GNOME appreciation day (was Fwd: Looking for community managers or enthusiasts!)
On 15 November 2012 13:50, Alberto Ruiz ar...@gnome.org wrote: The one thing that was somewhat true is that we have less corporate support, back then IBM, Sun, Novell, Nokia and many other people were looking at GNOME as a platform to build products from. These days that's not the case. Market has changed, and sure, getting a job where you can do GNOMEy stuff is hard. This and the blog post from Sony that is linked below made me think of what could be a good marketing action: a GNOME appreciation day. http://developer.sonymobile.com/2012/10/31/linux-developers-join-forces-in-the-linaro-project/ The marketing team would coordinate with prominent users of GNOME the release of blog posts and/or press releases that would explain how the organization benefits from GNOME and how it participates in the community. This could be used to raise awareness of what GNOME is and how it works, and hopefully would bring more contributors. The participants in this campaign could be: - organizations doing derivatives such as Canonical, Bosch or Sugar Labs/OLPC, - consultancy companies such as Codethink, Collabora, or Igalia, - deployments such as City of Largo, - the foundation's advisory board members, - maybe famous people (Cory Doctorow uses GNOME?). Regards, Tomeu -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: GNOME appreciation day (was Fwd: Looking for community managers or enthusiasts!)
Great idea, love it. On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 5:05 PM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@tomeuvizoso.net wrote: On 15 November 2012 13:50, Alberto Ruiz ar...@gnome.org wrote: The one thing that was somewhat true is that we have less corporate support, back then IBM, Sun, Novell, Nokia and many other people were looking at GNOME as a platform to build products from. These days that's not the case. Market has changed, and sure, getting a job where you can do GNOMEy stuff is hard. This and the blog post from Sony that is linked below made me think of what could be a good marketing action: a GNOME appreciation day. http://developer.sonymobile.com/2012/10/31/linux-developers-join-forces-in-the-linaro-project/ The marketing team would coordinate with prominent users of GNOME the release of blog posts and/or press releases that would explain how the organization benefits from GNOME and how it participates in the community. This could be used to raise awareness of what GNOME is and how it works, and hopefully would bring more contributors. The participants in this campaign could be: - organizations doing derivatives such as Canonical, Bosch or Sugar Labs/OLPC, - consultancy companies such as Codethink, Collabora, or Igalia, - deployments such as City of Largo, - the foundation's advisory board members, - maybe famous people (Cory Doctorow uses GNOME?). Regards, Tomeu -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: GNOME appreciation day (was Fwd: Looking for community managers or enthusiasts!)
+1000 2012/11/19 Seif Lotfy s...@lotfy.com Great idea, love it. On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 5:05 PM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@tomeuvizoso.net wrote: On 15 November 2012 13:50, Alberto Ruiz ar...@gnome.org wrote: The one thing that was somewhat true is that we have less corporate support, back then IBM, Sun, Novell, Nokia and many other people were looking at GNOME as a platform to build products from. These days that's not the case. Market has changed, and sure, getting a job where you can do GNOMEy stuff is hard. This and the blog post from Sony that is linked below made me think of what could be a good marketing action: a GNOME appreciation day. http://developer.sonymobile.com/2012/10/31/linux-developers-join-forces-in-the-linaro-project/ The marketing team would coordinate with prominent users of GNOME the release of blog posts and/or press releases that would explain how the organization benefits from GNOME and how it participates in the community. This could be used to raise awareness of what GNOME is and how it works, and hopefully would bring more contributors. The participants in this campaign could be: - organizations doing derivatives such as Canonical, Bosch or Sugar Labs/OLPC, - consultancy companies such as Codethink, Collabora, or Igalia, - deployments such as City of Largo, - the foundation's advisory board members, - maybe famous people (Cory Doctorow uses GNOME?). Regards, Tomeu -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list -- Cheers, Alberto Ruiz -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: community managers
On 11/15/2012 09:36 PM, Emily Gonyer wrote: I think Dave's point was that we missed an opportunity to keep Cinnamon as GNOME 3 - because at one point it was GNOME 3.x with extensions piled on. They have since forked and are truly a separate project now, but that wasn't always the case. If we had made it clear that they their users were still using GNOME 3, we might have been able to bring them into the larger GNOME tent and kept them from forking and going their separate way. Just because someone is using extensions doesn't mean they aren't using GNOME 3, any more than my use of HTTPS Everywhere, AdBlock Plus, etc in Firefox Chromium make them different browsers. I think the difference there is that you as the person using Firefox in the end are the one adding those extensions on top and not someone before you in the chain. This is also why I find extensions.gnome.org AMAZING, while it worries me about the possible difficulties when you try to debug something when a bug report is coming in from