promote Gratipay users during PyCon

[chadwhitacre]

Over on #111, @chrisdev proposed the idea of using the Gratipay booth/presence at PyCon to cross-promote Gratipay users within the Python community. We're looking specifically for project users, because when an open-source project is really successful, that translates into potential opportunities for many individuals, including and especially non-rock-stars.

The purpose of this ticket is to brainstorm and recruit and plan with potential partner projects for this PyCon cross-promotion.

So ... is this you? Is your project interested in partnering with us on this? :-)

[chrisdev]

Targets: https://gratipay.com/readthedocs/ https://gratipay.com/bitprophet/ - Fabric https://gratipay.com/djangogirls/ - https://gratipay.com/mitsuhiko/ - Flask https://gratipay.com/zzzeek/ - SQLAlchemy https://gratipay.com/CallbackWomen/ I'm looking for Python teams. But some of these important projects are represented by single individuals on Gratipay.

[chadwhitacre]

@chrisdev In that case we should coach them through configuring their team/project on Gratipay. Many of these were set up years ago when we were focused much more heavily on individuals.

[chadwhitacre]

https://gratipay.com/pyladiessf/ https://gratipay.com/BotBotme/

[chrisdev]

@whit537 :+1: Nice choices. Did not know that they were there (discovery :frowning: )

[chrisdev]

In that case we should coach them through configuring their team/project on Gratipay. Many of these were set up years ago when we were focused much more heavily on individuals.

• We will reach out to them at Pycon.
• Maybe we need to do a blog post extolling the virtues of teams.
• Drip email campaign (email is not just for bad news ! )

[chadwhitacre]

https://twitter.com/Gratipay/status/580091885198381057

[chrisdev]

Do we need a blog post about this? Do we email folks also

[chadwhitacre]

Do we email folks also

Yes.

[chadwhitacre]

https://gratipay.com/djangogirls/ https://twitter.com/olasitarska/status/556859365958107136

[chrisdev]

Ok I noticed they joined about 2 weeks ago. Claims that they have guidelines we have them too.

[chadwhitacre]

Ok I noticed they joined about 2 weeks ago.

They joined in late December, a few weeks before the tweet I linked.

[chrisdev]

Ok https://www.patreon.com/djangogirls

[chadwhitacre]

You should talk to @SaltStackInc! Super popular project with a lot of awesome contributors.

https://twitter.com/failvarez/status/580148236419133440

[chrisdev]

@whit537 any positive responses to this?

[chadwhitacre]

Salt doesn't really have a need for funding. Django Girls appears to be going with Patreon, though they still have a Gratipay account so I suppose we could email them. CallbackWomen appears to be active on Gratipay, but isn't tagged Python (they're tagged Ruby).

[chrisdev]

Wondering if someone like pydanny/audrey meets our criteria? They're not a team but CookieCutter alone has 60 contributors. Maybe we could encourage them to formalise themselves as a team?

[chadwhitacre]

I can't bring myself to email Ola and Ola, because of https://twitter.com/olasitarska/status/556859365958107136. Sorry. :-(

[chadwhitacre]

@chrisdev I need to let you or someone else be the one to reach out to people in the Python community. :-(

[chrisdev]

@whit53 i'll can with some rejection in my life :smile: I can use @citruspi 's email template in #111 But do I send the emails under my own email address or the git marketing team or ???

[citruspi]

@chrisdev if you wanted to split it 50/50 so you don't have to deal with as much possible rejection and work, I'd be happy to email people also. :wink:

[chrisdev]

@citruspi don't really mind the rejection but I like the idea of a 50/50 split. On a physical letter we could both sign. Wish there was something similar for email

[citruspi]

@chrisdev We could both sign the email with our GPG key.

[chadwhitacre]

I would say keep it simple. You can cc: each other and I think that'll be enough. Let's review @citruspi's template:

Hey {{ user }},

Gratipay appreciates the awesome work you do for the Python community.

We're planning on having a special promotion at PyCon 2015 to help highlight people and teams who do awesome work and to help them get more funding using Gratipay.

We've selected five different people and teams to take part in the promotion, and you're one of them!

As part of the promotion, we will be encouraging people who visit the Gratipay booth to give to people and teams who do awesome, specifically you. We will also provide a dashboard at our booth which will highlight your project and and the progress that has been made towards achieving your funding goal.

By the end of the conference we would like to make sure that you have reached 100% of your funding goal.

Let us know if you're interested in partnering with us in the promotion.

