Re: Pre-release marketing and community management [Was: getting www.gnome3.org]

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

Sriram Ramkrishna wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 8:41 AM, Dave Neary <dneary gnome org> wrote:
>         Hi,
>         
>         Stormy Peters wrote:
>         > It seems like we need two things:
>         > 1) a website to speak to the world (our our community) about
>         GNOME 3.0 -
>         
>         > that's gnome3.org <http://gnome3.org>
>         > 2) a place for all those interested in helping with
>         community management
>         > to share stories and ideas - is that this list?
>         
>         
>         Just to avoid a Vizzini & Inigo Montoya moment later on [1],
>         can I just
>         ask: what do people here mean when they talk about "community
>         management"?
>
>
> I think in this case, we want to be a buffer between devs and
> enthusiasts.  In general, I want to address the frustration devs feel
> with having to continually defend design decisions by people who fear
> change.  By continuing to address them and to focus on positive
> aspects of the Gnome shell design.  In addition, we can also perhaps
> turn shrill user enthusiasts to hopefully people who will contribute
> positively.
>
> But my motivation is really to get people off devs back so that they
> can focus on getting the design done.  And since you decide to give a
> video response. I have one in turn. :-)

Personally speaking, I'd add a few other ambitions:

 * Ensuring that those from outside the project have a positive
experience when they come into contact with GNOME. A bit more
micromanagement here would help our public relations, I think.

 * Communicating and explaining the direction of the project. 3 dot oh
involves some big changes and our community would benefit from some
positive messages in that regard.

Do those sound useful? 

Also: GNOME 3 is going to be met with criticism. We don't know how much,
but there's definitely going to be some. Sri made a really good point to
me the other day - we need well-rehearsed and effective responses to
those criticisms, and this kind of community management is an
opportunity to identify and rehearse those arguments. Maybe we could
work together to produce some kind of PR play sheet? Or would that be
taking things too far?

Allan
-- 
Blog: http://afaikblog.wordpress.com/
IRC: aday on irc.gnome.org