someone that have a system that works vastly different from what came with your system out of the box. This does not disallow, or even disencourage you or someone else from taking, say Firefox, modifying it in various ways or reuse parts of it to build something entirely different, like say, a arcade machine or a car UI and spread that to the world. I mean, it's free software and all. The question is if the name Firefox makes sense for that amazing thing you just built, or if it might make things easier for you and everyone else installed to give that a new and unique name. Keeping a good relationship between a project and the people that take the project and end up building something quite different with it is always desirable when it benefits both parties. Of course. Cinnamon specifically seems to make some people happy, and I don't mind that at all. I think that's great. That's more people using free software instead of, say, getting a mac just because they didn't like something in GNOME 3. That's my personal take on Big Tent vs. Tight Core. - Andreas -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: community managers
Hi Jon, On 11/15/2012 09:12 PM, William Jon McCann wrote: On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 6:38 AM, Dave Neary wrote: I think that as a project, we have had trouble communicating our vision, because as a project we are not sure what it is. I think this is the main thing I wanted to say. I have been involved in the GNOME project, albeit not as a core developer or module maintainer, since 2004. And I do not understand our vision. What is the dream that we're selling, and why should I be excited about it? For instance, the insistence that theming will damage our brand, or that Cinnamon is not GNOME 3, has led to missed opportunities for the GNOME project, and has not got grass roots support among the GNOME community (and I'm not talking about users here, I'm talking about contributors - developers, translators, user group co-ordinators, and marketers). Let's be clear then. Cinnamon is not GNOME 3. I understand that is your position. And I understand that as the maintainer and primary designer of GNOME Shell, you have a lot of weight in holding that position. I think it's a shame that Cinnamon users don't realise, for the most part, that they are using GNOME Shell, and the rest of the GNOME 3 stack. I think that it's a shame that we have apparently gone out of our way to put a barrier between ourselves and the Cinnamon/Mint guys by saying you're not GNOME 3. The message we're sending is, your help is not wanted, we don't like what you're doing. Personally, I think that it'd be cool to have our community be the community of people who can go wild on the platform - let a thousand flowers bloom. That the core GNOME project is solid and useful, but that we encourage experimentation, respins, freedom for our users. That seems inconsistent with the current GNOME messaging. The discussion of brand was in relation to the stability of extensions and the impact on the user experience - and was taken out of context. Neither of these have led to missed opportunities. Continuing to misrepresent or misunderstand what we are trying to do and trying to say doesn't help us communicate our vision, does it? I certainly misunderstand what you are trying to do. I don't think I know what the GNOME 3 vision is. Would you mind helping me understand better? Thanks, Dave. -- Dave Neary, Lyon, France Email: dne...@gnome.org Jabber: nea...@gmail.com -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: community managers
I think this comes down to a philosophical difference in ideas about what GNOME is, as it has before. Is GNOME really just GNOME Shell as we release it? When other people use our technology, in XFCE, Cinnamon, Unity, Mate, etc, are they still using GNOME? Do we want to completely segregate ourselves from them? Is that healthy for our community? For theirs? Or would we all be better off, recognizing that we all use many of the same technologies, and that we all have something to share. Wouldn't we all be better off, if the folks who work on Cinnamon and XFCE and Mate and GNOME Shell could all sit around and talk about their problems together, and find solutions that work for everyone? I'm not saying we should all combine and just produce one desktop - that's never going to happen. But recognizing each others' work as useful, as interesting, as important would go a long ways to repairing some of the relationships that have suffered. I don't really want to run Cinnamon, but I don't doubt that there are parts of it that I would enjoy and find useful. Why can't we find a way to share? A way to include everyone who uses GNOME technology so that we can all share what we do and learn from each other and make better software. Isn't that what GNOME has always been about? Emily On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 10:50 AM, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org wrote: Hi Jon, On 11/15/2012 09:12 PM, William Jon McCann wrote: On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 6:38 AM, Dave Neary wrote: I think that as a project, we have had trouble communicating our vision, because as a project we are not sure what it is. I think this is the main thing I wanted to say. I have been involved in the GNOME project, albeit not as a core developer or module maintainer, since 2004. And I do not understand our vision. What is the dream that we're selling, and why should I be excited about it? For instance, the insistence that theming will damage our brand, or that Cinnamon is not GNOME 3, has led to missed opportunities for the GNOME