BOSTON 2004

  • Marketingnotes - Thoughts on Guerilla Marketing.

Some conclusion-y type bits:

MarketingTodo

MarketingTODO more concrete:

  • figure out what core message is
  • from core messages, create material/massage existing material where available:
    • refine 5 word description
    • refine 25 word description
    • presentations (varied for various markets)
  • GnomeMarketing/TalkingPoints(newer) for interviews

    • use the venn diagram of products/markets to refine/rank/group these highlights:
    • GPL/LGPL
    • ease of use
    • existing deployments
    • binary compat
    • release schedule
    • localization
    • standards (aka fd.o, etc.)
  • create focuses for release notes
  • compile list of existing deployments [starting list here: http://www.gnomedesktop.org/article.php?sid=1625 ]

rough:

  • 'cheat' on describing ourselves- piggy back on Linux marketing- go for the throat, say 'GNOME is the (Leading?) Linux Desktop' :)

  • must have a news pipeline into lwn/linuxtoday
  • need to have press releases ready- hasn't happened reliably in several releases (preps pipeline to eWeek, etc.)
  • need to be better prepared for TechnicalConferences (also trade shows, slightly distinct but related)

    • need better materials, including GNOME Branded live CD to give out
    • need identified people who can go talk, with pre-cooked materials/slides/etc.
    • need technical conference kit- if there is a local conference, how can I do a GNOME booth? No way of knowing- barrier to entry is high. [Make people comfortable talking about GNOME even if they aren't comfortable.]
  • push our actual deployments better- hollywood, spain, etc., and our ISVs- Real, VMWare, etc.- need to create list
    • need to get better docs, and prioritize doc resources towards most important APIs/tasks for ISVs
    • also want outreach- 'hey, you can make your app more gnome-y'
    • they want to understand the benefits of using our platform
  • put planet/gnomedesktop/journal on front page www.gnome.org links, maybe with filters for curse words on blog topics ;-)

  • 'GoToMarket team' ;-) needs leadership, ideally involvement of RH, Sun, Novell, Canonical as well

  • for ISVs and code contributors- need to help get folks focused on docs- this really limits the impact increased marketing can have, until we have more docs to talk about/point people at
  • work to develop translatable marketing materials for LocalGroups which can be used to market to governments, schools, etc. for PublicDeployments

  • To help ISVs PotentialContributors and OtherOpenSourceProjectsWhoNeedToIntegrateWithGNOME whitepapers(?) on the value of

    • important to market to projects like Firefox and OpenOffice, convince them to work with our standards/technologies/etc. (or freedesktop when appropriate)

    • almost completely in alignment with ISVs needs, probably- biggest difference is that on the one hand you say 'see, firefox and openoffice are working towards our standards' and that on the other hand you work with firefox/ooo/real to get even closer to/more involved in our standards
    • we have http://www.gnome.org/~newren/tutorials/developing-with-gnome/html/

  • need live CD for conferences, media, etc.- imagine being able to send CDs of 2.7.9 to eWeek, etc.
  • include LocalGroups action items

    • in large parts, this blocks on the success of creating active local groups- country-by-country basis- this is happening organically (spain, germany, others)
    • foundation needs to provide guidelines, assistance to per-country groups- this is very in line with the goals/structure of the GNOME Foundation (as a non-profit) potential ActionItems:

    • identify regions
    • open dialog with existing UGs, not just potential/existing GNOME groups
    • translate marketing materials

TargetMarkets

TargetMarkets segments:

  • PotentialContributors (inc. Developers, bugs, doc writers, etc., etc., etc.)

