Re: Friends of GNOME campaign

[Bryen M Yunashko <a11yrocks bryen com>]

On Wed, 2012-04-18 at 01:22 +0200, Oliver Propst wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 5:32 AM, Karen Sandler <karen gnome org> wrote:
> > hi all,
> >
> > We've had the accessibility campaign up for a while, and I'm going to post
> > a new item about it this week (pointing to Diego's story -
> > http://www-old.gnome.org/friends/a11y-testimonial-2.html) but I think it's
> > time to start looking ahead.
> >
> > What do we think the next campaign should be? And when should we ideally
> > launch it? (While giving full consideration to running the current
> > campaign for the right amount of time.)
> >
> > karen
> >
> > --
> > marketing-list mailing list
> > marketing-list gnome org
> > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
> 
> Maybe the current campaign should continue until GNOME ASIA in the
> beginning/middle of June. The next campaign could start in end of
> July/the beginning of August and continue through the fall to November
> and in December we can lunch a Christmas/New Year campaign.
> 
> The end of July/ beginning of August are a good time to start a new
> campaign because the GNOME project usually get some press attention
> around that time because of
> GUADEC and the upcoming release in September.
> 
> Here are a few suggestions of themes for a new campaign.
> 
> Website/infrastructure campaign.
> One resource that many GNOME users and contributors take for granted
> are the websites and infrastructure that support the GNOME project in
> various way. In the marketing meeting we had back in October it was
> stated that the website/infrastructure was not in ideal shape
> (http://goo.gl/eB0um). I know that the past months great progress have
> been made with the websites (foundation website migration to new
> design).
> 

I'm not sure this would be effective for a campaign.  Yes you raise
valid points about why we could use additional funds to cover
infrastructure, but from a human-appeal POV, I don't think a campaign
about web infrastructure is going to make someone dig into their pockets
to donate, unless they happen to be close to GNOME already.  This
campaign would leave out those who might donate out of a basic human
appeal.

> A campaign to raise money for website/infrastructure work could also
> be a good way to raise awareness about the GNOME infrastructure. The
> money collected could be used to improve the website/infrastructure
> and finish outstanding website projects (mention of
> the projects are in meeting minutes).
> 
> 
> Developer documentation campaign
> If the GNOME project are to succeed it is important that great apps
> are available and
> if want we want developers to write great apps for GNOME it is
> important that they have access to good developer documentation
> (including examples). While the developer documentation are not that
> bad today, I think it could be much better. When I look at the
> developer documentation I get the feeling that there are certain
> 'gaps' that need to be filled, certain topics needed to be explained
> in greater detail and we need to provide more code examples &
> tutorials. The money collected could be used to “fill the the gaps”
> and construct examples/tutorials.
> Tagline: "Help make great GNOME 3 apps possible"
> "Good developers want good documentation, help make it possible"
> 

I love this idea.  Only one problem, money raised != documentation
written.  Just because we've raised the money doesn't mean we'll get
developers to document or at the very least collaborate on
documentation.  People are going to want to know their money was
actually put to good use and if 1 year from the end of campaign we still
have same level of documentaiton quality, people are not going to
forgive us the next time we ask for money.  :-)

> Anjuta IDE campaign
> As well as it is important for developers to have access to good
> documentation it is important for all GNOME developers that do non
> trivial programming to have access to a great IDE. As I understand it,
> the official GNOME IDE Anjuta are missing features from a modern state
> of the art IDE, look a bit outdated and have old non trivial bugs that
> need to be resolved. A campaign could raise money to help fix these
> issues.
> Tagline: "Ease the life for GNOME developers"
> “Help make it easy and enjoyable to develop for GNOME”
> 

This would be a viable campaign.  Not sure if it would be exciting to
the masses, but it spears two benefits:  1)  Raise money for Anjuta and
2) Raise awareness about the existence of Anjuta.   Anyone who sees
"Anjuta" will ask  "Gee, what's that?" and investigate a bit more
(hopefully.)

> In general I think the upcoming campaign should aim at making the life
> easier for GNOME developers and thus make it easier to contribute to
> GNOME.
> 
> -- 
> -Mvh Oliver Propst