Contribute/Form Brainstorming
Form
Ideas for improving the get in touch form:
- Add an opt-in for receiving future information about contributing (bug 649379)
- Compile stats with a counter that tracks how many emails have been sent from the form and how many of those have been sent with the various area of interest options (bug 685992)
- Add additional form fields depending on area of interest (eg, for localization add a language field, for student reps add a school field) (bug 689369)
- Display easy ways to get involved with that area of interest on thank you page after user submits form
- Alert the user to make sure the email address they enter is valid and be careful of typos, something to the effect: "Please check to make sure your return email address is valid and typed in correctly. If you don't hear from us in a reasonable period of time, this may be the reason."
- Remind users that support questions will not be answered via the form, and give them a URL where they can find links for support sites.
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Have inline error checking (bug 568627)
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Set up an auto-response based on selected area of interest? (bug 569624)
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Require input in comments field (bug 649382)
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Check for well-formed email address input(bug 567823)
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Have a confirmation message(See thanks page)
Note: Tracking bug at bug 685675.
Ticker
We could use the RSS feed from the VolunteerMatch site that we've set up as a test. This could be expanded with opportunities from throughout the community. This area could also have hard-coded promos if we'd rather, or in addition, have 2 or 3 featured opportunities that get rotated on a regular basis.
We could also use a Bugzilla query as a feed -- perhaps the helpwanted keyword or something similar?
Tabbed Browsing
We could use the tabbed browser to present people several different ways to find what they're interested in.
- By area of interest (localization, testing...)
- By contributer description (localizer, tester...)
- By level of involvement (beginner, advanced...)
- By skills (fluent in multiple languages, interest in programming...)
- By amount of time (a few minutes, a few hours...)
- By some other way?
Search
The idea of search is good, but maybe the reality means we should consider something else -- what would this pull from? Even if we decided to build a database of opportunities how much effort would that take and is it even impossible since so much of this information is tacit and inside existing community member's heads?
We could set up a Twitter account dedicated to Getting Involved opportunities. It could pull from any automated feeds and any manual updates we make to the page.
T-Shirts
We could make a t-shirt that focused on getting involved with the community. Maybe put in the back of the t-shirts a list with ways to help like: filling bugs, writting code, design logo, spread firefox, give talks, etc. In the bottom of the list would be great if we add the URL of Get Inveolved.
Poster
Create an offline page that has information about the community and how to get involved that can be posted at events, schools, etc.
