Re: Marketing Mission, Team Members & Wiki Cleanup

[Dave Neary <dneary gnome org>]

Hi,

Paul Cutler wrote:
> Did you know we have a Mission page for the Marketing team?  (We 
> definitely need to re-organize these wiki pages, there are some gems here).

I agree :) I've been trying to get that message across.

> I would like you to take a look at this page, as it sums up the 
> sub-teams within Marketing very well:

Some of these teams are aspirational, and others are bread & butter 
stuff that is getting done - I think it's important to make a difference.

>     *
>       *Releases* - roadmapping <http://live.gnome.org/RoadMap>, release
>       notes <http://live.gnome.org/ReleaseNotes> and coordination with
>       the Release Team
>       <http://live.gnome.org/ReleasePlanning/NewReleaseTeamMembers>.

This is getting done (not as well as I'd like perhaps, but Davyd and 
Murray deserve major props for conscientiously following up on this 
every 6 months).

>     *
>       *Websites <http://live.gnome.org/GnomeWeb%3A/InterWiki>* -
>       www.gnome.org <http://www.gnome.org/> and the official GNOME
>       subsites <http://live.gnome.org/GnomeWeb/GnomeSubsites>.

This is mostly getting done.

>     *
>       *Press <http://www.gnome.org/press/>* - Official news
>       <http://news.gnome.org/>, press releases
>       <http://www.gnome.org/press/releases/> and press relations.

This kind of happens by default - there was a year there where I wrote 
all the press releases, but we haven't exactly been doing a sterling job 
of getting the word out. Not a core skill of mine :) It's been better 
since Stormy came on board.

>     *
>       *Events <http://live.gnome.org/GnomeEvents>* - GUADEC
>       <http://live.gnome.org/GUADEC>, Boston Summit
>       <http://live.gnome.org/BostonSummit%3A/InterWiki> and other events
>       organized by GNOME or with official GNOME presence.

Again, this gets done, although sometimes we get very close to major 
debacle status (Boston Summit a couple of years back, a few GUADECs I've 
been involved in) and we regularly drop invitations to participate in 
events (particularly in the US) for lack of an organised local US 
presence to organise & man booths. This has been getting better in the 
past couple of years.

>     *
>       *Merchandising
>       <http://live.gnome.org/GnomeWeb/MerchandisingAgreement>* - GNOME
>       brand <http://live.gnome.org/BrandGuidelines> explosion:
>       producing, licensing
>       <http://foundation.gnome.org/licensing/index.html> and selling
>       <http://live.gnome.org/GnomeWeb%3A/InterWiki>.

Right now this is mostly aspirational, isn't it? Or have we got someone 
working with Zazzle on choosing merchandising, getting designs, and 
getting a shop online?

>     *
>       *Materials <http://live.gnome.org/GnomeMarketing%3A/InterWiki>* -
>       Digital and printed documents and demos allowing more people to
>       learn about GNOME.

Happens by default right now. People write presentations, demos, 
screencasts, etc. when they have to - to give a presentation, to demo a 
project, for a report, that kind of thing.

We should force people to do those things more often to get more material :)

For posters, by the way, I have done small print runs of very nice A2 
posters from GNOME Art backgrounds - there are some very nice ones out 
there (this one, for example, looks great on my wall: 
http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/teams/art.gnome.org/backgrounds/GNOME-AnotherGrass_1024x768.jpg)

>     *
>       *Research <http://live.gnome.org/GnomeMarketing/Research>* -
>       Collaboration with universities and private R&D programs.

This is very much aspirational right now - it's one of those things we'd 
like to see done, if you know what I mean. When we have one final year 
student doing a project, or one masters/PhD student thesis to put up 
here, I'll be a happy man. Right now, ...


>     *
>       *Local groups <http://live.gnome.org/UserGroups>* - Coordination
>       between the activities done at a local level.

Again, this is mostly people auto-organising, and as such it's getting 
done & needs some polish.

> (I did not touch the Local Groups information on the Team page above - 
> is the information still accurate?  Dave Neary, are you still involved 
> and can you comment?)

I think I have been commenting ;) I'm still involved, in so far as I 
have my fingers in most of the user group related pies...

We should do a review of contact details for local groups. I'm aware of 
GNOME Hispano, GNOME Deutschland, GNOME-fr, GNOME Brazil and GNOME UK, 
contact details there are accurate (or, at least, the people listed as 
contacts know the people involved, and are still active in GNOME).

As I said before, we have a mailing list which is indended to be the 
meeting point for GNOME User Group leaders, the gugmasters-list (named 
after the UK based lugmasters). The list address: 
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gugmasters-list

The archives: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gugmasters-list/

The list description:
"The gugmasters-list mailing list is for collaboration and co-operation 
between GNOME User Groups worldwide.

Users of this list are expected to respect other members of the mailing 
list, and thus the GNOME Code of Conduct.

This is an English language list, but allowances will be made in some 
circumstances, if the poster has problems with English."

We also have a calendar maintained in Google Calendar, and I'm always 
looking for people to help maintain it, add GNOME related dates & events 
- ideally with a description of the relevance to GNOME (eg. "GNOME Booth 
sponsored by Lanedo, contact Herzi" or "Stormy Peters keynoting on "The 
State of GNOME"):
(ICS): 
http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/mdnrfqhbsjn37b6sgad089qmak%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
(HTTP): 
http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=mdnrfqhbsjn37b6sgad089qmak%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=Europe/Paris

Murray co-ordinates the events box: http://live.gnome.org/GnomeEventsBox 
 - this & the GNOME User Groups budget grew out of my frustration and 
(a little) anger at seeing what GNOME stands looked like in conferences: 
http://blogs.gnome.org/bolsh/2005/10/19/before-and-after/ (the before 
picture has died, but is here: 
http://vieux.aldil.org/aldil.org-2008/photos/JDLL2004/stands/38.html)

In FOSDEM 2007, I gave a proposal on "Marketing GNOME", where I 
identified a bunch of stuff which we needed to do for user groups, and 
then get the hell out of the way. User groups need to be bottom up 
phenomena, not top down. But co-ordination and centralisation of 
resources for redistribution can be top down. The things I indentified are:

Infrastructure:
 - We have a Sun T2000 server with space available for any user group 
who wants disk space, a web presence, etc. - donated to GNOME, currently 
used by GNOME Hispano, available for others
 - Event boxes - available on request "conference stand in a box".
 - Merchandising - we have a bulk agreement with a t-shirt producer, we 
have (or at least, had) a standing discount from a book publisher who 
has a couple of GNOME development books on their roster, and we have the 
ability to get GNOME mugs, badges, posters, ... With Zazzle, this will 
only improve. We sould be a central clearing house for buying & 
reselling GNOME merchandise. Look at what the FSF does in GUADEC, you'll 
see the model I would like us to follow. We also publish a large amount 
of content which people can re-use for printing merchandising - t-shirt 
designs, poster designs, sticker designs, LiveCD images of recent 
releases (through Foresight Linux) - although I don't believe 2.24 or 
2.26 every got the GNOME LiveCD treatment
 - User groups budget - a measure I encouraged in '06, a budget was 
made available to user groups for travel funding, advances for 
merchandising printed locally, ... This budget was undersubscribed when 
I was treasurer. It has been increased under the current board.
 - Wiki: Centralised space for people to co-ordinate, keep contact 
details for the GUG up to date. You pointed to the page.
 - Calendar, mailing list

So on the infrastructure side, we're mostly done.

What's left is motivating people and getting them organised, and that's 
not going to get done locally by one person. We need people locally to 
be contacting their local press, LUGs, universities, writing articles, 
giving demos, participating in conferences, and making all of the above 
easy with some nice generic material...

Cheers,
Dave.

--
Dave Neary
GNOME Foundation member
dneary gnome org