Re: GNOME publicity & marketing

[Thomas Wood <thos gnome org>]

Hi Karl,

Sadly you're not jumping in during a lively and/or interesting debate. 
In fact, it seems fairly rare to actually have a lively debate on this 
list! Probably something about the British reserve...

However, I agree whole heatedly with all your comments, and I suspect 
you saw my blog post today (for those who didn't: 
<http://blogs.gnome.org/view/thos/2007/06/06/0>). However, I think we 
have to be very careful how we market GNOME and what audience we aim 
at. Unfortunately (or otherwise), most of the marketing to new users 
and even existing users is done through and by the distributions. The 
support channels are then passed through the distributions so that at 
the end of the day people can use "Ubuntu" and "Fedora" and not even 
know (or care) what GNOME is.

And why should they? Their needs are all fulfilled by the 
distribution's support systems and community. What would we have to 
offer them? GNOME itself is not the end product that a user can pick up 
or download and use straight away.

Therefore, I wonder whether it would be more beneficial to the GNOME 
project if "GNOME Marketing" took on the role of attracting new 
contributors and developers. If we can do this by being at events such 
as LugRadio Live and turning users into contributors, then I think we 
will be doing well. The big question is how do we do it. We need a 
grass roots campaign that demonstrates how easy it is to get involved. 
The "Love/Hate" board is one method that I think really helps to engage 
people with the project. But we need more...

Is anyone going to LugRadio Live who would be interested in meeting up?

Regards,

Thomas