project, and has not got grass roots support among the GNOME community (and I'm not talking about users here, I'm talking about contributors - developers, translators, user group co-ordinators, and marketers). Let's be clear then. Cinnamon is not GNOME 3. I understand that is your position. And I understand that as the maintainer and primary designer of GNOME Shell, you have a lot of weight in holding that position. I think it's a shame that Cinnamon users don't realise, for the most part, that they are using GNOME Shell, and the rest of the GNOME 3 stack. I think that it's a shame that we have apparently gone out of our way to put a barrier between ourselves and the Cinnamon/Mint guys by saying you're not GNOME 3. The message we're sending is, your help is not wanted, we don't like what you're doing. Personally, I think that it'd be cool to have our community be the community of people who can go wild on the platform - let a thousand flowers bloom. That the core GNOME project is solid and useful, but that we encourage experimentation, respins, freedom for our users. That seems inconsistent with the current GNOME messaging. The discussion of brand was in relation to the stability of extensions and the impact on the user experience - and was taken out of context. Neither of these have led to missed opportunities. Continuing to misrepresent or misunderstand what we are trying to do and trying to say doesn't help us communicate our vision, does it? I certainly misunderstand what you are trying to do. I don't think I know what the GNOME 3 vision is. Would you mind helping me understand better? Thanks, Dave. -- Dave Neary, Lyon, France Email: dne...@gnome.org Jabber: nea...@gmail.com -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list -- Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. - Goethe Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr.Seuss Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. - Albert Einstein -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: community managers
Jon/Dave: On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 10:50 AM, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org wrote: On 11/16/12 11:28 AM, William Jon McCann wrote: I was attracted to the GNOME project because of the vision and because I was excited by it. [...] I continue to be inspired by it - going on 10 years now. Inspired enough to put up with a lot of negativity. It's good for your karma. :) Despite how some would portray it, this vision is shared by the current core contributors. You'll find evidence of this everywhere, if you look. That said, we should do more to make it explicit. Make it clear. Not because of threads like this but because we are proud of it. Because we want to shout it and we know people will respond. I agree GNOME Rocks! We can be different, have different ideas, have different goals, and still be friends. Sharing where it is mutually beneficial but still appearing separate and distinct. Standing on our own, proudly. With individual rights and responsibilities. I very much agree. You and I, for example, have had many differences over design choices relating to GDM, yet I also respect the significant amount of work you do leading the project. Friendship is more like a spectrum than an on-off switch, so I think it can mean different things amongst different people, but I am proud to be associated with so many brilliant GNOME engineers. George Lebl, the maintainer of GDM before me, indicated in his source code comments that the believed that fixing crack gave one a certain license to introduce more. Modernizing GDM has broken configuration features and caused pain for users. Criticism aside, I do think George would applaud the fact that GDM is finally ported to using sensible interfaces like D-Bus. While the new GDM is a step back in certain ways (such as XDMCP support since you cannot launch the GDM chooser from the GUI anymore), I think it was overall a step in the right direction. I am not sure if this lack of XDMCP chooser support breaks LTSP, though I wonder. Interfaces like GTK+ and the entire GNOME Platform have had a stellar ABI stability over the years, yet stability seems to be breaking down recently. I think ABI stability and providing existing users important updates like security fixes are important parts of project management. GNOME should accept that interfaces exposed to users, such as theming interfaces, need to be better supported if we want to build a stronger relationship with the actual userbase. GNOME will benefit from the stronger interface stability that comes with maturity, but now is probably a good time to consider what configuration interfaces should be more stable, such as GTK+ theming, obviously. In the GNOME 2 cycle, it was GNOME 2.16 before GNOME really started being usable when HAL started fixing a lot of serious desktop bugs and GStreamer started being used. I would say that GNOME 3.6 is already much farther along than 2.16 was at its stage in the development cycle. So, there is progress. :) I have absolutely no problem with Cinnamon. I think I give them more credit than you do. They took a name, on purpose. To differentiate themselves - to allow people the freedom to choose a different user experience. They have different goals. A different appearance. Different behaviors. A different future. And that is fine. Does the GNOME community have a plan for how to deal with providing GNOME 2 users important fixes like security bug fixes? By making a small committment to release new GNOME 2 tarballs with security updates as needed and making sure that updates to things like D-Bus do not break the GNOME 2 experience, then I think GNOME maintains stronger control over the GNOME 2 source code. People should want to use the GNOME source code repository if that's where they get security fixes. Does the GNOME community have any recommendations about how a distro should deliver a secure GNOME 2 experience? I think it's a shame that Cinnamon users don't realise, for the most part, that they are using GNOME Shell, and the rest of the GNOME 3 stack How could they be expected to realize unless GNOME were to support them with the GNOME brand. GNOME provides too little guidance to distros that use GNOME, such as OLPC, about how to reference the GNOME brand in their products. Or do you think GNOME should not work to encourage the GNOME brand gets effective placement in products that use it? It is not a shame that users aren't concerned with or interested in implementation details. That is as it should be. We welcome it. Users are concerned, though, with brands. The implementation detail of how GNOME makes effective use of its brand is something of their concern. How do you think Cinnamon should use the GNOME brand? We are not sending any message other than: We are deeply sorry that we could not agree on goals. We are always willing to have a conversation about how we may find common ground. We respect your difference of opinion and your right
Re: community managers
I'm not really sure about the effectiveness of this approach. I think addressing these external problems in such a micro level - as in, answering comments and pieces of news - is very likely to create more noise and, possibly, more misunderstanding about the project. What I think might be a better solution is to, as much as possible, have one proper, well-thought and cohesive piece of feedback per issue we want to address. I think it's really important to allow us to take some time to, given a certain issue, strengthen our position within the community, before getting ourselves out there in the wild. Maybe it could be good to have those volunteers mostly listening to the buzz and logging it, in order to more easily measure feedbacks/identify problems, and then properly craft an official answer to them, establishing one official communication channel and, therefore, lessening the noise. The matter of how to build this understanding within the community (so that we can turn it into those official answers) could also be addressed from this log, using it as a starting point for analysis and then turning the main critical points into internal discussions, before giving any feedback to the external community. Anyway, this might not be the best solution, but it's just an alternative to addressing problems in a micro level, what I think might generate more noise and misunderstandings. Best, Fabiana On 14 November 2012 18:59, Sriram Ramkrishna s...@ramkrishna.me wrote: On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 12:23 PM, Mathias Hasselmann mathias.hasselm...@gmx.de wrote: Am Montag, den 12.11.2012, 15:17 -0800 schrieb Sriram Ramkrishna: Greetings! I know that we have a bunch of new people who joined the list. We haven't done any thing to use you people. Sadly, an epic failure on our part. But I am looking for some good people who can fill the role of community manager. Clearly, we have a problem relating to our user base and some of the decisions have become more controversial than it needs to be. As you point out, community managers basically work on improving communication in projects with separated circles of participants, like silently working in-house developers, and a wider community of outsiders. Do we really have such situation in GNOME? We mostly have a problem externally. But I think we have a situation internally. Resolving the situation will help the community to scale up. What would be the inner circle then? The inner circle would likely be module maintainers. They are the core team, followed by the release team, designers, translators and everyone. I would like community enthusiastic to be on equal level with this second circle. How did it happen? I think it's a natural organization. There is nothing wrong with this model. We're just trying to get the communication right. Do we really want to consolidate such unfortunate situation, or should that inner circle rather be broken again? There is no issue with core team or anything else. In fact, thanks to World of GNOME, I know more of what's going on with design and modules than I ever have. Our contacts with the general populace needs work. Do people feel there is a looming issue with how team members communicate internally? I never felt that. sri Ciao, Mathias -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: GNOME weekly roundup (was Re: community managers)
for the GNOME project, and has not got grass roots support among the GNOME community (and I'm not talking about users here, I'm talking about contributors - developers, translators, user group co-ordinators, and marketers). After all, GNOME design doesn't have any authority but is able to convince maintainers that doing their approach is best for their application. I disagree with your analogy. I'm envisioning a team of 10 volunteers. 10 volunteers who start out as community managers and then hopefully will be interested in doing other things within the project. I currently have four as of right now. Need to recruit six more! Sounds like a plan, and we certainly need to do something to stop the rot. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary, Lyon, France Email: dne...@gnome.org Jabber: nea...@gmail.com -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/**mailman/listinfo/marketing-**listhttps://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list -- Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. - Goethe Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr.Seuss Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. - Albert Einstein -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: GNOME weekly roundup (was Re: community managers)
