How do we want to do GNOME Marketing?

["Thilo Pfennig" <tpfennig gmail com>]

Hi,

I have scanned our mailing list archive and found out that WGO revamp
had taken much of our energy, while discussion about how we should do
marketing were rare.

You can many nice ideas in http://live.gnome.org/GnomeMarketing, but
the question is not only what target markets we have
(http://live.gnome.org/MarketingTeam/TargetMarkets), survey, market
segmentation, etc. It is also a question on HOW we want to do
marketing.

We can state: We need lobbying

But who is going to do this? We are not distributors. What we are
selling is the idea of a free desktop. if the GNOME Foundation is not
paying somebody to actually do all the stuff that is discussed at the
end we need to build on voluntary work and this means that it it very
likely that these nice people are not going to do all we have dicussed
on page.

So I'd like to suggest to switch focus. In fact I think we should also
learn from the developers. We should create marketing projects and
have the tools that we need - and just start.

I think that we do should not plan actual deployments, because this is
the job of distributors and ISVs. It is nice to have the data that is
collected at http://live.gnome.org/MarketingTeam/GnomeDeployments for
ourselves - as motivation and also as an argument and BestPractice.
But I think we should rather learn from the deployments and work on
feedback also for the usability team (
http://live.gnome.org/UsabilityTeam)

My understanding of marketing for GNOME would be to develop strategies
and to help in communication between different parties like usabilty
people, developers, freedesktop.org, KDE people, distributors, ISVs,
companies, governments or simple users.

The marketing team should define an overall goal for GNOME. We should
not just invent slogans. We also should not try to "sell" GNOME. I
think that we do not want that because than we would want people to
use GNOME instead of KDE or other desktops. But that would not benefit
but harm us!

What I would like to see from the marketing team in the next months
are efforts to define GNOME and to define its niche. What should GNOME
be and who should want to use, what needs does GNOME fullfil ? How
should GNOME "feel" (or how does it feel)?  Keep on asking simple
questions. The marketing team should combine all informations and
experiences that are available. GNOME should define a core metaphor
(rather than a message or goal). I think what we have so far at
http://live.gnome.org/GnomeMarketing/CoreMessage is not sufficient. We
have to analyse where we are now, what makes GNOME special and what
the overall direction of GNOME should be. We must look at our history
and question the goals of yesterday. What have we accomplished?

Many questions seem to be trivial, but the problem is that those that
are heavily involved in GNOME tend not to see where GNOME is strong or
week, because they ARE GNOME. They also often know how to circumvent
problems.

I like to write some things about how I see GNOME:
As stated above I don#t think it is possible to state goals that
nobody is going to work on. So we must be very realistic. GNOME is
strong as one of the major free desktops. It is strong, because it
listens to its users. My impression also is that it gets more
interesting as a development platform for companies. Many users are
satisfied with GNOME. There are also some interesting innovations like
the NetworkManager and also some of the long-year annoyances are more
openly spoken about and are worked on (printing, audio). Also usabilty
was and is a focus of GNOME. Many things are not under GNOMEs control
alone but have to do with other projects like the Linux kernel or the
Mozilla project.

Generally it seems that users that just want a working, elegant
desktop grab GNOME and those who want to change everything grab KDE.
But there is also much collaboration between those two projects and
users use applications from both projects. On the community level my
impression that in KDE there is more going on and people are generally
more friendly to each other. OTOH GNOME is more stable and more often
started projects to the benefit of every desktop or other projects
outside of GNOME.

GNOME has still great potential but is also very dependent on the
success of Linux (and also other free software projects). Important
projects like Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice.org are not part of
GNOME but are part of the users experiences of what she thinks or sees
as "her GNOME". So a users view is mostly completely different from
the GNOME insiders view.

What to make of it?
The fact that users loose a bunch of software means that a good GNOME
marketing must take this into account. Rather than thinking of
"promoting GNOME" we should do what is best in the users interest and
also help in communication between different projects. Help defining a
GNOME metaphor that inspires developers and users alike. And that
should help GNOME to make its way. The marketing also should help to
spread the ideas of GNOME which should at least meet some potential
users interest.
Is GNOMEs goal to be the leading desktop? The best usable desktop?
Maybe we should also make a poll with the developers of what they
think. In the end they are the ones that make visions come true?

regards,
Thilo


--
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