Impact at GNOME

These are notes from our work during the Engagement BoF at GUADEC 2019. Original etherpad here: https://etherpad.gnome.org/p/Impact_at_GNOME_2019

Meeting on Aug 26, 2019

Attendees:

• Deb Nicholson - deb@sfconservancy.org

• Molly de Blanc
• Nuritzi Sanchez
• Rosanna Yuen

Working Group

• Molly
• Rosanna
• Nuritzi
• Deb as an advisor

[Total] Brainstorm / Warm Up Exercise:

• how many people transitioning from proprietary software to open source software
• people served by accessibility work
• grants for journalists in vulnerable environments
• bringing people fom marginalize language groups into the digital age. Underserved language groups.
• GNOME community diversity
  • Gender, race, national origin, technical and class background, age

Impact Categories

WHY -- why are we measuring? What areas do we want to measure? And why are they important? What are our goals here?

• Capacity Building
  • Fundraising, Engagement, Outreach
    • there are some specific grants we can qualify for
    • Tell a good fundraising story for FOG's
    • add advisory board members
    • recruit new contributors and users
    • ensuring that local groups are serving GNOME's mission
• Retention and Happiness
  • Better understand the community to better serve them
  • Attract new talent by providing immediately graspabale success story
  • Resource allocation -- areas where the project needs support
  • Confidence that programs are effective feeds enthusiasm, confidence in the project that their time spent is worthwhile and making an impact
    • strengthen bonds with local groups
• Organizational Maturity
  • Mission success
  • Ascertain the success of various programs. Accountability, prioritization
  • Clear picture for your budget
  • Helps you attract people from organized non-profits / best talent, etc
  • Brand recognition

Prioritized Categories

• Metrics for a good fundraising story
  • counting and quantifying users and contributors
  • gender parity
  • global impact
  • competitive advantage areas: accessibility and privacy
  • NPS: Net Promoter Score
  • Ecosystem health (industry and partner adoption)
• Ensuring outreach and engagement efforts are effective
  • Ensuring that local groups are serving GNOME's mission
  • Event attendance and impact
  • Booth effectiveness
  • Number of people following our official outreach channels
    • Foundation-announce
    • gnome.org/news
    • engagement blog
    • social media: twitter, facebook, mastadon, reddit
  • Understanding our contributor funnel
  • Increase number of contributors
    • Foundation members

    • GitLab stats

    • Measure users
    • Partners (distros)

Deep Dive On

Event attendance

• Booths organized by staff and volunteers (maybe same, maybe different?)
  • cost: financial, staff time, and volunteer time
  • guesstimate of visitors
  • number of follow-ups with booth staff (?)
  • social media mentions
  • engagement strategies (what are the things that work best?)
  • SWAG sold and given, country specific (also useful for understanding our identity appeal)
  • FOG sign-ups, mailing list sign-ups
• GNOME conferences
  • social media mentions / press generated
    • ACTION: @Molly to create a wiki page for GUADEC 2019 where we can keep track of how many articles we had
• Community organized small events:
  • attendance - how many are new?
  • NPS - did people enjoy the event?
  • funnel - do people stick around or come back?
    • self-identification of first time, newcomer, and regular (later: how do you measure when someone is no longer a newcomer?)
  • Email or contact info captured
  • social media mentions / press generated
  • demographics of attendees
• hackfests

• Understanding GNOME community

GNOME Foundation Goals

1. Sustainable Project & Foundation

• sustain and increase funding levels
• increase number of contributors
• create and sustain infrastructure for Foundation Staff

2. Increased User Base

• Foster a vibrant Linux desktop
• Uphold reputation as the most accessible desktop
• Support improving the basic function of a desktop for everyone

3. Wider Awareness Through Leadership

• Develop better marketing and outreach tactics
• Become an exemplary FOSS community
• Evaluate and adopt new technologies to stay competitive with proprietary desktops

Random Ideas Generated

• Workshop for women and their friends (friend can be a man)