Re: Marketing Minutes December 13, 2012

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

Karen Sandler <karen gnome org> wrote:
...
>> I don't think it's actually that hard to figure out what we need to do to
>> improve the perception of GNOME and GNOME 3. There are lots of examples
>> that run contrary to the negative discourse that has been circulating -
>> you don't have to look far to find people who love GNOME 3, or to find
>> developers and designers who are receptive to feedback or who are doing
>> cool stuff.
>
> I love this - as I mentioned on a different thread, I'm working on putting
> together a series of interviews of GNOME users, starting with greggKH and
> Brett. Do you know of any other awesome folks we should feature?

I'm sure I could come up with a few names for you. I'll make some enquiries.

...
> Perhaps one thing we can do is put together a wish list of simple things
> we'd like to see done, sort of a GNOME love approach to marketing. That
> way when newcomers ask for things to do we have a whole list to choose
> from. We'd have to make it all things that are not very time sensitive,
> but even just listing articles or interviews we'd like to see written
> could be a good start.

I'd say that the key tasks look something like:

 * Ensuring that there's a steady stream of messages from the GNOME
social media channels
 * Regular posts on gnome.org
 * Monitoring of (and engagement with) blog comments, social media
sites and forums (we should have a list of sites we want to cover)
 * Semi-regular events (an announcement can be an event, so can the
completion of a new feature) - accompanied by press packs

Having a check list of what needs to be done every week (and perhaps
every month) could be a good start, perhaps with a way for people to
record when they've taken care of something. This would help
contributors get started and would also be a way for us to evaluate
our performance. It could also be a good basis for regular meetings
(less strategy, more tactics).

...
>> One possible way we could help with this would be
>> to invite designers and developers to come and speak to the marketing
>> crew as a part of regular meetings (I'd be happy to help organise that).
...
> We talked at this meeting about inviting designers and developers to our
> calls maybe on a monthly basis. If you wanted to help organize that it
> would be awesome!

My idea was to have the guest talk about what they have been working
on, and then answer questions from our marketing contributors. One of
the objectives would be to create opportunities for marketing
contributors to find stories to write about. Another would be to help
them establish contacts with the development community.

>> What do others think? What can we do to grow the GNOME outreach effort?
>
> Our actual outreach efforts (mostly around OPW and GSoC) have been really
> successful, maybe we need to highlight that more too? I don't think we
> ever really did anything with the materials that were prepared at GUADEC
> even by the newcomers...

Sorry, "outreach" was the wrong word to use there. I should have said
marketing... I meant community outreach as community relations, not
new contributor programmes.

Allan