Re: Disruptive Question | Merchandising

[Nelson Marques <07721 ipam pt>]

Quoting Diego Escalante Urrelo <diegoe gnome org>:

Hi Diego,

> Hey Nelson,
>
> El mar, 02-02-2010 a las 21:26 +0000, Nelson Marques escribió:
>
> >  Establishing the "personality" of the brand is essential for all
> > merchandise, in fact, for all projects GNOME related. I hope people
> > don't take this as an "attack from bureaucrats", but getting this lines
> > thought over now is nice and will help in future projects and to
> > position our brand correctly.
>
> Maybe you want to check this links, it's not directly brand personality
> stuff but perhaps you can get some view of what was done before, as far
> as I remember, we haven't updated these in a while, my memory is not
> cooperating [sidenote: maybe we should have a timestamp in that
> licensing page].:
>         http://foundation.gnome.org/licensing/index.html
>         http://live.gnome.org/Trademark

I will take a look on it.

> We actually don't have something set in sacred stone or bureaucratic,
> don't worry we (as Project and as Foundation) are always open to new
> ideas ;-).
>
> >  I've got a couple of things to propose to this list, need just some
> > time to make a paper presentation for them, so we can develop some
> > concepts.
>
> This is great, any suggestion is always welcomed. And it's awesome that
> you decided to start contributing so quickly :-).

 The things I would like to propose are the following, I can state them now, but
I will later on place a written document following the key details that should
be interesting for everyone.

 - Develop a set of tools to help us establishing some real numbers. A platform
where we can submit queries for our users and everyone else related to GNOME. We
need to extract lots of data, such as:

 # Most accurate as possible number of GNOME installations. To be sub-divided by
platform (Solaris, Linux generic, linux specific, *BSD, etc), by architecture
(IA32/86, Sparc, RISC, Alpha, etc).
 # What people use GNOME mainly for... home, work, develop, multimedia, etc.
 # Components most used, etc.

 If we can collect all the relevant data, we can prepare campaigns that aim
directly to the goal established by the Foundation, or even prepare a massive
campaign marketing driven. Remember that if such platform is developed, our most
relevant project, as any other GNOME related project can use it... where our
developers can also query users (imagine on a new release) about features,
eye-candy, whatever they need to dig. We can even outsource it when it's mature
enough to grab some $ for the Foundation. As for us within Marketing, getting a
more accurate inview of our users will allow us to take action on strategical
matters. People, the markets are changing a lot, and there's a lot that will
need to be done, by preparing us before hand we will have a better opportunity
to strike back with innovation and go directly headed to what our users want.

 - About the Brand... we need to position it, to check what are the things that
can be related with the GNOME Philosophy, and work towards that goal. Let's
imagine we position our brand as an ecological supporting brand. This means that
we could allow our merchandise to be bio-degradable and meet ecological criteria
to be defined. We won't sell merchandise that takes 500 years to be processed
and recycled ;). We have a set of values... we make our campaigns based on this
set of values, like "freedom" for instance. 

 - Develop a signed signature for GNOME Distributions. Lets suppose we do so,
whenever a GNOME Help panel or System Properties opens, it displays a logo
different, imagine like this:
 
 # Gnome 2.28 - Red Hat
 # Gnome 2.28 - OpenSUSE
 # Gnome 2.28 - ATI Enhanced (if ATI drivers are present)
 # Gnome 2.28 - Ubuntu - nVIDIA Enhanced (if nvidia drivers are present)

 This means actually nothing usefull for GNOME, but with such a campaign, we are
associating our brands with user known brands. We can launch campaign where
hardware suppliers and distribution brands can distribute a digitally signed
version of GNOME identifying them with our product. This can useful in the
"Friends of GNOME" philosophy ;)
 Hopefully we can stimulate as well hardware developers to make linux opensource
drivers so they get correctly ID'ed on GNOME Panels through a digital signature
GNOME can provide. Eventually, we can extend this signatures to other things,
like distribution channels. Lets say someone installs a openSuSE distro
downloaded from the openSuSE mirror in Portugal. When you open your System
Properties, YaST or whatever you get the GNOME digital signatures presented like:

 GNOME 3.0 - OpenSuSE XX
 Distributed by: Mirror NAME.

 Through this, we can probably try to get more people distributing iso's for us
and thus supporting us. 


> >  I'll be keeping people updated on what I'm doing, then submit the info
> > to the list, discuss, work, re-work if needed, submit to whoever calls
> > the shots and implement.
>
> Cool!, also feel free to ask in the list for a small brainstorm session
> or just a meeting to discuss some ideas you are drafting. There was a
> meeting recently, but surely there's people available and interested to
> sit down and chat for a while if you want.
>
> Thanks for this and welcome!

 Yeah, we have to do that, and I would suggest that we create a small task force
envolving the following:

 - Someone who represents the Marketing Team
 - Someone who represents the GNOME Foundation
 - Someone who represents the main developers
 - IT Specialists on several fields: Web Development, Software Development,
Database Administration, etc
 - Public Relations/Communications representant
 - Someone who knows about licensing (maybe ask FSF for an advisor)

 With such task force, we can actually start working on tools we need; start
getting people in touch so that we all work for the same goals and eventually
create a strong link between GNOME and it's developers.

 If we move to start writting tools, having such a task force would be great,
for intance:

 Marketing Team plans to develop a tool (lets assume the same I proposed for
queries). Developers can decide what is the best technology to be used (if we
need to create a new format, licensing consultants can advice a lot here),
Database experts can help on DB implementation and work with licencing people to
take the best choices. Public Relations for press releases... We can then work
on a paper establishing all the stuff we need, the technology we going to use,
licensing stuff that meets GNOME's Foundation criteria, and then launch the
challenge to the community and pray that some developers have time to make it
happen according to the specs the Task Force decided.

 I will be attending next meeting once I sort out the time difference between my
location and the scheduled time.
 As you might imagine, only one of those ideas, is time consuming to develop,
and this takes some time, but I'm giving it a go. You can flame me, but I'm so
much used to Microsoft Office, and I'm trying to present this on a  document
(.odf) made on OpenOffice ;) So it's an extra barrier I have to fight through,
and this one is time consuming... If I get bored with OpenOffice, I'll go the
old way LateX.

 Thanks,

 Nelson.