<VV> Why an Online Encyclopedia? (VERY long)

[Barry Johnson]

I'm the guy that wrote the original message about an online encyclopedia for CORSA.  The original message was a private message to Mark Corbin; he reposted it to the group with permission.  But it wasn't written for this audience, so I'm not surprised at the reaction we've seen.

Let me explain to everyone why I think this is a good idea.  It's a long explanation.  If you want short, simple answers you might as well stop reading now, because I'm not likely to convince you of anything.  But if you're willing to put in the ten or fifteen minutes it might take to read this, I hope to show you that there's a very rational thought process behind this.  I'm not just reacting, and not just tossing something out because it's cool, or something that I read about in an article.

 I truly believe this is one project that can turn into increased membership and actual dollars of revenue for CORSA, and that it's within our means to accomplish.

Background
---------------

This idea is a response to the "CORSA is dying" threads of conversation.  CORSA's situation is indeed troubling -- membership (which means revenues) are dropping while costs climb.  Sacrifices have been made to balance the budget, but those sacrifices do not solve the underlying problems.  There are two ways to approach this problem:  work on increasing revenues, and work on decreasing costs.  Valiant efforts are being made, and I'm convinced that the CORSA Board of Directors fully understands and appreciates the situation.  I know what it's like to run a volunteer organization in bad times -- I am in those shoes myself in other organizations, and I fully appreciate the Board's personal efforts.  That appreciation exists regardless of whether I agree with each director's opinions or not.  Thank you, all of you.

Much of the discussion has been upon ways to increase membership, and therefore increase revenues.  "Increasing membership" means, simply, "Convince more people that they ought to pay annual dues to CORSA."  Several approaches to that problem have been discussed.

I've worked in the computer industry for more than 30 years.  In particular, my career has been with companies that sell computers and software systems.  I spent many years working closely with salesmen (although I've never been in sales in my life).  These guys are professionals at understanding how to convince people to pay money, how to keep those people satisfied with that decision for years, and how to keep them coming back.

Frankly, that's the same issue that we face with CORSA membership.  We need to convince non-members to become members, we need to keep the membership satisfied with that decision, and we need to keep them coming back year after year.  So are there lessons we can learn there?

There sure are.  First lesson is that not all people value the same things the same way.  What works with one person may not work the same way with the next person.  If you want to be truly successful, you have to find the things that work for people with different sets of values, and provide *all* of those values for *all* of those people (or at least as many as you can).

While it's a bit arbitrary, I think it's instructive to group current and possible CORSA members into these categories:

* Hardcore members.  These are folks that love the organization, particularly the people they meet.  Many of these folks would be willing to pay double the current annual dues.

* Fringe members:  These are members that are borderline:  Yeah, they're members, but they don't meet many of the people, and probably don't go to many (if any) of the conventions.  To them, the Communique is nice but not vital.  They'll stay next year, but there's a limit to their tolerance and willingness to pay.

* Possible members:  These are folks that aren't members, but could probably be convinced to join.  Perhaps they don't know of the organization.  If they do know of it and haven't joined, it's probably because of a few different reasons:  They don't know people, or they don't see it as providing them with enough benefits to be worth the cost.

* Actively against membership:  These are folks that are aware of the organization, and actively resist membership.  Perhaps they're angry at someone.  Perhaps they're excessively frugal.  Perhaps they violently disagree with current CORSA policies.  For some of these people, one dollar per year is too much to pay for CORSA membership.


OK, then.  We want to increase revenues.  How can we do it?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

One option:  Find things to sell -- that is, develop revenue streams that aren't dependent upon membership.  I know there are folks working hard and faithfully at this, and have been for many years.  There doesn't seem to be a magic bullet here.

Well, we can raise the annual dues.  We get more money from the hardcore members at the risk of losing some of the fringe members.  It's a tradeoff.  But if you look at membership counts, as opposed to revenues, it's safe to say that raising dues won't ever -increase- membership.  There are very few people in the world that would say, "Oh, look!  CORSA raised their annual dues!  That must mean they're a great club -- I'd better go join!"  No, that's not going to happen.  If the membership is more of the "hard-core" flavor than "fringe", raising dues is a perfectly fine way to increase revenues, but it won't help to increase membership headcount.

A third option:  we can try to stem the bleeding by reducing the loss of fringe members.  We have to find out why those folks that used to be members are dropping away, and try to change whatever condition caused them to leave.  This is pretty hard.  In order to succeed at it, you have to learn why members are leaving.  If the cause is something the organization can control -- then perhaps it's fixable.  But look at our demographics!  I would suggest that *most* of the people that drop out of CORSA are doing it because of factors like death, infirmity, loss of income, or sale of their car.  I don't know that's true, but that's my personal guess.  There probably are a few folks leaving because they no longer think the benefits are worth the dues, but this probably isn't a place for us to make a big win.

Even so, unless you can convert fringe members into hardcore members willing to accept dues increases, all that third option does is try to slow the losses.  It's a worthy thing to do, but it's not sufficient.


Everything else, then, comes back to increasing membership:  to convincing more people to pay money to join.  In particular, you have to focus on that group of "possible members", and find ways to persuade them to sign up.

How can we increase membership?
----------------------------------------------

One approach that's been suggested (rather loudly, I might say)  is to increase membership  by issuing mandates.  Being blunt, this is essentially blackmail:  proponents of this approach threaten to take away things of value from non-CORSA members unless they pay up.  What would they take away?  Membership in a local chapter, and/or a local club's affiliation with CORSA.  "If you want the benefit of belonging to a local chapter, then you have to pay the national fee.  If you won't pay the national fee, then you can't continue your local membership."

Being rather Machiavellian, that's a perfectly fine approach to take.  There's no reason why CORSA couldn't do that.  But will it work?  Let's look at how that plays with our four groups of people.

Hardcore members are probably fine -- in fact, the shared sacrifice increases the "brotherhood" aspect.  I wouldn't expect this change to cause any hardcore members to leave.  Fringe members, well, they're probably OK, too.  After all, they're paying dues already.  Unless they get angry at the politics of the decision, I wouldn't expect to lose many fringe members directly because of this.

Those that are actively against CORSA membership:  It's not gonna convince them to join.  In fact, it's more likely to make them even more actively against CORSA.  If their local chapter chooses to enforce 100% CORSA membership, they'll leave the chapter first.

Possible members:  that's where the balancing act is at.  How many non-members would be willing to retain their local chapter benefits for an additional $35 per year?  What are today's CORSA benefits worth to those people -- and what's the difference between that dollar value and our annual dues?  Tough call.

Personally, I don't see blackmail as a good way to convince those possible members to join.  Some will pay and join willingly; others would leave their local chapter.  I'd guess that's it's about 50-50.  We'd get half of the non-members to join CORSA, while driving the other members into the hostile against CORSA camp, and driving them out of their local chapters.  In some cases, we might well see the local chapter leave CORSA altogether because they'd rather retain their local membership.

I haven't seen the comparison of total chapter membership against CORSA membership.  After you account for folks that might belong to more than one chapter, I don't see this approach as adding very many people to the CORSA membership roles.  We're not going to get another 1,000 members that way, and I doubt we're going to get another 500.  We *might* get 100.  Is it worth it?  Is it worth driving away the others just for those 100 people?  Not in my mind.

Is there another way?
----------------------------

Well, what other options are there?  It comes back to converting "possible members" into "members".

Some of the possible members aren't aware of CORSA, and would join if only they knew that the organization existed, and knew how to join.  That's an advertising problem.  The recent suggestion about putting CORSA stickers or displays at various Corvair repair shops is an advertising solution aimed at this very group of people.  That's a fine approach, but it shouldn't be the only approach.  We need to continue advertising and making our presence know.

If you take away those that simply aren't aware of CORSA, you've got a target audience remaining.  These are people that are aware of CORSA, aren't actively against membership, and yet haven't paid their dues.  These people think that CORSA's annual benefits aren't worth the annual dues, or else can't afford those dues.  Frankly, if someone can't afford the dues, there's not an awful lot to do.  Only three choices:  either offer a reduced membership level that allows us to get -some- money from them; provide them with financial assistance (or reduced dues) in the hopes that their goodwill will make up for the loss of revenue; or kiss them goodbye and ask them to come back when they can.

