Grex Publicity Conference

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Grex Publicity Item 19: Beyond Publicity
Entered by danr on Mon May 31 12:43:33 UTC 1993:

Our publicity committee has done a great job in attracting new users.
I don't have the exact figures, but their efforts have resulted in
hundreds of new users in the last year.

What Grex hasn't done so well is keeping these users and turning them
into members.  Why is this?  Well, one reason is probably the
"user-unfriendliness" of the system.  It's hard for someone who's not
a computer jock to figure out how to use.  There are other reasons, of
course.

I think what we need to do is figure out some new ways to get new
users more involved with Grex.  Perhaps one way to do this would be to
hold a new user class that would cover some of the basics of PicoSpan,
e-mail and news use.

Any more ideas?

14 responses total.

#1 of 14 by glenda on Mon May 31 14:42:14 1993:

Misti and I are working on updating a "PicoSpan Pocket Guide" which will be
sent to all new users that leave an actual address in their .plan or .profile.
I just entered it into my machine in ASCII and will upload it here for Misti
to take over prettying it up to get it ready for printing.  She has sent copies
of the old one we are going from and gotten enthustiastic thank you's.  The
only thing that I see missing from basic moving around Pico is something about
hitting the return/enter key after about 70 characters.  She will be over here
this afternoon and we'll look at it together and talk about it so as to make
any simple ASCII changes before I upload it.

#2 of 14 by steve on Mon May 31 15:24:52 1993:

  I'm now convinced that we need to completely revamp newuser, and make
real documentation that people can understand and use.

#3 of 14 by mju on Mon May 31 17:18:55 1993:

I agree.  I'm going to see about loading the newuser source code on
here (I think I have it on a floppy somewhere) so we can take a look
at it.

I also think it would be a good idea for the board to appropriate
real funding for the publicity committee, to come out of the
Grex coffers.  Publicity, as I understand it, has mostly been
running from personal donations directly to Misti; this is fine,
but it's time Grex recognized the usefulness of the service
Misti (and the other publicity folks) are providing, and officially
supported it financially.  (I will probably bring this up at the
next board meeting as well.)

#4 of 14 by mta on Tue Jun 1 19:48:57 1993:

For the record, I stopped sending free cheat sheets after about 30 stamps,
mainly because the expense got beyond me.  The offer is still open to
anyone who gets as far as finding out about it for a cheat sheet in
exchange for a SASE.

I'm also planning on integrating a paper document that goes into some more
detail that we can sell at cost--the online idea is fine as far as it goes,
but if it's here on GREX, it may be hard to get at for *really* new users,
and for most it would be hard to keep it at hand for reference during
the procedure they wanted to perform.

I know that alot has already been written--if you have a section, please
list here or send me mail telling me    1) what you've written, and
2) how I can get a copy of it for inclusion in our doc.

Although the original plan was more ambitious, I think we'd benefit
more by making what we have available immediately and adding to it
as we can than putting it all off until we can "do it right."

Our most valuable resource, IMO, is those users who are not particularly
computer sophistiates.  Those are the people who are logging in once
and leaving discouraged.  This is how we fix that.

#5 of 14 by steve on Tue Jun 1 20:08:22 1993:

   Quite right about the new users!

#6 of 14 by jared on Wed Jun 2 01:53:26 1993:

Maybe we need something like the menu shell on m-net.
(But a lot smarter.  That thing is VERY stupid).

#7 of 14 by tsty on Thu Jun 3 17:43:48 1993:

Speaking of newuser, someone logged in as    bye  and then had to send
gripe mail about not being able to get past the login/passwd prompt.
  
Hmmmmmmm, wonder why .............    We might want to have something
in the hello message either about how to bye/hangup or about +not+ using
either of those character strings as a loginid ....

#8 of 14 by kentn on Fri Jun 4 22:31:26 1993:

Isn't it possible to disallow some loginids?  We already disallow
as new logininds, the ids of people already using them.  Can't 'bye'
'exit' et al. be set to give an error message if anyone tries to use
them from newuser?

#9 of 14 by steve on Fri Jun 4 22:37:14 1993:

   It won't work to use any id that already exists in the /etc/passwd
file.  If you give such a name newuser will complain and ask you
again for an ID.

#10 of 14 by davel on Fri Jun 4 23:20:20 1993:

Well, aren't bye, exit, hangup, etc. in the password file?  How did these
new users come up with the original complaint?

#11 of 14 by danr on Sat Jun 5 02:41:43 1993:

Not that I haven't been known to drift in my time, but I think this
is getting a little too far off topic.  :)

Aren't there any other comments on my original ideas?

#12 of 14 by steve on Sat Jun 5 03:24:43 1993:

   Sorry Dan!  It's easy dropping into the drift trap.

   Yes, we need to do fund raisers.  I need to read this item again
so I can intelligently respond.  Lots going on in my head lately.

#13 of 14 by popcorn on Sat Jun 5 23:20:59 1993:

This response has been erased.

#14 of 14 by tsty on Sun Jun 6 05:40:42 1993:

Ahhh, so that's how the mail came from loginid bye. interesting. 
  
If I make the opportunity (he said) I'll check out the.mail.system
for added verbosity ...

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