Re: Summary of responses to round one questions about 3.0

[Hylke Bons <hylkebons gmail com>]

How does "Seth, who we had [...]" and "No one from Shell replied.
[...]" align with "Please know that I will make every attempt to keep
your answer in confidence"?

Hylke

On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 11:25 AM, Dave Neary <dneary gnome org> wrote:
> Hi Jason,
>
> Jason D. Clinton wrote:
>> Out of 9 attendees who blogged on the UX Hackfest and were emailed, 5
>> responded. The email sent was the following:
>>
>>     I am writing you this email on behalf of the GNOME Marketing
>>     Committee and because you were a UX Hackfest attendee.
>>
>>     The GNOME Marketing Committee is deeply concerned about the
>>     coherence of our message to the public about what the 3.0 release
>>     will be. Up until the UX Hackfest, that message was coherent: GNOME
>>     Shell with deep integration with presence management and time-based
>>     file management. Now, the Committee does not know what to tell the
>>     public. The Committee has empowered me to gather opinions about what
>>     attendees believe will be in 3.0.
>>
>>     Please answer the following four questions by one week from the time
>>     of this writing. Feel free to make your answer as short as you
>>     please: a one sentence answer is sufficient. Please know that I will
>>     make every attempt to keep your answer in confidence; however, I
>>     will provide a summary of the opinions of all attendees to the
>>     Committee.
>
> Are you sur you couldn't have sounded a bit more formal???
>
> The language is a bit intimidating & impersonal, no? "deeply concerned",
> "The Committee has empowered me", "Please answer the following questions
> by one week from the time of writing"...
>
> I just wonder if it wouldn't have been more inducive to creating a
> longer-lasting relationship with the designers to say something like:
>
> "Hi!
>
> I noticed that you were at the UX hackfest & blogged about it. The
> marketing team met recently, and we were wondering if any of what has
> come out of the UX hackfest will get implemented for GNOME 3.0, if
> you're working on refining any designs & getting them implemented, or
> whether they're still in the ideas stage. We've noticed expectations
> growing about what will be delivered in 3.0 since the hackfest, and we
> just want to make sure that the expectations stal aligned with reality.
>
> Would you mind answering a few questions to help us out, please?"
>
> Followed by questions about what the person you're emailing is doing,
> and with whom, rather than general questions about the features in the
> product, and how that mighht relate to previously uinanticipated
> features in GNOME 3.0.
>
> I'm just wondering whether response rate & answer quality & usefulness
> might have improved with a friendlier email.
>
> Cheers,
> Dave.
>
> --
> Dave Neary
> GNOME Foundation member
> dneary gnome org
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