User recruitment and support: a viral marketing approach based on the word-of-mouth influence

The deployment, management and total cost of ownership of large computing environments always involve huge investments. These systems, once in production, have to meet the needs of users belonging to large and heterogeneous communities whose demands are often conflicting. Only an efficient and effective use of these systems can pay back the investment carried out. The infrastructure needs to be sustained also by means of the building of an "appropriate" community of users (the "catchment area"), to be, firstly, recruited and then driven to a conscious use of resources. Based on the experience we gained at the University of Naples Federico II, in the activities related to "support users and applications" on the SCoPE system, we "enjoyed" to write our "recipe". Since 2008, also in the framework of ReCaS, that recipe represents our way to recruit new users and to consolidate the "catchment area" in terms of both number and awareness in the use of the infrastructure.