What are the volunteer issues? * user motivation * interested in science * VC as a game: stats, etc * general altrusim * retention levels for various groups/motivations? * esp in context of multi-project services * treat each user category separately? * different services/types of services for each group * science types: need forums, techie * or: can they be combined synergistically? * trickle down summaries of science * tech support * stats: mark's market research * % of people who would take action in support of charity much larger than % of people who would take action in support of science? * relative merits of single-app projects vs multi-app aggregators like WCG, ibercivis, etc. * absence of science discussions in multi-app projects * do people know what they are doing? * retention? * it's not all free * volunteers are not working for free: they get paid in "results" -- scientific results, stats, social factors. * everything is financed: distribution of financing in volunteer computing * outreach: think of it as a grant application, submitted to tens of thousands of reviewers what is the value to project scientists of the user community * additional labor (distributed thinking) * value of outreach: public education (ex malaria awareness) what to do * science * more news * more involvement, more to do (distributed thinking) * more science info (BG info) * scientific "translation" service * altrusim * get grant to do good popsci writing about projects * proper PR * when getting a grant, should be required to get funding to allocate resources to writing PR * this should be a requirement of funding agencies * poss. adt'l involvement, depending on details * social status (badges) rather than credits (ie, different incentive system) * stats/gaming crowd * self organized: teams, etc. * push info into those groups (news, etc) * just feed them credits * good model: communities of shared interests * what are the causes sufficient to motivate action? * organize communities around these * bundle PR/outreach plan w. BOINC software * best practices but: insufficient resources to implement, so: community of communicators [[BR]] -- social middleware -- every BOINC project is a distributed thinking project designed to produce new users -- * writing, PR * just ask -- there are people to do this. * seek professionals in misc domains social middleware * credit for new recruitment of volunteers (rather than new credits) [badges: social status] * credit for translations [badges] motivations * financial reward * social status * intellectual interest / learning * altruism