Maybe it would be simpler to just do a Google+ Hangout? --lucasr On 15 November 2012 06:34, Sriram Ramkrishna s...@ramkrishna.me wrote: On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 9:52 PM, Karen Sandler ka...@gnome.org wrote: On Wed, November 14, 2012 7:58 am, alex diavatis wrote: On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 2:54 PM, alex diavatis alexis.diava...@gmail.comwrote: Hello, Why don't you try an YouTube channel. A weekly 5' show kinda like: I love the idea of maybe doing a weekly audio recording of this week in GNOME. I could potentially do this as an interview with a different key person each week, if it's not too long. Perhaps a half hour each time? I'm wary of video as I think that will take a lot of work... slightly off topic: The youtube channel idea seemed pretty good but it was hard to manage. Mostly because I had a hard time figuring out how to tag posts for GNOME. Maybe I'm missing something there. Design guys are always throwing up video on their thoughts. A missing opportunity IMHO. Do others think this is a good idea? Alex, would you want to help with it? It depends. I would set it up almost like an RSS feed postcast. That would make it more automatic and something people can subscribe to. sri karen This week in Gnome...[ie new features] We cannot support this because .. [ie theming API] In Gnome 3.. [discuss/explain some features and how to use desktop] In Gnome 3.. [tech news] It will take only two hours for each person to do this, and you can rotate This week, Allan, next week Seif, week after next Sri and so on. YouTube is by far the most popular media to promote a product, plus you will have a more personal connection with people. Oops that was going to previous thread [reddit IAMA GNOME developer/designer] sooorry :) - alex - alex On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 2:35 PM, Seif Lotfy s...@lotfy.com wrote: Hello, First I love the idea of a community team. KDE already has such a team with a good mission (http://ev.kde.org/workinggroups/cwg.php).I think studying their history and experience would be beneficial to the community team. After discussing this Lydia from KDE, it looks more like a Public Relations team more than a Community Management team. Both do have some common tasks. I think a Community team should encompass a PR team. Agreed. We have a problem communicating our vision internally and externally. Internally it seems like not all of us are on the same page, e.g: theming will damage our brand. Or systemd dependencies etc. Do all high profile GNOME contributors agree on this? Before communicating to the outside world that XYZ is a fact we need to at least agree on it internally. Taking the liberties with ones own modules without general consensus inside the community leads to friction and arguments. This is something that a community team should work on, make people inside the community get along, reduce friction. As a community team another mission would be working on communication between devs, on mailing lists and bugs. Damage caused by snarky, arrogant or dismissive remarks should be controlled and positive communication efforts have to promoted and praised. Just my 2 cents Cheers Seif On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 12:38 PM, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org wrote: Hi, On 11/13/2012 06:53 PM, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: As a project, we are having trouble communicating our vision because everything gets lost in a sea of vitriol due to past actions or perceived actions. For instance, removing fallback is seen as yet again the GNOME project is removing a feature instead of an act of maintenance and sustainability. I think that as a project, we have had trouble communicating our vision, because as a project we are not sure what it is. There is a part of the project that has a very clear idea of their vision, but that vision has either not been clearly expressed, or what has been expressed has not got clear support from the community of contributors in the project. For instance, the insistence that theming will damage our brand, or that Cinnamon is not GNOME 3, has led to missed opportunities for the GNOME project, and has not got grass roots support among the GNOME community (and I'm not talking about users here, I'm talking about contributors - developers, translators, user group co-ordinators, and marketers). After all, GNOME design doesn't have any authority but is able to convince maintainers that doing their approach is best for their application. I disagree with your analogy. I'm envisioning a team of 10 volunteers. 10 volunteers who start out as community managers and then hopefully will be interested in doing other things within the project. I currently have four as of right now. Need to recruit six more! Sounds like a plan, and we certainly
Re: community managers
