[Theforum] another online community in trouble

Ken Kogler ken.kogler at cph.org
Wed Jun 19 10:14:27 CDT 2002


> it's our decision on how we plan to proceed with meo...
> isn't it? can't we decide to kill meo, or make it the
> most kickin' ass service out there or even make it into
> a small lump of tar?

"Filet it and fast-food it if ya want to..." (movie quote!)

I don't think the point is what we *can* do with it so much as what we
*should* do. Along the lines of what we *should* do: we should use MEO
exactly how it's being used now.

I see MEO as a playground. It's a very nice perk to being an evolt member.
It's a chance to sharpen my skills and play around with technologies and
languages that my hosting provider doesn't support (like CF and PHP).

I think MEO could be a source of a small *steady* income for evolt ($5/mo
per member, or something), but it's not a cash cow. If we push too far, we
lose a lot of MEO accounts.

> > having a meo account is a community statement. you'll
> > notice that i sign all my emails to themembers with my
> > meo account address.

> if that's the case, then does it really matter what meo offers?

Because if MEO offers crap, then people infer the community is crap. But if
MEO offers quality, then people assume the community is quality, and that's
a community I want to be a part of.

It all boils down to this, folks:

 1) evolt needs money.
 2) evolt doesn't want to upset the members too bad.
 3) evolt has to pay the bills.
 4) evolt is a community of smart people who *should* be
    able to find a way to raise some money.

I think mirroring BEO is a lot more effective way of reducing the bills
evolt has that cutting (or scaling back) MEO.

There's two ways to go about this: we can reduce our current bills, or we
can increase our incoming cashflow. Either one accomplishes the same goal:
get evolt out of the red and into the black.

It sounds like reducing our current bills (by mirroring BEO), then trying to
increase the incoming money (opening the books to members and politely
asking them to consider helping out) might be the best way to go about this.

One more thought: if I was still a non-active evolt member (meaning I just
read the articles and subscribed to thelist and had no idea of the current
financial issues going on), and evolt came to me and asked me for money
because the bills were too high, I'd ask "how have you tried to reduce the
bills? have to tried cutting costs at all before you came to me for money?"

If I gave $20 (which is way more than I can afford at this point), then
found out that evolt passed by the opportunity to cut their bandwidth by
+100Gb/month, I'd ask for a refund!

-Ken Kogler




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