Re: Marketing, GNOME 3.0 and subteams

[Paul Cutler <pcutler foresightlinux org>]

On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 11:48 AM, Claus Schwarm <clschwarm googlemail com> wrote:

Paul,

I'm glad you like it.  :-)

But I have to disagree in one point: After about four years on this list, I do not think, teams will work. I'd prefer to have managers (or maintainers if you like): people that have the balls to commit, deal with stuff, make decisions, and have fun while doing so.

Thus, I'd suggest the following: The board should decide who's going to manage the whole thing, a single person who's making the decisions. Looks like you already applied for the job. ;-) I just warn you that it'll be much work.

I have a lot of passion and excitement to see us put a plan together for GNOME 3.0.  Consider me signed up.  :)   (Or at least to get things organized and going).
 

I also suggest to keep the following organization of the campaign confidential and private (I believe the wiki is able to have privat pages for certain user groups.) Let's keep everyone out who's not committed to invest time and energy into it. Let's just get things done.

I struggled with this idea though of confidentiality - to me at least, it seems contrary to the idea of an open source project. 
 

For the creative part, I suggest we simply make something like a pitch. Everyone who believes to have the GREATEST idea for the GNOME3 campaign EVER should make a presentation of the idea. (Of course, the above idea is MINE so hopefully nobody dares to copy it.)

Presentations will be sent to the board so they can choose which one they want if any. They are not allowed to make rejected presentations public. They are not allowed to mix elements from different presentations without consent. (After all, they are copyrighted.) They should also decide about the amount of money we're allowed to spend (Maybe presentations should have a sort of expense plan, too).

So, effectively, the manager gets a "creative director" for the creative part.

I think you hit on two great points - the idea above about getting things done, and the idea of a pitch.  I love the idea of individuals or small teams creating their pitch idea and presenting it out.  I have to admit I'm concerned that no one in the last couple of days since this email has spoken up wanting to do a pitch too though.

We use the next meeting of the GNOME board as a deadline. If there's no meeting planned, let's make the deadline in two or three weeks.

If the board won't commit, I see no reason why I should. My time is valuable to me.

If Stormy and board members are OK with that, it's probably useful to make a separate announcement on this list (and maybe even elsewhere). This thread got so crowded, it's hard to keep overview.

The winning presentation will be sent to the marketing list so people can pick tasks, join the team, or add tasks if they are committed to manage them. It's probably also useful to sent an announcement about the winning presentation to developers (and maybe the public) so they can join in for technical tasks.

That would be my suggestion. Reactions? Comments?

Best Regards,
Claus

 To follow up on Stormy's earlier email, we also need to define a strategy.  Without that, I don't know how many of the pitches or marketing ideas would be successful without that.

Does anyone else have any recommendations or thoughts?  Any feedback on Claus' idea of jumping in and starting to work on a plan as individuals or small groups?  Or should we as a larger group brainstorm and discuss some of the buckets of work?  Either way, my goal would be to start working on a marketing calendar that lays out the different marketing vehicles and when we want to use them, as we build an actionable plan.  These things can be done in parallel to building the marketing messages and strategy.

Paul

<snip>