So I need to ask...

After 2+ years we only have 187,000 participants in this project? Don't you find that extremely low (regardless of how other @HOME projects are doing). Does RAH advertise at all? I've never seen RAH mentioned in Time, Discover, Scientific American, the news, etc. With over 300million people in the U.S. alone, (and I would bet there are at least 100million US residents have computers powerful enough to join RAH), why is the participation so low? We're at 0.5% of the U.S. population yet this is a global project...so 187,000 registered users is, well, frankly pathetic.

The world population is 6+BILLION (yes, I know not all 6 billion people have a pc) but for a project that seems so meaningful, why is there so low attendance (of people, not CPUs)?

This isn't a flame...I'm just trying to figure out why RAH is never advertising or spreading the word. Advertising is pretty darn cheap...especially for non-profit type organizations.

I really want this project to succeed and I tell new people every day about this project. Literally every day. But RAH can't hope to be successful by word of mouth promotion.

Thanks a bunch!

-Eric

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Advertising is pretty darn cheap...especially for non-profit type organizations.

Eric, if you are aware of programs for promotion of non-profits, have you contacted them and inquired about the details required to participate? And the specific costs involved? If you find a program where you feel the project should be participating, gather the specifics and shoot me an EMail and I'll make sure the information finds it's way to the right hands.

There is some advertising done vicariously through Grid Republic via Google's program for non-profits. Other then that, I don't believe any advertising is being done. The primary reasons for that likely being that the scientists know much more about publishing their work then writing an advertising campaign, and the costs involved. If you compare the costs to buying the machines yourself and running them, advertising is probably clearly cheaper. But that is not the option they are faced with. They don't have the budgets to buy all the machines themselves, and so there's no actual cost savings when you compare to something that's not a viable option.

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense

Advertising is pretty darn cheap...especially for non-profit type organizations.

Eric, if you are aware of programs for promotion of non-profits, have you contacted them and inquired about the details required to participate? And the specific costs involved? If you find a program where you feel the project should be participating, gather the specifics and shoot me an EMail and I'll make sure the information finds it's way to the right hands.

There is some advertising done vicariously through Grid Republic via Google's program for non-profits. Other then that, I don't believe any advertising is being done. The primary reasons for that likely being that the scientists know much more about publishing their work then writing an advertising campaign, and the costs involved. If you compare the costs to buying the machines yourself and running them, advertising is probably clearly cheaper. But that is not the option they are faced with. They don't have the budgets to buy all the machines themselves, and so there's no actual cost savings when you compare to something that's not a viable option.

Maybe advertising is a strong word. What I am talking about is reaching out to some newspapers, trade magazines, popular websites, tv shows. Stuff that the average person reads/watches. Not the niche trade magazines that PhD people read in their office. The goal of distributed computing is to get as many "people" to assist in the cause. I haven't even heard of that Google place you are talking about.

Here's a list of some easy places that you could spend a few minutes shooting an email (or ask the RAH team members to call/write in order to get attention):

Boston.com
NYtimes.com
Discover Magazine
History Channel
Scientific American magazine
National Geographic magazine
Time Magazine
Chicago Tribune

In the past, I've literally picked up the phone and called National Geographic (their # is in the magazine) and talked to a human (on the 1st call!) about topics to discuss...very friendly conversation and months later my topic was there. I emailed an editor at Boston.com (essentially the Boston Globe but more stuff), he emailed me back 2 days later, and we chatted about some stuff...about 2 weeks later my topic was in the magazine AND online.

Again, I'm not talking about spending $10,000 on an ad on Google or Yahoo...I'm talking about reaching out to 10+ popular news outlets and asking if they would cover RAH's worthy cause.

Maybe you would like us to do so?

I mean, in 2008, don't you think there are a lot of ways to "advertise" such a fantastic project other than centuries old word-of-mouth? :)

We all want this project to succeed (right???)...having such a small user base clearly shows that people either don't want to join or don't know it exists. I would say it's the latter.

I am offering suggestions. I am also stating, "help me help you".

-Eric

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Associated Press is pretty widely used resource around the world. Article was published and picked up by many local newspapers.

Donna Blankinship's article

Laurelin created a video and published on YouTube.

Lindsay Moran wrote an article for the more scientific audience for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Bulletin.

For the more modern perspective...
A wikipedia page was created.

A MySpace page was created.

CAN YOU HELP ROSETTA?? It sounds like you can. Please join the discussion in the How can we bring more users to the Rosetta project? thread. You will see there that participants were basically encouraged to make contacts with organizations such as those you've mentioned, and if they wish to set up an interview or etc. directly with Dr. Baker (his post), he would make himself available to do so.

These were basically one-time events, so I did not mention them earlier as the topic was more about on-going promotion. But a number of ideas have been implemented and achieved, but they didn't seem to have the expected measureable impact on overall project TeraFLOPS.

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense