On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 1:44 PM, Alex Stinson <stinsoad@dukes.jmu.edu> wrote:

Well, one way to spend money in order to directly support the UK community's goals would be, once you have a chapter manager, to hire an agency or contractor to run an awareness campaign (Posters at public transportation outlets, radio and telivision ads, etc.) to get other people to contribute in Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects and get the face of the community out there, like Wikimedia Deutschland did.

I think, to my mind, the issue is cost effectiveness. Do we really need more British Wikipedia editors/Wikimedians? How many people are there in the UK who would contribute, but don't know of the possibilities? These are tough questions.

Since this thread includes some of the activity formerly known as "brainstorming", can I suggest simple technological projects as providing a good cost-return ratio? I can't be the only student with programming knowledge, and we come cheap by comparison to an advertising campaign. Even bigger projects where proper professional help was required still look positively inexpensive to me. Of course the problem with this rests in being able to think of good ideas for "apps" -- whether little things that help people contribute, bigger projects and/or show-pieces that highlight what we've already got -- but it's a starting point. I can't be the first to suggest this, so if someone could point me in the direction of a suitable wiki page / mailing list post that would be good too :)