  • ISVs and other developers

  • LinuxDistros

    • Want them to better support (and market?) GNOME
    • we would rather have distros make GNOME the default and never mention GNOME than say 'we ship GNOME... and KDE'
    • want to increase communication- 'why did distros change $FOO'
    • if we made customization of branding easier for distros, might make them frendlier to us, and perhaps more accepting of the remaining GNOME feet (also useful for PublicDeployments and EnterpriseCustomers ) (particularly useful for smaller distros, who would appreciate branding but have no manpower)

    • GNOME can feel like a RH/Novell duopoly; need to reassure other vendors that this isn't an exclusive game
  • EnterpriseCustomers (enterprise-y, mostly)

  • PublicDeployments (governments, mostly?)

    • need better contact with public deployments in spain (linex)- contacting is hard, need local contacts who are close to the public decision makers in a locale
    • government projects will be huge in near future- come in huge chunks of desktops, and make big splash when they land
    • needs active LocalGroups

  • !OtherOpenSourceProjectsWhoNeedToIntegrateWithGNOME
    • important to market to projects like Firefox and OpenOffice, convince them to work with our standards/technologies/etc. (or freedesktop when appropriate)

    • almost completely in alignment with ISVs needs, probably- biggest difference is that on the one hand you say 'see, firefox and openoffice are working towards our standards' and that on the other hand you work with firefox/ooo/real to get even closer to/more involved in our standards
    • we have http://www.gnome.org/~newren/tutorials/developing-with-gnome/html/

questions:

  • KDEOrg has good groups for 'business-oriented KDE' and 'Klassroom' and things like that, we could maybe help create groups that identify their own markets, and pursue/market to them- depends on interest, though

KDEOrg

  • 5 Word Description: 'KDE is a powerful Free Software graphical desktop environment for Linux and Unix workstations.'
  • google says KDE has ~50% more stories on linuxtoday than GNOME does, and my sense is that this gap is increasing * google says I lied about lwn- roughly same number in last three months
  • must have a news pipeline into lwn/linuxtoday
  • are we aiming to market 'you should switch to linux/gnome' or is our message more limited- 'enterprises/hackers/$OTHER_GROUP switch to GNOME'- probably need focus

notes:

  • We don't have the windows market to target, which is different from Firefox/OOo.

Current GNOME resources:

WhatWeDoWell

  • strong core product (better than, by comparison, our developer platform, owing to lack of docs)
  • already have fairly strong TalkingPoints - media responds well to these

  • GnomeJournal is promising

  • release notes have been good and are still improving

GnomeJournal

PlanetGnome

  • lots of people follow this regularly
  • very accessible, friendly- more commentary-oriented than the lists

WebSite

  • web page doesn't link to gnomedesktop, planet, GnomeJournal, other resources

  • add search to developer.gnome.org
  • developer cookbook
  • update example code/projects

Other stuff:

OtherProjects

  • have to make sure not to over-emphasize KDE- long-term competition is Windows and OS/X
  • KDEOrg
    • MozillaOrg - has links to weblogs, mozillazine news, and announcements

      • autodetects platform, could have different messages for people from linux or windows
      • goal is to market to people who are windows user, read paper, and want to be 2-3 clicks from being a firefox users
      • go beyond 'what software is' to 'why you want it'
  • MonoProject - split into three homepages, more or less: about, using, contributing (apple does something similar)

  • AppleCom apple.com

    • doesn't say anywhere 'apple makes computers' or 'this is an operating system'
    • look at apple.com/switch - is that something we could consider modeling after? 'Why Switch' 'switching made easy' http://www.apple.com/switch/questions/ is great

    • switch may be more appropriate for distros, but at the same time, none of the distros are marketing to end-users-all are marketing to enterprise, etc.
  • FedoraProject - Have chosen to market the project and not the product

RandomThoughts

  • figure out what our %age of apps on sf or freshmeat is- everytime someone writes to xlib, god kills a kitten
  • some of the confusion is 'are we marketing gnome the product, or gnome the project, or gnome the devel platform'- do we need separate marketing plans for each one?


Engagement/TeamMeetings/10OCT2004 (last edited 2013-08-10 14:00:22 by AllanDay)