Re: [guadec-list] Marketing GNOME BOF

[Dave Neary <dneary free fr>]

Hi,

Quim Gil wrote:
> El dj 01 de 06 del 2006 a les 16:40 +0200, en/na Dave Neary va escriure:
>
> >  1. I move the BOF into Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday (without being in
> > the printed schedule, of course), and get the interested parties
> > together during a time when there's no major clash
>
> My vote for this option.

How about 10am - noon Tuesday? It's always going to be tough to find a
good slot, and there will always be clashes, but given that I'd like to
have a 2 hour slot, and see Lucas's presentation on the journal on
Monday afternoon, the two best slots I can see are 10 - 12 Tuesday or 10
- 12 Wednesday. A flip of a coin gave it to Tuesday.

I'm sure that we're all more or less tired of discussing target markets
over and over - I'd like to propose that we organise a strategy for
attacking 3 major markets -

 * third party developers
  - will need co-ordination with platform developers
  - Preparation of material showing the benefits of developing on the
GNOME platform
  - Laying out and printing the platform overview that Shaun wrote
  - Setting up a decent feedback loop from third parties (the board can
help here, we're in contact with the advisory board on this issue)
  - Co-ordinate participation in future OSDW sessions

 * Public administrations
  - Spanish, French, German and Asian organisers needed
  - Collect addresses of public officials inquiring about free software
or planning migrations
  - Contacting people responsible for announcements of free software
adoption to offer help and get feedback
  - Feedback loop - working with the development community to address
concerns we hear about from administrations
  - Focus on South America, India, China and Europe
  - Set up reporting so that everyone knows who's talking to who (shared
address book and contact management solution - Drupal?)

 * Hobbyists
  - Early adopters - synthesising feedback and pushing it back into the
system
  - Hobbyists - working with computer magazines to get free software on
the cover disks and get articles published (article writers needed here!)
  - Trade shows
   - organising the event boxes, working on budget for stand
rental/construction and getting volunteers for trade show stands
   - Getting promotional material printed and delivered in a timely fashion
  - Merchandising - let's leverage the passion!
  - Working with people like Canonical to co-ordinate presence at trade
shows
  - University outreach - contacting local university user groups - see
Jono Bacon's UK tour, or the BadgerBadgerBadger tour as good examples of
possibilities - encourage your local LUG to have open door sessions, and
get a "big name" to come & present
  - University outreach 2 - contact teaching heads of local colleges and
push open formats and free software for college exercises and training
  - Co-ordinate all these contacts and events - Drupal maybe?

This is a *huge* amount of work, but luckily, it's broken down into
small chunks, which can have bite-sized micro-tasks - for instance one
person can organise a GNOME presentation at the local university and get
a GNOME developer to come & present. One person can contact the Sao
Paolo government. One person can organise trade show presence.

If we do this stuff well, it will make a massive difference to our
marketing. Even if we do one category really well, it will rock GNOME's
world. Even if we do half of each category well, we change everything.

Let's get moving in the right direction. I will not be surprised when we
change course during the voyage, but let's haul anchor, hoist the
mainsail and drift off into the sunset.

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
David Neary
bolsh gimp org