Re: OpenCD GNOME
On Fri, 05 Aug 2005 09:34:39 +0200 Dave Neary [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, Claus Schwarm a écrit : I'm afraid you gotta be a litte bit more precise: Who should care about these claims? Windows users? I'll try to explain... We are involved in marketing GNOME. 90%+ of the world is running Windows. Of that 90%+, quite a few are hobbyists who haven't even heard of us. Gosh! Really? I must have missed a memo, then. ;-) We should be working with the OpenCD to get the CD shipped to as many people as possible, and making sure that GNOME has a brand presence in there. We should be contacting magazines asking them to include the CD, and offerring to write short articles on what's on the CD. We want people to get the message that installing GNOME software on Windows is putting them on the path to a happier computer usage. That's what the information I was missing. Thanks! Your first mail reads as if you and the guys of the OpenCD agreed on a cross-promotion: We feature them (say: space on the front page for a certain period), and they feature us (space somewhere to place something in). It was not clear - at least to me - that you were talking about promoting both in your first mail. Thus, your paragraph The sell is not the development environment, it's the applications... was so confusing. We want people installing GNOME applications on Windows to know that there is A Better Way (TM) - that these same applications work well on the GNOME desktop, and that there are a bunch of other applications available too. Yes. Please read carefully: GNOME is a complex product that needs explanation. A logo based gimmek won't do. Any text about build with the GNOME development enviroment will trigger the thought: Development? I don't care about this. However. I guess the OpenCD has some kind of portal, a sort of build-in webpage that starts after inserting the CD. Is this correct? If so, we can simply take our web page tour (when ready) and ask the OpenCD guys if it's possible to integrate that. Then, a message near the application descriptions (text or banner) can be placed that links to this tour on the CD. This is another easy step between looking at Windows applications and trying to get a LiveCD working. It also explains GNOME better then any text-only message or a banner could do. This is also good for people with bad internet connections. The disadvanatage is that magazines will be less likely to distribute it but I'm not sure if they would do this without additional funding, anyway. The difference of this approach with GNOME desktop software for free on Windows is that we'd provide an answer to the WTF is Humpfty? question. This will make GNOME fans also (more) interested to spread the CD. Otherwise, it's just a bunch of open source apps that everybody with a good internet connection can do for his friend. After that's done we can ask Andreas to make a banner for gnome.org (The OpenCD is here!, or something tbd), and we can do an announcement on footnotes. That'll spread the OpenCD. You just need to find somebody who organizes this. Cheers, Claus P.S.: Just a minor comment: I believe this whole discussion could have been shorter if you'd have provided suffcient infos in the beginning: Your base idea, the target group(s), the possible techniques and space a designer could use, maybe even a screenshot to get an idea how it looks like without many people be forced to download a complete CD. In hindsight, I should have said this clearly and earlier. I admit that was my fault. Therefore, I apologize. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: OpenCD GNOME
On Thu, 4 Aug 2005 02:46:14 -0700 Jeff Waugh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: quote who=Murray Cumming We could try to ensure that fun applications running on Windows, such as Gimp and Inkscape, are identified as built with the GNOME development platform. Shouldn't be tough at all, there's a spiffy Windows launcher thingy for running the installers that includes some explanatory text. Would fit very nicely there. I've not looked at the OpenCD yet, so the following may sound foolish. However, promoting the GNOME development platform to end users seems somewhat misguided. Would the launcher thingy allow to include information about additional GNOME apps that are related to a certain application or category, but have not yet been ported to Windows? An entry close to Thunderbird could read: There are more (Free Software/Open Source) apps available if you'd use GNU/Linux: Evolution is a great EMail application that list benefits here Or close to Abiword: Gnumeric is a Free Software spreatsheet application under GNU/Linux that integrate nicely into a GNOME desktop, starts real fast, and has excellent support for scientific and business calculations. If the applications names could be made internet links, clicking on it could start Firefox and show their homepages to let users find out more. Just my 2cts. Cheers, Claus -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: OpenCD GNOME
