[RIPE Atlas Ambassadors] How to get people to actually plug in their probes?

On 06/04/2018 10:06, Lia Hestina wrote:
> 
> 1.     People don’t plug in their probes after getting one from an 
> ambassadorHaving miserably failed to get my last batch activated (of my last 
batch, all seven are currently not online) I can only subscribe to what 
others have said: you work out interest before, then bring the probe to 
an event to hand over, you do not ask "who wants a probe" and then give 
them away.

This way, interest must be shown several times before and the handover 
is a conscientious thing instead of "I have four left, who wants one?".


> 2.     Host experiences probe USB failure
The instructions to replace the USB stick are simple once you know where 
to find them. This means the host should not just have it "plugged in", 
he or she must be involved in the community to get messages like this. 
I don't think I have seen messages like "your probe became offline, this 
is what you need to do to recover it" once my personal probe failed; I 
had to google up to find others who had the same issue and what they 
done about it.

Yup, people don't always read mailing lists or blogs. Sounds familiar?

(I still think that the "broken USB key" statement has been hugely 
unfair to the USB key manufacturer, but that's another issue)


> 3.     Hosts lose interest sometimes
You should try to post something to another country yourself today. You 
will find that international postage rates have gone through the roof!
I blamed people selling me stuff through USPS for high postage rates 
until I looked up what they actually need to pay to send something.
If you lost interest, especially if you lost interest rather early in 
the process ("I didn't want to connect this probe thing after all"), 
would you be willing to spend a lot of money and effort on postage?
Also, think of the complexity of customs.

I therefore see huge benefit of, once the probe is deployed, keeping it 
in the country.

This is where _local_ ambassadors can be of great help. Having a probe 
handed back / brought back to the ambassador, assuming he/she is still 
in the country, is a lot simpler. The ambassador can then issue the 
probe to someone else. He'she can also take care of details like having 
the USB disk replaced, if required, so that the new owner gets something 
that works.

It would again speak against the "ambassador brings probes to 
international conference to hand out" approach. I consider myself more a 
probe-mule than an ambassador since the event I handed mine out moves 
country every year and I have not been in any of the countries my probes 
are now supposed to be in.




I'm still hoping that RIPE NCC would consider making ATLAS-PROBE a 
package on OpenWRT and the like so that people can use their existing, 
running hardware to double up as probe point.


Geert Jan