• Gratipay

[chadwhitacre]

A couple tweaks:

• You can and should say that you're with Gratipay, but we want to use a personal voice and sign it with your name. "Hey! I'll be representing Gratipay at PyCon ...," etc.
• Let's present this as an open invitation, not an exclusive "we've selected"
• Let's underpromise and overdeliver. Let's not promise anything about a dashboard or percentage of funding. If those happen great, but they're non-essential.
• Let's end with a direct yes/no question instead of an open-ended "let us know."
• Let's keep the "ask" simple: "May we use you as an example of a project to support on Gratipay?"
• Let's focus on projects as much as we can (instead of individuals).

@citruspi Want to write a revision?

[chrisdev]

Agree with the focus on projects but sometimes the projects are represented on Gratipay as individuals. So I would target mitsuhiko buy not Kenneth Reitz for example. Although, now that I've written this I'm not so sure anymore :disappointed:

[chadwhitacre]

https://gratipay.com/PycodersWeekly/

cc: @myusuf3

[chrisdev]

@citruspi @whit537 https://gratipay.com/julython/

[chrisdev]

Vim python mode https://gratipay.com/klen/

[myusuf3]

@whit537 thanks! We can do whatever formalization you guys need us to do. We are fairly big community that reads the newsletter ~20K. cc: @chrisdev

[chrisdev]

@myusuf3 :+1: I'm a subscriber to the newsletter its a must read for me

[myusuf3]

:100:

[citruspi]

@whit537 @chrisdev

Revised edition

---

Hey {{ project }},

I'm {{ name }} and I'll be representing Gratipay at PyCon 2015.

Gratipay appreciates the great work you do for the Python community.

We're planning a special promotion at PyCon 2015 to help highlight projects that benefit the community. We're inviting projects who are interested in promoting themselves through Gratipay to work with us to accomplish this.

As part of the promotion, we will be encouraging people who visit the Gratipay booth to give to these projects.

Would you be interested in being highlighted as part of the promotion?

- {{ name }}

[chadwhitacre]

@citruspi :shipit:

[chadwhitacre]

https://twitter.com/Gratipay/status/582658908885413888

[chrisdev]

@whit537 @citruspi I think we ready to send out some email :smile_cat: How do we propose to proceed?

[citruspi]

@chrisdev @whit537

Are we going to use our personal email accounts? Or is there a Gratipay marketing email account that @chrisdev and I should send them from?

[gravyboat]

Hey @whit537 this is failvarez from twitter (guy who posted about Salt). While the organization itself doesn't need funding, we have a group here: https://gratipay.com/for/saltstack/ that consists of both members of the open source community that just work on the project, as well as those who work for the company. Last time I checked no one from our organization was receiving any sort of donation for their Salt contributions.

When you compare the number of Gratipay group members versus the contributors to the main Salt repo, the ratio is huge. This is also surprising considering Salt is one of the most active projects on all of GitHub, yet even our #2 contributor (s0undt3ch, 4692 commits, 245,000 lines of code) makes $0.00 on Gratipay. There is a big disconnect between donating to people who contribute to such a popular project, and people actually part of the group who are also working on the project. While the organization itself is well funded, the open source contributors don't receive anything.

[chadwhitacre]

While the organization itself is well funded, the open source contributors don't receive anything.

Thanks for jumping in @gravyboat. That definitely sounds like a potential partnership. I think it falls outside the scope of what makes sense for PyCon, because our primary goal is to introduce Pythonistas to Gratipay by suggesting projects they could fund. Can we move that convo to #165?

[thatch45]

@whit537 I never have followed up with you, I really should have. Timing for us right now is iffy, we are just very swamped. I will try to find some time to get more involved with you guys!

[chadwhitacre]

No worries, @thatch45. Maybe @chrisdev @citruspi will have a chance to catch up with you at PyCon. :-)

[chadwhitacre]

I punched another 150 pennies, so I have 350 ready to send. Bank tomorrow.

[citruspi]

@chrisdev @whit537 Have we started emailing Gratipay users yet?

[chrisdev]

@whit537 @citruspi Was wondering about this. Do we have a list of emails?

[citruspi]

@whit537 @chrisdev PyCon is in two days. We really need to get started on this.

[chrisdev]

@citruspi, @whit537 how do we progress this?

[citruspi]

@whit537 @chrisdev So, PyCon is tomorrow...

[chadwhitacre]

!m @citruspi @chrisdev et al.

[webmaven]

Results?