On 8/4/05, Simos Xenitellis [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Claus Schwarm wrote: On Thu, 4 Aug 2005 02:46:14 -0700 Jeff Waugh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: quote who=Murray Cumming We could try to ensure that fun applications running on Windows, such as Gimp and Inkscape, are identified as built with the GNOME development platform. Shouldn't be tough at all, there's a spiffy Windows launcher thingy for running the installers that includes some explanatory text. Would fit very nicely there. I've not looked at the OpenCD yet, so the following may sound foolish. However, promoting the GNOME development platform to end users seems somewhat misguided. Would the launcher thingy allow to include information about additional GNOME apps that are related to a certain application or category, but have not yet been ported to Windows? An entry close to Thunderbird could read: There are more (Free Software/Open Source) apps available if you'd use GNU/Linux: Evolution is a great EMail application that list benefits here Or close to Abiword: Gnumeric is a Free Software spreatsheet application under GNU/Linux that integrate nicely into a GNOME desktop, starts real fast, and has excellent support for scientific and business calculations. If the applications names could be made internet links, clicking on it could start Firefox and show their homepages to let users find out more. Heh, some may accuse us of slugging off certain programs :) A GNOME LiveCD with Win32 programs a la OpenCD is an excellent idea. The only technical consideration that comes to mind is the space available for the Win32 programs, after we use the space for GNOME. As we are planning for multi-language LiveCDs, the available space will be somewhat variable. For example, the English version does not have langpacks. My recollection on space figures is about 480-550MB for GNOME. Does this still stand now? The spanish CD I built last night (has some bugs, so not distributed yet) took about 540M. So there is space for some gtk-based stuff, but not much. Of course, there is also some borderline stuff creeping into the linux side of the liveCD- if we had a long list of good, gnome-y windows apps, I'd be open to trimming the linux app list a bit. Luis -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: OpenCD GNOME
I think the message should be very simple. if you like this application, please see http://www.gnome.org/; Then let the page do the selling. sri -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: OpenCD GNOME
On Thu, 04 Aug 2005 18:10:43 +0200 Dave Neary [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, Claus Schwarm a écrit : I've not looked at the OpenCD yet, so the following may sound foolish. However, promoting the GNOME development platform to end users seems somewhat misguided. The sell is not the development environment, it's the applications... Use top-quality free software on Windows!, GNOME desktop software for free on Windows, Put yourself on the road to enlightenment with Abiword, GNUmeric, the GIMP, and many more! I'm afraid you gotta be a litte bit more precise: Who should care about these claims? Windows users? Try to imaging a Windows users who has never heard about GNOME before. To them this reads like: Humpfty desktop software for free on Windows If you read it like that, you get a good impression what they will think: WTF is Humpfty? Additionally, where would you like to place such advertising claims? On the CD? Would the launcher thingy allow to include information about additional GNOME apps that are related to a certain application or category, but have not yet been ported to Windows? Not a good idea, IMHO. Get people using free software, learning about the philosophy, the community, the freedom. Force-feeding Linux, or software that they're not ready to use yet (otherwise, why use the OpenCD? Why not install GNU/Linux directly?) is not a good idea. Plus, it's in bad taste. People don't like that kind of thing. I'm sorry. There's a Ubuntu LiveCD on the OpenCD, isn't it? Are you expecting OpenCD users to be computer beginners? I really fail to understand you here. Why use the OpenCD? Maybe because the point of the CD is to feed people piece by piece? Let them explore the options in small steps? However, where's the point in distributing the CD if there's no additional information about other apps? Should users get the impression these handful of apps are everything they can get for Linux? If we don't make people curious about exploring a whole new world, why do we expect them to switch at all? Force-feeding... wow! In the forums I read regularily new users often ask for recommendations about apps! And given the mess that freshmeat or sourceforge is, who