finiduck --

I admire your enthusiasm about the World Community Grid. I am not sure how well advertising would work towards gaining new members, but, in any event, my position with the World Community Grid is as a volunteer so I cannot give you any guidance regarding the policies that would be in place for it.

In terms of security, there is a discussion of it here that may help you to explain some of the safeguards that are in place to protect the members computer environments. While no connected computer environment can be made absolutely safe from attack, I would remind you that the professional staff behind the World Community Grid are employees of IBM and security is a major consideration in that corporation.

Best regards,

Hi Gangyi --

The World Community Grid finally implemented a new scheme for forum titles yesterday. The announcement is here. The new titles which correspond to your number of forum posts are:

0 - 49: Cruncher
50 - 149: Advanced Cruncher
150 - 499: Senior Cruncher
500 - 1499: Veteran Cruncher
1500 - 3999: Master Cruncher
4000+: Ace Cruncher

So far, nobody is even close to being an Ace Cruncher. Only 3 of us have reached the Master Cruncher level, Graham with 2446 posts, myself with 1864 (as of this post), and David Autumns with 1856.

Thank you,Dave Bell.
I have been Cruncher now. Come on!

Hello gangyi,
Different people are interested in diffeerent projects. When people hear of a project that interests them, they will respond. In a few years, we will be vastly larger than we are today.

mycrofth

My experience is that a single mention (however good) does very little. With something as complex as grid computing, with the associated investment in computer time, and the risks involved, most people are going to want to take the time to research and evaluate the projects and the risks. In my case, I spent about three days reading and lurking before I committed to installing the client.

My team has a very large recruitment base, and I think I can provide some useful statistics (maybe folks from other large recruitment-based teams can add their experience). UserFriendly the cartoon has a readership somewhere over half a million. Talking to just the community members (a far smaller number) and recruiting constantly, slightly less than one person per day joins WCG. This is (I think) good going for such a small community, especially remembering that many are already involved with other crunching projects.

From time to time, Illiad, the creator of User Friendly, features WCG on the site's front page. At these times, uptake jumps to maybe 5 or 6 people every day. This is great for Team UF, but if you crunch the numbers it equates to a barely noticable percentage of the readership.

So, what do you need to do to get members? I think the best way to describe this is "brand awareness". You don't need to shout, but make as many people as possible aware of WCG, and keep mentioning it. Don't gloss over the issues, either. Deep and honest discussions of the benefits, costs and risks of grid computing only serve to create more interest, and hopefully better informed people will be able to make informed choices. Then, big events can provide a useful burst of interest. World Aids Day, for example. Hot topics like these can keep WCG in the front of people's minds for days. And the people that really care will help out, if they can.