Hi Dave, On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 6:38 AM, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org wrote: I think that as a project, we have had trouble communicating our vision, because as a project we are not sure what it is. There is a part of the project that has a very clear idea of their vision, but that vision has either not been clearly expressed, or what has been expressed has not got clear support from the community of contributors in the project. For instance, the insistence that theming will damage our brand, or that Cinnamon is not GNOME 3, has led to missed opportunities for the GNOME project, and has not got grass roots support among the GNOME community (and I'm not talking about users here, I'm talking about contributors - developers, translators, user group co-ordinators, and marketers). Let's be clear then. Cinnamon is not GNOME 3. The discussion of brand was in relation to the stability of extensions and the impact on the user experience - and was taken out of context. Neither of these have led to missed opportunities. Continuing to misrepresent or misunderstand what we are trying to do and trying to say doesn't help us communicate our vision, does it? Jon -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: community managers
I think Dave's point was that we missed an opportunity to keep Cinnamon as GNOME 3 - because at one point it was GNOME 3.x with extensions piled on. They have since forked and are truly a separate project now, but that wasn't always the case. If we had made it clear that they their users were still using GNOME 3, we might have been able to bring them into the larger GNOME tent and kept them from forking and going their separate way. Just because someone is using extensions doesn't mean they aren't using GNOME 3, any more than my use of HTTPS Everywhere, AdBlock Plus, etc in Firefox Chromium make them different browsers. Emily On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 3:12 PM, William Jon McCann william.jon.mcc...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Dave, On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 6:38 AM, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org wrote: I think that as a project, we have had trouble communicating our vision, because as a project we are not sure what it is. There is a part of the project that has a very clear idea of their vision, but that vision has either not been clearly expressed, or what has been expressed has not got clear support from the community of contributors in the project. For instance, the insistence that theming will damage our brand, or that Cinnamon is not GNOME 3, has led to missed opportunities for the GNOME project, and has not got grass roots support among the GNOME community (and I'm not talking about users here, I'm talking about contributors - developers, translators, user group co-ordinators, and marketers). Let's be clear then. Cinnamon is not GNOME 3. The discussion of brand was in relation to the stability of extensions and the impact on the user experience - and was taken out of context. Neither of these have led to missed opportunities. Continuing to misrepresent or misunderstand what we are trying to do and trying to say doesn't help us communicate our vision, does it? Jon -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list -- Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. - Goethe Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr.Seuss Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. - Albert Einstein -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: community managers
On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 12:36 PM, Emily Gonyer emilyyr...@gmail.com wrote: I think Dave's point was that we missed an opportunity to keep Cinnamon as GNOME 3 - because at one point it was GNOME 3.x with extensions piled on. They have since forked and are truly a separate Well, the thing is that GNOME 3 is considered the design and look of GNOME 3. It's the default package. You could argue that GNOME 3 + extensions changing the look is not GNOME 3 from a branding issue. Consider that Apple's look is very distinctive. You can look at a computer running OSX and know it is running OSX. In this case, Cinnamon is not GNOME 3 from that perspective. Now, it si GNOME 3 in that uses the GNOME 3 platform but it's not what its designers consider GNOME 3. Now I agree that it would be great to say Cinnamon is based on GNOME 3 as it shows what a flexible platform GNOME 3 is that it can be modified to be so distinctive. project now, but that wasn't always the case. If we had made it clear that they their users were still using GNOME 3, we might have been able to bring them into the larger GNOME tent and kept them from forking and going their separate way. Just because someone is using extensions doesn't mean they aren't using GNOME 3, any more than my use of HTTPS Everywhere, AdBlock Plus, etc in Firefox Chromium make them different browsers. We seem to be in a strange place where we are competing against our own software modified by others - Mate and Cinnamon both who have gotten marketshare. sri Emily On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 3:12 PM, William Jon McCann william.jon.mcc...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Dave, On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 6:38 AM, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org wrote: I think that as a project, we have had trouble communicating our vision, because as a project we are not sure what it is. There is a part of the project that has a very clear idea of their vision, but that vision has either not been clearly expressed, or what has been expressed has not got clear support from the community of contributors in the project. For instance, the insistence that theming will damage our brand, or that Cinnamon is not GNOME 3, has led to missed opportunities for the GNOME project, and has not got grass roots support among the GNOME community (and I'm not talking about users here, I'm talking about contributors - developers, translators, user group co-ordinators, and marketers). Let's be clear then. Cinnamon is not GNOME 3. The discussion of brand was in relation to the stability of extensions and the impact on the user experience - and was taken out of context. Neither of these have led to missed opportunities. Continuing to misrepresent or misunderstand what we are trying to do and trying to say doesn't help us communicate our vision, does it? Jon -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list -- Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. - Goethe Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr.Seuss Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. - Albert Einstein -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: community managers
