Thread by @swardley

X : You were teaching at LSE?
Me : Yes
X : I heard mapping is being used in Moscow?
Me : Apparently so.
X : It's spreading all over the world.
Me : Looks like it's helping.
X : How big is your marketing budget?
Me : Eh? Where's this going?

X : I just want to know how much an effort like this costs?
Me : Oh. £0.
X : Sorry?
Me : £0. That's how much we spend on marketing.
X : What about speaking etc.
Me : £0 marketing. £0 travel, £0 budget except Map Camp.
X : How much is that?
Me : That costs £13k but next year £0.

... basically Map Camp gets cheaper each year as it gets larger. We spend all the money raised on the attendees.
X : What was Map Camp's marketing budget.
Me : £0. We didn't do any but people volunteering to spread the word. It's a community effort. It's all community.

X : This is mad.
Me : Why?
X : You need marketing etc.
Me : This is community driven - website, speakers, everything - people are putting time in etc. Sure, there are some out of pocket expenses which we need to cover next year. Are you trying to offer me some marketing service?

X : No. I just want to know how to do this?
Me : Easy. Build something that is hopefully useful for others. Give it away without expectations. Spend over a decade telling everyone and flogging yourself to death. Create a community. Try to be kind and supportive.

X : That's not helpful if we're trying to build a community around a service we want to offer.
Me : The community builds services around mapping. Even the company I work for makes money from mapping (workshops, creating reports, gaining new clients). Isn't that enough?

X : It's not what I'm after.
Me : I suspect you're after a figure for how much it would cost you to create a worldwide 'community" around something you're trying to flog without giving anything away?
X : Yes. Any ideas?
Me : This is a community you want, not users?
X : Yes

Me : I'd hazard a guess at £60M over five years. Hire some rockstars, create flash events etc. Then, you'd have to keep topping it up in order to keep people motivated. It wouldn't be much of a community anyway ... just people there for the free events / handouts etc

... and £60M is probably a conservative figure, it would be easy to waste vast sums of money trying to build a community based around nothing substantial. The Dot-com days were great at this, hundreds of millions if not billions wasted.

X : £60M over five years?
Me : Why do I feel this is going to end up in a spreadsheet somewhere. You really don't get this do you.
X : I just needed a figure. I think it's high.
Me : Try £0 then and build it in a different way.