Re: How do we want to do GNOME Marketing?

[Joachim Noreiko <jnoreiko yahoo com>]

--- Dave Neary <dneary free fr> wrote:
> Joachim Noreiko wrote:

> > That's something we need 'glue-people' for --
> > developers who are on several teams or hop between
> > them.
> 
> 'Glue people' is exactly how I would characterise
> good marketers. The
> message is the reflection of what the company
> employees believe in, the
> evolutions of the product are the reflection of what
> the market wants,
> and in both cases, the marketing team is the mirror.

Right. I hadn't thought of that as part of the
marketing team's job. I saw marketing as really just
publicity -- but fair enough :)
It strikes me as the sort of thing that would be quite
easy if all gnome developers were in the same building
-- just lots of coffee ;) -- but as we're scattered
all over, it's actually quite a task. (So it isn't
surprising that we're not doing very well at it.)

> > Isn't it desktop-devel-list's job? Or if not them,
> > who?
> 
> I saw Mr. List last week - he's going to be taking
> some time off to take
> care of the second baby, and he just changed jobs.
> So the vacancy's there.

Sorry, you've lost me there ...?
  
> The applications have perhaps not been revolutionary
> in their change
> recently, but the platform's been making leaps &
> bounds. We haven't been
> doing particularly well communicating that, yet.

Actually, it's not revolutionary change in
applications that think we need.
Off the top of my head, the things that I would like
to see happen are:

- Implementation of the new revamp of Metacity window
types. There's a specification waiting on the wiki.
That'll then need a fair amount of work across lots of
apps and a lot of communication.
- Reintegrate searching across the desktop -- give
Nautilus search its second coat of polish, figure out
what to do with the old filesearch tool which now
seems out of date and incongruous, and figure out how
Deskbar fits in with all that -- it should all appear
to be one coherent thing, instead of several different
interfaces jostling for space in the feature landscape
- Do a new spec for the notification area, and decide
what it's for, which apps should use it and which
should not.
- Project Mallard! ;)

None of those are especially sexy. 
But if they happen, I'm sure the publicity arm of the
marketing team can make them sound good :)
And some will definitely require some herding, or
gentle pointing at least.

> > A long-term roadmap like that would be a good
> start.
> 
> I agree, and it's our job (as the connective tissue)
> to try to spot
> patterns in the chaos, and federate those efforts
> into movements. Think
> of la résistance during the second world war as a
> model. We need a Jean
> Moulin to make links between the groups. We don't
> necessarily need a
> General de Gaulle to inspire everyone - we have,
> after all, got RMS.

I guess I'm waiting for someone with the required
seniority and karma to get things going :)


		
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