OpenWetWare:Steering committee/Suggestions

Finances

• To reduce your funds to meet the actual budget, you may be able to halve the UROP funding (there are lots of outside sources for funding and lots of those young kids would be happy to do things for credit/free). I would also consider reducing the speaker funding (by half?). Who do you think you would like ot invite? Is there anyone local (so you can save cash) or who is coming to town for another reason (so you can split the costs)? Also, consider the likelihood of attendance from the community here. Would enough people be interested to go to something every month? There are so many seminars going on that I fear yours will get lost in the fray if there are too many. You definitely don't want to be in the situation where you invite someone to speak and no one goes to the talk. Timing and advertising will be key to avoid those issues. That said, it may be a good idea to establish a pattern of talks (the open science talk is the second Tuesday of every month). You may want to talk to the people who have the science education seminars at MIT. Those seem to be somewhat infrequent, but they may be dealing with budget issues like you are. Also, are you realistically going to send someone to a meeting solely to promote OWW? This may be true for a wiki-type meeting, but probably not for most of the scientific ones. Even if you did, the best way to advertise would be to have a booth, which will be quite expensive. Maybe you have some other vision for how this would go, but this could be a good place to cut the budget.--Kathleen 22:51, 5 January 2006 (EST)

Community Development/Advertising

• I think one of your best resources for recruiting other people will be word of mouth (I tell 2 friends, you tell 2 friends, they tell 2 friends, etc.) since the scientific community is so small. That said, it would be really great if there were a small "packet" available to send these people (via email, of course) that could introduce them to the concept and hopefully get them excited about it. This could come in the form of an invitation letter that could be personalized by current OWW users (avoid mass emails!!!). II think the FAQ page is a good start.