I agree with you, something new for marketing WCG-community would be nice. I have quite a discreetingly keeping WCG-banner only at my website. I think it could be also telling about projects that we have here. Now only computer enthusiast become intrested about from the slogan

You know, for whatever reason crunching is a hard sell.

I am not technically savvy, so, wanting to help build the effort, I am constantly looking for news articles about some subject related to any WCG or BOINC project. I go in and write a comment which basically says, "...did you know that you can help...here's how..." and I describe what is going on.

I started a team locally, thinking it might be a magnet in this area, which boasts a very major research university, the research facilities of a major pharmaceutical company, and a huge multi-faceted medical/pharmacological Fortune 500 company. In other words, good demographics for computer literate people. I have gotten all of seven team members; but two are from my office, one is my sister-in-law, one is my neighbor. Not a big success.

The local paper had a great article on Dr. Foran's Cancer project because the institution is local. It had great pictures, including the screen saver. I dragged that article around, showing everyone and really annoying my wife. No comers.

I have BOINC and WCG T-shirts. I wear one or the other on my daylight exercise walk through the middle of town after work. I also wear one of them if I am going to the local supermarket for an extended period of shopping. I have been doing this all Summer. I did get two guys, in one incident; but, they were standing outside nursing beers. Who know if they actually went inside and looked at any of the web sites? Not promising.

So, we all need to keep on trying. 80,000 crunchers, or 150,000, sounds like a lot, and I do not dismiss the numbers. But in a world of close to a billion personal computers? Not impressive at all.

>>RSM

WCG has a strategy and it's developing. To me by taking the 'from within' approach, the proliferation should expand. In-Office and In-College and In-University will eventually spread like a spider in the heart of the web. Spider moves and the vibrations go all the way to the outer fabric. The bigger these organizations, the bigger the viral marketing effect. Anyway, here a 70 day picture. The Machine is now sitting on 200 Tera Flops for every workday of the week.



And believe it or not, there seem still to be folk out there installing the UD agent software and trying to communicate with WCG. If you see a place where this old agent is still circulated let us know here or through mail to support, so WCG can contact these sources to remove it.

Teach Your Children Well and they'll be appreciating this as a normal.

astrolab said:


Maybe, just maybe, the extremely low threshold of a 14-day commitment to a project was well thought out beforehand.

I'm guessing the 14-day badges were introduced knowing full well that some members will run after the badges. If you ask me, it was a good way of getting members to at least check out all the different projects... and especially the new projects.

But there is a downside. Like the titles, the badges may be misleading to newbies. If a "badge running" member who chit-chats and plays games a lot wanders into the support forums, a newbie may think this gasbag knows what s/he's talking about.

[Edited by debsgr8 for typo]

2BarneyBadass And if a person crunches constanly for a "high-level" badge, and then leaves for vacation with his comps off, he will lose all his badges? I would probably be pissed of :)