That leaves us with possible members that don't see today's benefits as worth the dues.    Of all of our groups of people, THESE are the folks that can make a difference to the revenue stream.  THESE are the people that we, CORSA, need to focus upon if we'd like to get more money coming in.

To convince these people to join, you either have to change their perception of the value of the benefits, or you have to provide more benefits.  There aren't any other choices.  It really is that simple.  And if you can't do that, then you won't increase your membership, and you have to squeeze the hardcore members harder and harder until you reach a stable point.  Or the organization dies, or turns into a different organization that has a wider pool of members (like merging with another vintage car association).

Raising the Perceived Value of Benefits
------------------------------------------------

Can we persuade people that the existing benefits are worth more to them than they currently think they are?  Well, our existing benefits are, I believe:  the Communiqué, availability of the annual membership roster, the ability to attend the annual national convention, the altruistic value of underwriting public access to Virtual Vairs, and the liability insurance program.

People are working hard to sell those benefits today.  We shouldn't stop or interfere with those efforts.  That's a good thing.  But, frankly, that sales job isn't working well enough.

No, after all this, I contend that the best way to increase membership is to, somehow, offer more benefits to users.  I know it sounds trite and obvious, but that doesn't mean it's false.

So, what could we do to increase our benefits?

I'll throw out a couple small ones.

* We could allow non-CORSA members to attend the national convention.  I'd suggest that an additional $40 fee for non-CORSA members to attend would make this viable.  If they'd like to attend the convention, throw in a year's CORSA membership!   (To those that say this would be too complex to manage, I say Phooey.  I've run registration, using only volunteer help, for events with hundreds or thousands of attendees.  I know that registration processes can be efficient.)

* We could forbid access to VV by non-CORSA members.  With other free Corvair discussion forums out there in the wild, I don't know that this would be effective.  It's an option.

* Regarding insurance:  someone suggested that the annual insurance fee is approximately $2 or $3 per person.  I could see turning the "non-100% CORSA" chapter filing fee into a "$3 per non-CORSA member surcharge" for each chapter.  If those numbers work, then that effectively extends the insurance benefits to additional people in a way that doesn't dilute revenue.  It effectively provides an "insurance-only membership option" that is devoid of all other benefits.

Or we can invent some new kind of benefit.

What could we invent?  What could CORSA offer that we aren't offering already?  And, since we're already concerned about finances, what could we offer that doesn't cost us money?

If you're still with me, friends, after all this -- this is the heart of my argument for an online encyclopedia.

I'll say again -- CORSA's single biggest asset is the technical and historical knowledge that our members are willing to share, especially when that's combined with the information that CORSA "owns" as an organization.  I challenge anyone to name a larger asset.

Do we have any of that knowledge working for us -- contributing to our bottom line revenues?  Yes, we do.  That's where the Communiqué comes in.  That monthly font of knowledge is, to some people, one of the biggest benefits of CORSA.  The shared knowledge also provides revenue for us through sales of the Technical Guide.

I love books.  My wife and I have invested over $100,000 in buying books over the past 30 years.  We own more books, literally, than some small-town libraries.  I think the concept of the Technical Guide (all three volumes!) is a fine, good, and worthy thing.  I think it will pay for itself -- at least I hope it will.

I'm less convinced that selling articles online will be valuable.  For one thing -- how does someone decide, prior to reading the article, that it's the one they want to buy?   Buying music online -- that's different.  You hear the music free on the radio, or at your friends, or you avidly follow a particular artist.  You also get to listen to about 10% of the song before you buy it online -- and that 10% of the time probably represents about 30% of the true content (since many songs repeat refrains throughout the music).  So would you preview the article?  How would you pay for it?  How much of the suggested 99 cents would go to the merchants handling the payments?

One person suggested that there was little need for an online Corvair encyclopedia because all of that information was already available online.  "Just google Corvair," he said, "and you'll get 1.9 million results!"

