wt volunteer meeting - Apr 5, 2007

Present: Patrick, Mike, Gabe, Matthew, Wes, Dave, Edward (did I miss people who came late?)

This was our first “volunteer meeting”. Volunteer meetings are intended to be opportunities to introduce WT to new people, with the hope that they'll decide to get involved with the group.

Gabe (with help from Patrick, Edward and Dave) gave the full intro to WT – what it is, what motivated us to organize, what our model is, etc.

We than ran through our projects:

• hotspots
  • pitching
  • installation
  • end-user support
• portal pages
  • design
  • content
  • adopt-a-hotspot
• upcoming installs:
  • St. Lawrence Market expansion (asap)
  • Dufferin Grove expansion (when it gets warm)
  • Harbourfront Centre (TBD)
  • FITC (festival, Apr 22-24)
• other projects:
  • AlleyJaunt
  • Toronto The Good
  • OneZone heatmap
  • Roach Coach / backpack

The conversation moved to marketing & strategy. It became clear that this is one of our weakest spots. Priorities we identified:

• signs / stickers at venues
• increase general public's (and specifically, wifi users') awareness of WT
• put more information about the group on the portal pages
• brochures/ collateral

Specifically, we agreed that since we don't have a lot of marketing sk1llz and energy in-house, our marketing strategy is one of user-driven expansion, wherein we enable our users to spread the word for us. All this means is stuff like: encourage users to print the PDF pitchkit and give it to potential venues in their neighbourhood; make a “I (heart) WT” banner/badge that people can put on their website/blog; etc.

• Patrick, Edward, Michael, Wes, and maybe others said that they're very interested in contributing to this effort.
• Patrick has set up a wiki page: http://wiki.wirelesstoronto.ca/marketing_revamp
• Toronto The Good will provide some good exposure; we should ensure that we're ready for it. (Also, have tshirts for sale.)

—

Things which need follow-ups:

• marketing activities
• portal pages
• SLM expansion
• DGP expansion
• make new tshirts
• OneZone heatmap
• Roach Coach next steps