Re: about gnome3 dev marketing

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

Juanjo Marin wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I think is a good idea to improve the GNOME marketing for developers.
> Obviously, what developers really appreciate is documentation, and the
> documentation team is working hard on this area. I think is especially
> interesting the set of 10-minute-tutorials they are working on [1].
>
> However, I think that form the marketing point of view, the situation
> can be improved a lot. 
>
> This presentation from Alberto Ruiz in 2008' GUADEC has very good valid
> points about GTK+ marketing [2], which is the best/only known GNOME
> technology for outsiders. I think this is very important because GTK+ is
> receiving bad comments from people. Our collegues are working hard
> turning GTK+3 into a very good piece of software and we must push it.
>
> I think we must also to improve awareness of other GNOME technologies,
> but because we must start from something, I think that GTK+ is the most
> straigh-forward way. The key point from the marketing point of view is
> unify the brand and websites of certified GTK+ bindings.

I don't think we can solve the entire platform marketing strategy in
time for 3.0 (it would be great to work on that in the future, of
course). It would be awesome to have some developer focused materials in
the GNOME 3 marketing, though. Our platform has received a lot of work;
we should be showing that off. Also, showing the extent of the changes
in GNOME 3 will reinforce the impression that it is a substantial
release (we don't want people to think that it is purely cosmetic).

For now, a concise set of messages which describe the improvements in
the GNOME 3 platform would be enough. I can imagine these falling into
two broad categories:

 * Ways GNOME 3 will enable devs to create better software (where better
means: richer, faster, more portable, more attractive...)

 * Ways it will be easier to make software for the GNOME 3 platform
(where easier might mean faster, easier to maintain, less
error-prone...)

I know very little about this stuff, but I can already think of some
examples:

 * Faster application startup thanks to dconf

 * Easier visual styling thanks to CSS-based GTK+ theming

 * Massive platform cleanup for a quicker, smoother, more intuitive
developer experience

If someone could put together a set of notes with other key examples of
how the platform has been improved, I'd be happy to write them up for
gnome3.org.

Best,

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