Re: Pulling this together...

[Sriram Ramkrishna <sri aracnet com>]

I'm trying to figure out how a simple set of questions on audience
turned into this. :-)

This stuff will take time.  I'm in no hurry to get them all accomplished.
It took us 7 years or more to get GNOME to the point where it's nearly
as good as NT.  So marketing is going be the same.

I'm not going to answer most of what you've stated because I think
solutions will reveal themselves as we move forward.  My opinion on
projects is simply this:

  if you got an idea that you think would work and you have the time
  and motivation to start a project like the Science CD and are willing
  to convince to work on it then nobody is going to stop you.  Do it!

Marketing projects need to be de-centralized because we work in a
decentralized community.  So I'm not going to sweat about GNOME
Science CD becuase if someone has sufficient motivation it will
happen. Look no further than GNOME Journal for an example.

What I am concerned about it is:

* We know who we are marketing to
* We have freely available resources that people have easy access to
* We have good foundation to help those who want to start marketing projects.

I'm approaching GNOME Marketing like it's a microcosm of GNOME
Development.  Because thats the only way it's going to work.  Projects
are headed by people who want to do them.

A loose overall strategy is required but other than that it's really up
to volunteers to come up with things they want to do and we'll figure
out what works and what doesn't.


sri

On Fri, Oct 22, 2004 at 04:47:14PM +0200, Claus Schwarm wrote:
> It will take years.
> 
> For example, just consider the GNOME Science CD: We'd need somebody to
> organize the local national groups, we'd need somebody to talk to the
> local national groups maintainers, we'd need somebody to talk to other
> application maintainers for eventual ports or updates of their
> applications, we'd need several people to organize the different GNOME
> love projects, we'd need somebody to organize eventual press releases,
> we'd need somebody to talk to companies if we can expect sponsering,
> we'd need somebody to do the artwork, etc.
> 
> And although this is not even considered yet, we have already two
> parties discussing which distribution the LiveCD should be build on!
> 
> But maybe it would make more sense to ask some of the local
> distributions it they are willing to do a local copy of a GNOME Science CD?
> Maybe it would make sense to ask Mandrake, for example, to do the french
> GNOME Science CD ? As far as I know, they are using Perl-GTK for their
> installation routine, so maybe they are willing to do a special CD
> featuring GNOME and the science software we suggested.
> 
> What about a proper installer? The point of the project is to get on
> people's harddrives to be used! In the best of all world, an installer
> encourages to do a data backup, lets users partion the harddisk in a
> friendly way, configures all hardware, looks for existing mail,
> bookmarks, adressbooks, and converts them after the install.
> 
> If we made it onto the peoples harddisk, what software will people be
> able to install in a friendly manner? Who's going to teach several
> thousand people worldwide the "./configure && make && make install" or
> "apt-cache search && apt-get install" way ?
> 
> What about support ? Do we expect users to figure out which mailing list
> is right for their problems ? Are we going to accept feature requests
> and future development discussion on gnome-devel ? Or do we expect
> people to set up blogs for getting heard ?
> 
> What about all the information we don't have yet? Which faculties do
> exists in different countries? What organizations do exists in
> universities? When do their studies start? Which software do new
> students need in their first years?
> 
> Which media can we talk to for national promotion? Do mailing lists
> exists for the different sciences, and can we ask questions about
> software, there? Are there dedicated web pages, forums, etc. to ask or
> announce the project?
> 
> What can we do to keep the Mono enthusiasts busy, so that they don't
> keep on reinventing the wheel but add additional utility ?
> 
> Who's going to talk to the KDE guys so that they adress a seperate
> target audience? I'm not convinced that they will watch silently if we
> really do this.
> 
> The nice thing about the project is that it uncovers all the marketing
> problems GNOME got right now.  ;)
> 
> And most of these questions would arise, too if we'd switch target
> audiences. Seems to me, we still have a few weeks to get the foundation
> right. No need to hurry. :)
> 
> 
> Claus
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