Individual Membership as a responsibility of the Community Committee

[hackygolucky]

Individual Membership to the Node.js Foundation was established back in 2015 as a way to represent the voice of the community on the Node.js via Board seats.

Individual membership costs $100 a year, or $25 for students. Contributors to the Node.js project, including all Working Groups and sub-projects, are eligible for free membership. The current benefit to being an Individual Member includes 20% off regular price registration to Node Interactive, access to the Node.js travel fund for request, and a vote/voice via the two Individual Membership Directors.

We are reaching a critical point of time for the Individual Membership where it has existed in its current state for a few years. This feels like enough time to examine what value it provides currently, who is responsible for improving it, and how it can be improved.

Should the Community Committee, considering its scope, take the Individual Membership on as an initiative? This would be an incredible responsibility, but the Community Committee is a point of entry for the ecosystem that could positively contribute to the future value of the Individual Membership through quality feedback collection and project management. This has been brought up in various conversations with CommComm members in meetings but never addressed as a decision to vote on.

Responsibilities that exist with this currently:

• Administration of the membership platform: (Node.js Foundation team via @hackygolucky)
• Administration of the election platform for Individual Membership Director elections: (Node.js Foundation team via @hackygolucky)
• Assessing and editing membership benefits: Node.js Foundation team + Board of Directors
• Representation of voice at the Board level and gathering feedback from the member class: Individual Membership Directors(currently @williamkapke and @ashleygwilliams)

[bnb]

I'd like to say that I'm generally +1 to this. I've personally been very critical of how Individual Membership has approached since its creation, but I do think that the Community Committee could likely help enable both the project - Individual Membership - and the members themselves.

Taking on Individual Membership will need a non-trivial amount of effort, so I'd like to suggest that we have someone explicitly champion the effort - similar to how the TSC is currently taking on new projects.

[dshaw]

I think this is a great idea. I see having Individual Membership representation working through the CommComm as the most effective to grow, support and engage Individual Members.

[refack]

I have bandwidth for helping with admin stuff.

[keywordnew]

CommComm taking this on would be great. Maybe contingent on getting enough members and observers on board to eventually drive this. I can put time into the tasks.

[komawar]

From a third person standpoint, (w/o much context on the history), I think this looks like a good idea. The blog that identifies who a Node.js Individual Member is under the community tag, there more information out there but looks mostly in github. (Of course, my google search might not be exhaustive). As a potential new Individual Member, I would expect CommComm to chaperone this.

count me in, will have bandwidth to contribute to the effort.

[jemjam]

I'm definitely a plus one for this. It seems like there's a lot of potential here.

Sounded like there's a wishlist of things that could be done better, it might be nice to enumerate some of those items here. Mentioned briefly during CommComm session:

• quarterly newsletter,
• getting more regular feedback from individual membership (is this related or overlap at all with the User Feedback Initiative?)

If there's hesitation, maybe we could also touch on some of the extra responsibilities that would be involved (if they haven't already been mentioned above) so folks know what we're getting into.

[ParidelPooya]

It's a great idea but is there any stat or data to figure it out how big is this individual membership? And how many individual members Node.js foundation have right now?

[bnb]

@ParidelPooya Currently we have ~200 individual members. That number did go up recently with membership being bundled in some way with Node.js Interactive tickets. That's almost the full extent of my knowledge, I know @hackygolucky can definitely help provide any additional scope.

[bnb]

I'd like to start keeping a list of those that have expressed interest in helping champion/maintain Individual Membership - and have bandwidth to so so:

• @refack
• @chowdhurian
• @komawar
• @JemBijoux
• @ParidelPooya

[ParidelPooya]

I have bandwidth to help too. please add me to that list @ParidelPooya

[bnb]

@ParidelPooya Added 👍

[hackygolucky]

I am happy to help, I just down want to own it wholly anymore :) (and also by it being moved out of the Foundation, I shouldn't be wholly owning it anyway)

[hackygolucky]

Also at this month's count @bnb @ParidelPooya we are at 241 for membership. The demographic makeup is about half collaborators who have signed up for free because they get the contributor discount, and the rest were mostly signups through our conference registration add-on.

[dshaw]

Also at this month's count @bnb @ParidelPooya we are at 241 for membership.

@hackygolucky: Is there a way to contact this group? Email list? This would be useful for @nodejs/user-feedback.