Yep, that's true.  There are many more pages of Corvair-related material out there than any mortal can look at.

There's a huge amount of information online today.  I'd suggest that perhaps 50 to 100 of those 1.9 million results are really sites with meaningful results.  Many of those sites are built with pride by CORSA members.  Some of them are absolutely terrific.

But each and every one of those valuable sites are maintained by individuals.   They've put in their personal efforts and published, free of charge to the world, the things they thought were important.  They're paying, in some way or another, to keep those sites running.

Er, not that I wish any of this would happen -- but what would happen to autoxer.skiblack.com if Bryan were ever hit by a bus?  How long would Corvair Alley survive if Rick Norris had a heart attack?  What would happen to corvairkid.com if Kent were to leave the hobby?  (Please, I don't intend to slight any of the other fine web sites out there, but three examples are enough, aren't they?)  If Bryan ever were, God forbid, to get hit by a bus CORSA could at least make arrangements to have the web server moved somewhere else and restored to service.  It would be hard and painful, but at least the CORSA web site should be able to survive any individual trauma.

The survival of all other sites out there are bound to the health and wealth of individual people.  In the long run, every single one of them will disappear.  The laws of statistics say that some may fall by the wayside this year, and others next year.  How long will it be until most of those fine web sites are gone?  Shouldn't someone be looking to protect and preserve this information before the disk drives fail?

There may be other sources out there, too.  For example, Bob Helt once intimated that he would consider transferring the copyrights to his books to CORSA as part of his will.  (Please forgive me if I'm remembering one of your VV posts incorrectly, Bob.)  Would Bob be willing to publish some of his copyrighted material on web site restricted to CORSA members only?  I don't know.  He might be willing to consider it if he was asked nicely.

Would a consolidated source of information be of value to our target audience of possible members?

I think there would be value, and I think it would be significant.

I consider myself a fringe member of the organization, paying my annual dues mostly because I think the organization is worth supporting.  I don't go to the national conventions.  I've never autocrossed in my life (but would like to someday).  The Communiqué is nice, but mostly irrelevant to me.  But if those annual dues gave me access to one set of Corvair knowledge that I could search and browse?  THAT would be great!  I wouldn't have to sift through 1.9 million pages of results.  I could believe that others had read the information, and corrected it if it was wrong.

And if I could upload pictures of my car after I get it restored?  If I could find pictures of the types of wheels I'd like to get?  Cool!  And if I found yet another wheel, or a source of usable seats or seatbelts, or an electronic ignition module program...  I could put it up there for others to see?

I'd pay for that.  And I think others would pay for that, too.  I think other "fringe" members could be kept in the camp, and that we could add to our membership by offering access to a single source of Corvair knowledge.

Would that knowledge be exclusive?  No, not in today's world.  There'd still be 1.9 million web pages out there.  Those folks that are in the "actively resist CORSA" camp -- they can google to their heart's content.

Would this be different than the online forums that are out there?  Yes, it would.  This would be structured more like an encyclopedia than like an online bulletin board.  This wouldn't be a series of conversations, with all the rubbish that goes on in those conversations.  This is data.  Information.  Compact.  Like a book.


Let's look a little deeper.  Does this really make sense?  Would it appeal to non-CORSA members, and could we actually pull something like this off?

One of the target markets we'd like to attract to CORSA is the "younger generation".  (Granted, that phrase has a different meaning for each of us.  To some, I'm a "younger generation" at age 52.  To me, the younger generation are those in their 30s and 40s, or even my kids in their 20s.)  All the same, my understanding is that CORSA has been "graying" for some time.

If you want to attract younger folks, you need an online presence.  Without it, it's a tough row to hoe.  You'll get the occasional highly motivated person willing to sift through back issues of the Communique, but you won't get the 20-something that considers his 3G smartphone to be his gateway to the world.  My eldest son (who bought my '64 Monza convertible) doesn't have a computer -- he thinks his iPhone is sufficient.  If he wants to know something, he finds it online.

And he pays subscription fees.  That's the important part.  The generations coming up behind us are being indoctrinated into the concept of paying periodic fees for simplified data access.

