Re: Marketing, GNOME 3.0 and subteams

[Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron Sun COM>]

Sri:

> On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 12:48 PM, Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron sun com
> <mailto:Brian Cameron sun com>> wrote:
>
>     - Many public television, radio stations, etc. will play free ads
>       for non-profits.  Wouldn't it be interesting to put together some
>       advertisements that we could use to get the message out there?
>       While it would require some work to coordinate such things, the
>       cost would be low once the content was created.  Perhaps we could
>       find volunteers to help with creating the content as well.  Some
>       people who do graphic design or video work might be interested in
>       volunteering their time on a project that would receive a lot of
>       airplay and therefore be a boost their resume or portfolio.
>
> We had talked about a GNOME youtube channel I think that is still a good
> idea and I'm looking into how to work that in my copious spare time.

As you say, I think this is probably a bigger job than one person could
reasonably do.  Perhaps we should focus on developing the GNOME
Marketing team so that such big jobs can be shared by subgroups of
interested people, as Stormy suggested.

Right now, I think we are in brainstorm mode, but hopefully we can
narrow down these ideas to a reasonable set of things we could do.

>     Although GNOME Journal is a great way to get the message out there,
>     can't we do more to try and get the message out in more mainstream
>     press?  We are mostly preaching to the choir via GNOME Journal, I
>     think.
>
> I think GNOME Journal can still do this.  See the message previously in
> this thread regarding sharing articles with other magazines.  If we can
> land our articles in mainstream magazines that is going to be a big
> win.  Secondly, we have in fact had articles from GNOME Journal
> published in foreign language magazines I think in eastern europe if my
> memory serves.

That's great news.  Perhaps we should be asking ourselves what we have
done right in the past and see if we can use that information to build
upon such past successes.

>     For example, I have heard that it costs thousands of dollars to make
>     a Windows machine support the sorts of disabled users who get free
>     support in GNOME.  Perhaps an interesting marketing angle would be
>     to better highlight exactly the cost benefits of using GNOME.  How
>     much, exactly, do you save?  This might be of special interest to
>     U.S. organizations which need to meet Section 508 requirements of
>     the U.S. Disabilities Act.
>
>
> This is an excellent point.  Also, for developers we have gui testing
> tools that cost thousands of dollars in the windows world.  So that's
> another thing we can hype up.

Exactly.

>     A press team would be great, though I don't think we should limit such
>     a team to only think about the GNOME 3.0 roll-out.  There are a lot
>     of messages we could be better at communicating.  In the past year, for
>     example, GNOME hasn't been very good about participating in things like
>     the "Software Freedom Day" and other annual events that would benefit
>     from greater participation from the GNOME community.
>
> Only if there is interest.  We already seem to have problems doing
> things actionable here.

Yes, that is a significant problem.  Getting more people interested and
engaged in GNOME Marketing is perhaps job #1.

Brian