[Marketing] Contacting entities that registered themselves in the SPD

[Arnulf Christl]

On Sat, February 2, 2008 18:24, Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> Arnulf Christl (OSGeo) wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>> I have done some spot checks in the SPD and noticed that quite a few
>> entries do not link back to OSGeo or any of OSGeo's projects. In some
>> cases the linked web sites do not even mention Open Source.
>>
>> This is a lost marketing potential on one hand and does not reflect our
>>  philosophy (to promote Open Source geospatial). We could have a lot
>> more visibility if more sites would link back to OSGeo and its projects.
>>
>>
>> Therefore I suggest that Marketing contacts companies and individuals
>> who have registered themselves in the SPD once or in a regular interval
>> (twice
>> a year?) and explains these issues. In some cases I would also feel
>> inclined to contact them personally. For this I would need to have
>> access to the contact email address given in the registry.
>>
>> What do you think, does this effort make sense? If yes I will ask SAC
>> how to get the email addresses whilst assuring privacy.
>
> Arnulf,
>
>
> I agree we need a feedback loop.  We need to be able to contact SPD entry
>  owners when their entries is apparently not following our guidelines.
> We
> might also want to reach out to them for educational purposes and to
> encourage them to better describe their foss4g related services though I'm
> somewhat less enthusiastic about that.
>
> Each SPD entry is administered and related to an OSGeo LDAP account which
> in turn has an email address and name associated with it.
>
> Currently there is no easy way to find out what OSGeo userid is
> associated with an SPD entry.  It is in the mysql database used for the
> SPD but not
> accessable on the web as far as I know.  My thinking had been that if
> someone is logged into Drupal with an administrative account (any account
> in the "administrators" group in LDAP) there should be an extra column in
> the SPD tables showing the associated userid.
>
>
> I would then modify the form at
>
>
> http://www.osgeo.org/cgi-bin/ldap_web_search.py
>
>
> So that it would also show additional information if you are logged in
> with an admin account - notably email address.
>
> Reviewing your email, I can see it is much more about organizational
> outreach than it is about SPD validation.  But I think the mechanism
> described can support both sorts of efforts.
>
> Best regards,

Organizational outreach is a good term to describe the first bit. We could
consider subscribing people who add themselves to the SPD to a low level
announce list. This list could then be used to inform registered parties
about updates to SPD functionality, new projects to add, changes in policy
etc.

Some low level SPD validation should also be done. All entries should have
an expiry date (~3, 6 or 12 months after submission, last update) after
which the entry is not displayed any more. People should be notified (this
involves contacting people either directly or through the mailing list) in
advance that their expiry date is coming closer. If people want to renew
their entry they need to log in and update the expiry date. This could by
automated some more by providing a link that does this. But maybe we would
even *want* people to log in every now and then so that we know that there
is at least a minimal effort on behalf of submitting individuals to keep
things up to date.

Marketing has an interest in promoting the SPD as a premium tool and not
as yet another unmaintained dump. It is good that we already have
generated quite a lot of interest now we should make sure that it stays
useful to people and does not become arbitrary.

Best regards,

-- 
Arnulf Christl
http://www.wheregroup.com