Recruiting

TODO: Merge with something related to publicity

This page documents ideas to improve the club's recruiting and retention abilities for the 2017-2018 year. (AKA making people want to be in VTLUUG)

Beginning of Year

While we do a good job at Gobblerfest every year, a lot of freshmen have joined all the clubs they are able to balance before then.

Idea: Have a new member-oriented meeting around the end of the first week of school.
- Make it less about club business (separate meeting?) and more like a normal VTLUUG meeting, with news, a talk, and open discussion at the end, with a signup sheet passed around and IRC info given as well.
- Advertise it on the major-specific listservs, like cs-interest and similar. People actually read these. Remember the turnout at the facebook talk that was advertised through that channel? We managed to get about 50 new people for that meeting.
Recruit at freshmen ENGE/CS/ECE classes
Submit WUVT PSAs - echarlie can help

Last year's meeting time and place could have been more optimal.

The time often conflicted with larger clubs with similar interests (cybersecurity, hackers@vt)
A lot of freshmen don't know where durham hall is, or if they do, they'll decide it's too far away. Put meetings in torg, to be close to the dorms and to food.
- Big rooms on MCB first floor or the rooms in LAV might be good as well
Work with/around csec in particular. The setup from 2015-2016 was good where we were next to them, and had our meeting ~15 minutes after they ended. Last year, we were either scheduled on top of them or with no time in between, while in a different building.

The posters definitely are noticed around campus; keep that up.

We could provide a link/qr code to a wiki page showing how to get on our IRC channel for questions/comments/concerns.
Also, emphasize on the poster/listserv posting if any that you don't have to come solely to install linux; it's a social event too. I know at least a few people (non-members) think that it's only for installing linux, and that the event isn't for you if you aren't ready to install linux or already have it.
Advertise in all the classes that require Linux (e.g. CS 2505/2506, ECE 2524, etc.)
WUVT PSAs