Hi, On 11/13/2012 06:53 PM, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: As a project, we are having trouble communicating our vision because everything gets lost in a sea of vitriol due to past actions or perceived actions. For instance, removing fallback is seen as yet again the GNOME project is removing a feature instead of an act of maintenance and sustainability. I think that as a project, we have had trouble communicating our vision, because as a project we are not sure what it is. There is a part of the project that has a very clear idea of their vision, but that vision has either not been clearly expressed, or what has been expressed has not got clear support from the community of contributors in the project. For instance, the insistence that theming will damage our brand, or that Cinnamon is not GNOME 3, has led to missed opportunities for the GNOME project, and has not got grass roots support among the GNOME community (and I'm not talking about users here, I'm talking about contributors - developers, translators, user group co-ordinators, and marketers). After all, GNOME design doesn't have any authority but is able to convince maintainers that doing their approach is best for their application. I disagree with your analogy. I'm envisioning a team of 10 volunteers. 10 volunteers who start out as community managers and then hopefully will be interested in doing other things within the project. I currently have four as of right now. Need to recruit six more! Sounds like a plan, and we certainly need to do something to stop the rot. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary, Lyon, France Email: dne...@gnome.org Jabber: nea...@gmail.com -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: community managers
Am Montag, den 12.11.2012, 15:17 -0800 schrieb Sriram Ramkrishna: Greetings! I know that we have a bunch of new people who joined the list. We haven't done any thing to use you people. Sadly, an epic failure on our part. But I am looking for some good people who can fill the role of community manager. Clearly, we have a problem relating to our user base and some of the decisions have become more controversial than it needs to be. As you point out, community managers basically work on improving communication in projects with separated circles of participants, like silently working in-house developers, and a wider community of outsiders. Do we really have such situation in GNOME? What would be the inner circle then? How did it happen? Do we really want to consolidate such unfortunate situation, or should that inner circle rather be broken again? Ciao, Mathias -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: community managers
On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 12:23 PM, Mathias Hasselmann mathias.hasselm...@gmx.de wrote: Am Montag, den 12.11.2012, 15:17 -0800 schrieb Sriram Ramkrishna: Greetings! I know that we have a bunch of new people who joined the list. We haven't done any thing to use you people. Sadly, an epic failure on our part. But I am looking for some good people who can fill the role of community manager. Clearly, we have a problem relating to our user base and some of the decisions have become more controversial than it needs to be. As you point out, community managers basically work on improving communication in projects with separated circles of participants, like silently working in-house developers, and a wider community of outsiders. Do we really have such situation in GNOME? We mostly have a problem externally. But I think we have a situation internally. Resolving the situation will help the community to scale up. What would be the inner circle then? The inner circle would likely be module maintainers. They are the core team, followed by the release team, designers, translators and everyone. I would like community enthusiastic to be on equal level with this second circle. How did it happen? I think it's a natural organization. There is nothing wrong with this model. We're just trying to get the communication right. Do we really want to consolidate such unfortunate situation, or should that inner circle rather be broken again? There is no issue with core team or anything else. In fact, thanks to World of GNOME, I know more of what's going on with design and modules than I ever have. Our contacts with the general populace needs work. Do people feel there is a looming issue with how team members communicate internally? I never felt that. sri Ciao, Mathias -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
GNOME weekly roundup (was Re: community managers)