They KNOW that the world is at their fingertips.  They BELIEVE that all knowledge is published out there, somewhere.  But they're IMPATIENT.  They don't want to sift through millions of pages to find the one that's got the tidbit -- they want to go to just the right place that has condensed the subject at hand.  And, within reason, they'll PAY for it on a recurring basis.

They pay for it because they believe it's a benefit.

An online enclopedia might not be a benefit to you -- especially if you've been involved with these cars for years, have stacks of old Communique's since the dawn of time, have enough parts in your garage to build another card, and know every bolt on your Corvair.  But to me -- a relatively new Corvair owner, and not a gear-head, it would be a -great- benefit.

I'm a good example of the kind of folks that CORSA needs to attract now.  And my kids are the kinds of folks that CORSA needs to attract down the road.

OK, maybe someone would be interested.  Maybe we'd get more members because of it.  But it's too hard to do, isn't it?  We can't possibly afford the kind of effort it would take to put this all together!

Well, let's think about that.

When I first got this idea about a year ago, I didn't have any experience in this area.  So I poked around, found a site that offered free Wiki's, and tried to screw something together.

In my first couple hours of playing around, I was able to find and load an index of Communiqué articles, and load the contents of a few articles that had been posted on web sites.  I'll admit -- for this experiment, I shamelessly ripped off some other people's web sites without asking any sort of permission.    But it proved to me that a novice with just a little bit of time could start something.  I was able to assemble a bit of a framework and start fleshing it out with reasonable information in just a couple of hours.

There are, I understand, 4,600 CORSA members.  Would 100 of those members be willing to put in 1 hour's time, contributing (mostly by copy/paste) some of their material?  If I could screw together a framework in just one or two hours, what could we do with 100 hours of work?

Would any of those CORSA members with cool web sites be willing to allow any of their content to be included in this thing?  Some of them would, I'll bet, if they were asked nicely.  Some of them might be willing to copy and paste their content to the site itself, while others might be willing to allow someone else to do the scraping.

Could we publish any of the Communiqué articles?  That would be up to the CORSA Board, I would think.  The recent issues have all been edited with digital editing software that is likely to allow a copy/paste of the text.  Pictures aren't hard to upload.  Could we find volunteers to copy and paste some data?  I'll bet we could.

I'll bet, over time, we'd be able to convince 500 members to contribute something.  If we could do great things with 100 hours time, what would 500 hours buy us?

How many times have we seen questions on how to read the Fisher body tags -- or production counts of various models -- or other historical questions?  Could we add, piece by piece, that kind of data to a larger framework?  Sure we could.

The more that gets added, the more valuable it becomes.

Frankly, over time, I believe that access to this encyclopedia could become one of the primary benefits of CORSA membership.  For everyone, that is, except those that know everything <BIG GRIN>.

REVIEW

OK.  Let's review.  It's been a long time, and if you're still reading, I'm truly appreciative.

* We need to increase CORSA revenues.
* The best way to do that is increase CORSA membership.
* The best way to do that is to find people that know about CORSA but don't believe the benefits are worth the dues.
* To bring them into the fold, we need to offer more benefits --  yet we can't afford to pay money to offer those benefits.
* Our biggest asset is knowledge, and CORSA can facilitate transferring that knowledge from those who have it to those who need it.
* Even though much of this information is already published, there is no consolidated source anywhere in the world.  Yet.
* We already have a suitable web server and data pipeline to the world.  The necessary software is free.
* Quite a few our members have already proven to be giving in nature, and willing to donate time to publish this knowledge.  They've built their own web sites.
* The greatest need of a new Corvair owner is for knowledge:  Technical, historical and contemporary
* The generations coming up expect information to be online, and are willing to pay for it.

Can you argue with any of those points?  Do you believe that any of them are wrong (outside of quibbling with wording)?

If you accept those points, then it's easy to see that building a consolidated online source of data restricted to CORSA members would translate into increased revenues.

THAT'S why we need an online encyclopedia.

baj
----------------------
Barry Johnson
Lake in the Hills, IL, USA
'65 Monza 4-door 140PG.