Santiago, I',m sure you can think of the context of your response to Linus. - As a Marketing Team we haven't sent an official response to anybody, e la nave va. - Starting precisely with a high profile like Linus is risky. A wrong step from our side can be magnified by someone with access to the media like him. - This action being done by someone who is not a high profile in the GNOME community is also risky. So you or me send this email. Linus responds with a complete answer. What do you do, follow yourself the debate in the name of the GNOME community? Start a debate here everytime you need to answer him? Any reply has a risk of being controversial even inside the GNOME community (see planet.gnome.org for more reference). - Now think that Linus comes with some very reasonable arguments that would imply changes in he way GNOME work as a product and as a developers community. Are you in a position to reply Linus "you are right here and we will address this mistake"? What is the real power you or the entire Marketing Team has to change wrong things inside GNOME? For all these reasons it is clear to me that any official answer coming from GNOME must be generated by a high profile trusted and listened by the board, a body that as explicitely the responsibility of speak on behalf the GNOME project and community. It's a pain and we could do it far better, I know. But the solution is not sending an email to a prominent user, but to stablish the mechanisms to deal properly with prominent rants like this. It's a longer way, leading ot a solution. Sending an email is a shorter way to... a completely unclear destination. En/na Santiago Roza ha escrit: > - our brand's image isn't too big of a deal, and we should just stay > arms crossed if people trashes it in public with inaccurate > statements. Work building a public voice mechanism for GNOME. I think the gnome.org homepage is the obvious place for this, or at least should be a main channel to rebate publicly inaccurate statements. Once you have a proper channel of public communication you will be strong when dealing with private communications such as an email sent to a prominent potential user. > - external communications, no matter how polite and non-controversial, > are a waste of time because they aren't "constructive". Sorry mate, but you (or me) sending an email to Linus discused only here in less than 24h is not that constructive to the GNOME project and community, not even to ourselves. This shot aready caught us, constructivism is to build a system to dal with future shots to come. > - trying to take advantage of a particular event that hurt our brand, > in order to "repair" it in public, is another waste of time. Nobody is saying we donpt want to repair this. The point is precisely if this email signed by GNOME helps to repair, or it will end up breaking more things (which is my main fear and why I'm writing these lines at 5.53am when I actually woke up to do some work to be delivered this morning. > that's such an innovative approach on marketing! so innovating it > contradicts everything i've ever been taught in college, and > everything i've ever read... so i guess it must be way better. Remember it's not about marketing but about marketing strategy. And "strategy" is what I miss in you proposal, as I'm trying to expose with a several bunch of arguments. Your proposal would fit better in a stronger marketing strategy if you would be convincing us to make your text or an improved version of it be sent by Luis, Jeff, Miguel, Owen or one of the high profiles in our community, able to nock Linus' door with a real possibility to start a dialogue and repair in GNOME whatever needs to be improved if the results of this dialoge show we could improve things. > these are the times when i finallly understand why we are incapable of > doing anything more complex (marketing-wise) than plain meaningless > advertising. As I said, help building the channels of communication the Marketing Team can control with authority, recognition and representation inside the GNOME project. Like for instance direct access mechanisms to publish GNOME announcements and responses in gnome.org. Sending an email to Linus sounds like building the house from the roof, which is not the best approach to the marketing strategy we need. Besides, I'm not saying yiu shouldn't send this message to Linus and all the websites you wish. I'm only saing you shouldn't include GNOME in your signature. If the contents of your message are convincing, linus and the others will be equally convinced. If the message is less convincing because it isn't signed by GNOME, the true is that today you can't (nor me) speak to Linus or whoever in the name of GNOME. And we won't change this on a rushed late night debate. Sorry if I can't continue with this thread, a deadline is byting my butt. -- Quim Gil - http://desdeamericaconamor.org
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature