[Ambassadors] Sponsored Media

[Karlie Robinson]

Alex Maier wrote:
 > And yes, of course, congratulations, everybody involved, and
 > especially Karlie Robinson, who initiated this project!

Thanks Alex.

Some things I've noticed about what is working...

* Project endorsement with "Give the Gift of Fedora" at 
http://www.redhat.com/fedora/ That was the point where the sponsorships 
really took off.

* Stars at OnlineVendors - When ThomasChung updated the list and added 
the gold stars info at the top of the page, my site stats showd a 
significant increase in traffic coming from 
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Distribution/OnlineVendors
While the stars were there when SponsoredMedia started, the symbol key 
stating what it meant was at the bottom of the page.  The star's move to 
the top of the OnlineVendors page brought the numbers of visitors from 
OnlineVendors to just about equal those coming from SponsoredMedia.

So we know those two things are working.  The question... Is there a way 
to duplicate this outside of the RH/Fedora Brand areas?

If not, what should we try?

Because what's happening, is the people who are starting their search 
for Fedora are catching a little 'good-will'

'Free as in Freedom' is hitting home.  Many users now understand the 
financial burden many projects carry.  As such, they are choosing to 
support FOSS at an ever increasing level. And while Fedora doesn't ask 
it's users to cover operational costs it seems the users are willing to 
support the Fedora Project by sponsoring FreeMedia (thus removing the 
financial burden from the individual Ambassadors)

How can we get more people aware of the good filling FreeMedia requests 
does for Fedora as a whole?  (by increasing the installed base... 
creating new fans..etc)

As a side note, and something we may not be able to duplicate, was Max's 
suggestion to eliminate the half and full share choices at On-Disk.com. 
  The only choice is to order two FC5s - one for them, one for 
FreeMedia.  It makes it easier for people to become generous - no 
cop-outs.  You can read more about how we're doing it by visiting 
http://on-disk.com/content.php?citem=on-disk/2006/Fedora-FreeMedia.php

~Karlie