could blame them? Pick a usual PC magazine and what do you find? Lots of app reviews. And people like to read it. I've roughly 25 CDs lying around here from my last Windows years, and all major apps on them want a password that will be sent to you after registrating at the vendors homepage. Magazines didn't stop doing that, I guess. Of course, nobody likes that but everybody agrees that it's better than paying! So, why should we be worried about about a small recommendation for apps people could only install after installing Ubuntu? The only thing that made me interested in Linux years ago was my (false) impression that you get LaTeX only for Linux. OpenCD users are very unlikely to be beginners who download Gnumeric because they can't figure out it's not a Windows app. Or who start wondering where Windows has gone after they partitioned their whole disk (A valid option in Ubuntu the last time I looked). I really don't mind if the idea is not what you've been looking for but I'm wondering about your arguments. If you're afraid to promote, put a GNOME logo under the app description with a note: Made with the GNOME developement framework. and you're done. Maybe people will recognize it later but usually the awareness effect of such one time exposure is rather low. Cheers, Claus -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: OpenCD GNOME
Claus Schwarm wrote: On Thu, 04 Aug 2005 18:10:43 +0200 Dave Neary [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: snip Would the launcher thingy allow to include information about additional GNOME apps that are related to a certain application or category, but have not yet been ported to Windows? Not a good idea, IMHO. Get people using free software, learning about the philosophy, the community, the freedom. Force-feeding Linux, or software that they're not ready to use yet (otherwise, why use the OpenCD? Why not install GNU/Linux directly?) is not a good idea. Plus, it's in bad taste. People don't like that kind of thing. I'm sorry. There's a Ubuntu LiveCD on the OpenCD, isn't it? Are you expecting OpenCD users to be computer beginners? I really fail to understand you here. Why use the OpenCD? Maybe because the point of the CD is to feed people piece by piece? Let them explore the options in small steps? However, where's the point in distributing the CD if there's no additional information about other apps? Should users get the impression these handful of apps are everything they can get for Linux? If we don't make people curious about exploring a whole new world, why do we expect them to switch at all? The task of explaining to the end-user what a program does, how to make it work, etc suits better to go more upstream, both for usability purposes but also technical ones. When I install a program, I want to get over with it and not get distracted by text messages that ask me to read and understand what it says. If it is OpenOffice.org which takes a bit longer to install, I don't mind to see some messages. But again, with OpenOffice.org, these messages are part of the native installer. Whichever Win32 binaries end up eventually on the LiveCD will be precompiled, they are already available as packages from their respective projects. I hope you do not expect that in this marketing effort there will be custom compilations of the Win32 binaries. If you have used Inkscape, you will notice that there are doing an excellent job to introduce to the end user how to the learn the program; From the Help menu you can load tutorials which are SVG files themselves, and by reading/doing what they say, you learn at the same time how to use the program. This functionality is provided from the package itself, so if you want to get Audacity (or any other program) to promote better itself, feel free to write similar tutorials that end-users can find under Help and use on the spot. ...snip... Simos Xenitellis http://simos.info/blog/ -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: OpenCD GNOME
On Wed, 2005-08-03 at 21:37 +0200, David Neary wrote: Hi, I've been talking to the guys over at the OpenCD recently, trying to figure out how we can work together in terms of co-operation and co-branding. For thse who don't know, the OpenCD ships a bunch of free software apps (mostly GTK+ based) and also has a cut-down Ubuntu LiveCD in their latest version, so they also ship a complete GNOME desktop. Anyone have any nice ideas about how we could get some nice news marketing mileage out of a partnership? Can we make their LiveCD be basically our LiveCD, with the gconf tweaks and the advertising content? We could try to ensure that fun applications running on Windows, such as Gimp and Inkscape, are identified as built with the GNOME development platform. -- Murray Cumming [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.murrayc.com www.openismus.com -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
