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

On 2018-03-31 07:48:17 (+0800), Philip Paeps wrote:
> I had a conversation with a new probe host who was wondering how many 
> of the probes I hand out "walk off" never to be seen again.
>
> Sadly, that's quite a lot of them in my case.  I guess I need to find 
> conferences with more reliable attendees?
>
> People promise to plug them in but then they get distracted.  Or they 
> move and the probes end up in boxes.
>
> How do other ambassadors twist their hosts' arms into actually 
> plugging in probes?  (And keeping them plugged in!)

Thanks for everyone's feedback.  I'm glad I'm not the only one finding 
it difficult to get hosts to actually plug in their probes.

Note that I wasn't actually thinking about the 50% quota, though now 
that it's been mentioned: on average fewer than 50% of the probes I've 
distributed are online.

I like the idea of keeping in closer touch with hosts.  Since I don't 
participate in so-called social media or the several cults of instant 
messaging, this is mostly a non-starter for me.  I'll continue to chase 
my hosts by email though.

I'm having some success convincing people who have not plugged in their 
probes for over a year to return them to me at the next conference.  
When I get probes back like that, I'll try to distribute them to more 
committed hosts.

The openwrt application sounds interesting.  Security may be a problem 
though.  The nice thing about the Atlas Probe is that it's a 
self-contained "appliance": it generally just sits there and works.  It 
also keeps itself updated.  With openwrt, this may be more of a 
challenge.

Philip

-- 
Philip Paeps
Senior Reality Engineer
Ministry of Information