I'm trying different ways to get Builderloo in front of people in Waterloo Region. The first was 30 orange posters in Kitchener and Waterloo.
Builderloo only works if people in Waterloo Region know it exists, so I'm trying different ways to reach them and keeping what works. The first one was paper. On September 29 and 30 I put up 30 posters in cafes, bookstores, campus buildings and the Communitech lobby. Each poster has its own QR code, so I could compare one spot with another.
Poster 38 on the board at Cafe Pyrus on King Street West, posted September 30
30posters up
86scans in a month
9new readers of The Weekly
Printing them
A script makes one letter-size PDF per poster, in black ink for orange paper. It will not save a poster unless every QR code on it scans back. The codes hold the address in capitals (HTTPS://BUILDERLOO.CA/Q/25), which QR stores in a smaller grid than lowercase, so the code prints smaller.
The poster asks people to post what they're building on the Builderloo forum: a side project, a school build or a GitHub repo. Eight tear-off tabs along the bottom carry the same QR code.
The bylaws ask a poster to name who put it up. Mine list a PO box at Waterloo RPO Columbia.
Every tab is cut by hand. This is half an hour of cutting on my couch, before the Kitchener run on September 30.
Cutting tear-off tabs on September 30, half an hour sped up
I also printed an outdoor version for laminating, with a bigger QR code and no tabs. None of those went up.
Two days of walls
Uptown Waterloo and the University of Waterloo were on September 29, and downtown Kitchener and the Tannery were on September 30. I taped posters to open boards where I could. At Midnight Run, Seven Shores and several other places, I left one with the staff. The Turnkey Desk in the Student Life Centre keeps a poster up for two weeks. The Davis Centre library stamps each one first.
September 29 in Waterloo, September 30 in Kitchener
What worked
Scans were highest in the first week and dropped each week after: 25, 23, 15, 14 and 9.
Scans by spot, September 29 to November 1
Balzac's in the Tannery24
UW Student Life Centre (4 posters)20
Communitech lobby board (2 posters)14
Old Goat Books5
Seven Shores5
Cafe Pyrus4
Accelerator Centre4
Adventurer's Guild3
Lost Vessel Vintage3
Balzac's had the most scans and one sign-up for The Weekly. The Student Life Centre had fewer scans, three sign-ups and three new accounts. The Communitech board had two sign-ups.
Sign-ups for The Weekly by spot
UW Student Life Centre3
Communitech lobby board2
Accelerator Centre2
Balzac's in the Tannery1
Old Goat Books1
Fourteen posters were never scanned. Eight of those were ones I left with staff. The others were at KW Bookstore, the Starbucks by Kitchener City Hall, Registry Theatre, the Waterloo Public Library, Words Worth Books and Princess Cafe.
What I changed
On October 3 the poster's page dropped to one email field, with making an account as an optional second step. On October 29 I tried a different poster for the Accelerator Centre. It asks people to sign up for The Weekly instead of posting, with a bigger QR code and no tabs. Its front desk put up four copies, and two people have signed up from it so far.
