Re: Getting marketing-list going again..

[Sebastien Biot <seb viralata net>]

Sriram Ramkrishna wrote:
> I thought I would (with a little help from Luis) attempt to get 
> marketing list and see if we can come up with a good strategy to market
> GNOME to all those people who we KNOW want to use it. :-)
>
> Comments, thoughts?

There are so many issues to discuss (target markets and segments, 
distributions, positioning...) and I have an informed opinion on so few 
of them that I'll only mention one: promotion.

I was surprised to see how little press we got when 2.8 came out. I 
could easily blame Ubuntu of course for stealing GNOME's thunder but I 
won't. ;-) Anyway it got me thinking about how we could more effectively 
communicate with the world outside the GNOME and FOSS communities.

I'd like to propose, and I do volunteer for this, the following two 
tasks to the group. I believe they are essential components to our 
marketing initiative.

First, we have to get much better at communicating with the press. Since 
this is at least partially the Foundation's responsibility I think we 
should support its efforts by creating a press kit and a reviewer's 
guide. (Liam Quin already suggested the creation of the latter a few 
months ago). We should make it extremely easy to write and talk about 
GNOME. Until we figure out more elaborate means to communicate this is 
probably the most effective way to get started marketing GNOME.

Second, we have to better support volunteers representing the project at 
conferences and trade shows. Here I propose that we inventory and update 
all our promotional material (pamphlets, presentations, posters, etc.) 
so as to make it easy for those volunteers to make professional looking 
material available to the public. I have actually started some of that work.

I'm glad to see the marketing list revived. There's a lot to do and I'm 
very much ready to lend a hand. As I stated earlier, I recognize that 
some of the issues surrounding marketing GNOME are quite complex and 
while I'll happily join the discussion around those topics, for the time 
being, I'll be content concentrating on those tasks I outlined.

--
Sebastien Biot - www.viralata.net
         "mus in pice"