Re: support for local gnome groups.

[Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org>]

<quote who="Erik Snoeijs">

> Now in my humble opinion the local gnome groups are the most important
> gnome marketing asset. Since basically they are the direct link to middle
> sized and small businesses and local people.
>
> I think that a lot of these groups could do a lot more if they got more
> backing from "global gnome" then just a pat on the back and a encouraging
> speech. (not meant as vindictive as one might read.)
>
> Now i'm not talking money. I'm talking about network

Absolutely. A huge way we could start is by collating the information we
have about GNOME groups worldwide, and making a really great web page for
them. Perhaps www.gnome.org/worldwide/ would be a good location. We can put
the GnomeWorldWide map on it, provide mailing list and contact details for
all of the groups, link to their home pages, etc. Making it maintainable is
the crucial bit - going techy for a moment - the page could be generated
from a simple RFC822 format text file, so we're not always mucking around
with HTML.

GNOME's worldwide presence is a top-level feature of the project, we should
do everything we can to highlight and expand it.

There is a list of groups in the wiki, and here's some random stuff I wrote
up about existing mailing lists when I created marketing-list with this in
mind:

  http://www.gnome.org/~jdub/random/marketing-team

> Also i was thinking about props. Like simple posters or gnome t-shirts
> that could be made in bulk for all global gnome groups so the cost would
> be reduced. Because getting proper props is now quite a expensive business
> if you don't have a sponsor.  Good props are in my opinion essential to
> give a good first impression.

There's a list of collateral we need in the wiki, and Murray has been
blogging about getting a big box to ship around with the goodies in it. :-)
More suggestions welcome.

> And there are probably more ideas that could be realized for local gnome
> groups to further the goal of marketing the gnome project and supplying
> local businesses with information about gnome.

It might be good to check out Ubuntu's LoCo team strategy, and build up
relationships with those teams.

> I posted this actually a few days back, but because i used a different
> e-mail address it was put into moderation.  But since that was the last i
> heard from that post, i simply though it would be faster/simpler to simply
> mail it again.  So my apology up front if this isn't the proper etiquette
> for mailing-lists.

That's fine, sorry - I must've missed it in amongst the spam. ;-)

- Jeff

-- 
GNOME Summit 2005: October 10th-12th        http://live.gnome.org/Boston2005
 
       "A rest with a fermata is the moral opposite of the fast food
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