted to make some ppl work under money... I was never against
> them HELPING us.

We are continuing to talk to KACST about their offer and will await
an answer from them.  In terms of a bounty, once we have an account
setup and donations come in, we can allot a percentage of what is
in the account to that purpose - but this is a bit far off'ish at
the moment as we don't have much in terms of donations, etc.

BTW: our account and all monetary records will be completely and fully
     open to the public (for scrutiny, accountability, etc).

> Or also in regard to money if a site doesn't want to show a banner we
> say to them ok here is some money and show our banner...

I'd rather we not advertise that way, but your point is noted.  I continue
to think its not due to lack of advertising, but possibly due to lack
of knowing and/or lack of motivation that people show and leave - don't
know really.  Maybe people are overwhelmed or ...

> But as a forth and maybe very "exotic" idea, we need smart concepts for
> eg: Ossama is an informatic teacher he can for eg. intreduce his
> students to linux and then ask them to work on one of our projects to
> get better marks or bonus marks this is good for them to get a higher
> education horizon and good for us as they will do something and maybe
> stay with us... But this is very exotic as said this is not part of the
> two I mentioned above.

This was the very first thing I tried to do.  I contacted close to 300
professors in various Arabic universities (after spending countless hours
on the net to get their emails, etc) to invite them to join (or even
look into) our effort.  I suggested they do some linux-centric projects,
etc and spelled out the virtues of linux and open source.  Out of the
300 mails, I got 3 replies - 2 said "very nice, keep at it" and one was
"I am interested, tell me and show me more".  As dismal as the attempt
was, I continue to believe that in order for the revolution to happen
it will have to take hold of university students and cement itself there.

Again, any ideas on how to push the university side of things to better
results ?

Salam.

 - Nadim


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