On Wed, November 14, 2012 7:58 am, alex diavatis wrote: On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 2:54 PM, alex diavatis alexis.diava...@gmail.comwrote: Hello, Why don't you try an YouTube channel. A weekly 5' show kinda like: I love the idea of maybe doing a weekly audio recording of this week in GNOME. I could potentially do this as an interview with a different key person each week, if it's not too long. Perhaps a half hour each time? I'm wary of video as I think that will take a lot of work... Do others think this is a good idea? Alex, would you want to help with it? karen This week in Gnome...[ie new features] We cannot support this because .. [ie theming API] In Gnome 3.. [discuss/explain some features and how to use desktop] In Gnome 3.. [tech news] It will take only two hours for each person to do this, and you can rotate This week, Allan, next week Seif, week after next Sri and so on. YouTube is by far the most popular media to promote a product, plus you will have a more personal connection with people. Oops that was going to previous thread [reddit IAMA GNOME developer/designer] sooorry :) - alex - alex On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 2:35 PM, Seif Lotfy s...@lotfy.com wrote: Hello, First I love the idea of a community team. KDE already has such a team with a good mission (http://ev.kde.org/workinggroups/cwg.php).I think studying their history and experience would be beneficial to the community team. After discussing this Lydia from KDE, it looks more like a Public Relations team more than a Community Management team. Both do have some common tasks. I think a Community team should encompass a PR team. Agreed. We have a problem communicating our vision internally and externally. Internally it seems like not all of us are on the same page, e.g: theming will damage our brand. Or systemd dependencies etc. Do all high profile GNOME contributors agree on this? Before communicating to the outside world that XYZ is a fact we need to at least agree on it internally. Taking the liberties with ones own modules without general consensus inside the community leads to friction and arguments. This is something that a community team should work on, make people inside the community get along, reduce friction. As a community team another mission would be working on communication between devs, on mailing lists and bugs. Damage caused by snarky, arrogant or dismissive remarks should be controlled and positive communication efforts have to promoted and praised. Just my 2 cents Cheers Seif On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 12:38 PM, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org wrote: Hi, On 11/13/2012 06:53 PM, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: As a project, we are having trouble communicating our vision because everything gets lost in a sea of vitriol due to past actions or perceived actions. For instance, removing fallback is seen as yet again the GNOME project is removing a feature instead of an act of maintenance and sustainability. I think that as a project, we have had trouble communicating our vision, because as a project we are not sure what it is. There is a part of the project that has a very clear idea of their vision, but that vision has either not been clearly expressed, or what has been expressed has not got clear support from the community of contributors in the project. For instance, the insistence that theming will damage our brand, or that Cinnamon is not GNOME 3, has led to missed opportunities for the GNOME project, and has not got grass roots support among the GNOME community (and I'm not talking about users here, I'm talking about contributors - developers, translators, user group co-ordinators, and marketers). After all, GNOME design doesn't have any authority but is able to convince maintainers that doing their approach is best for their application. I disagree with your analogy. I'm envisioning a team of 10 volunteers. 10 volunteers who start out as community managers and then hopefully will be interested in doing other things within the project. I currently have four as of right now. Need to recruit six more! Sounds like a plan, and we certainly need to do something to stop the rot. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary, Lyon, France Email: dne...@gnome.org Jabber: nea...@gmail.com -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/**mailman/listinfo/marketing-**listhttps://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: GNOME weekly roundup (was Re: community managers)
On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 9:52 PM, Karen Sandler ka...@gnome.org wrote: On Wed, November 14, 2012 7:58 am, alex diavatis wrote: On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 2:54 PM, alex diavatis alexis.diava...@gmail.comwrote: Hello, Why don't you try an YouTube channel. A weekly 5' show kinda like: I love the idea of maybe doing a weekly audio recording of this week in GNOME. I could potentially do this as an interview with a different key person each week, if it's not too long. Perhaps a half hour each time? I'm wary of video as I think that will take a lot of work... slightly off topic: The youtube channel idea seemed pretty good but it was hard to manage. Mostly because I had a hard time figuring out how to tag posts for GNOME. Maybe I'm missing something there. Design guys are always throwing up video on their thoughts. A missing opportunity IMHO. Do others think this is a good idea? Alex, would you want to help with it? It depends. I would set it up almost like an RSS feed postcast. That would make it more automatic and something people can subscribe to. sri karen This week in Gnome...[ie new features] We cannot support this because .. [ie theming API] In Gnome 3.. [discuss/explain some features and how to use desktop] In Gnome 3.. [tech news] It will take only two hours for each person to do this, and you can rotate This week, Allan, next week Seif, week after next Sri and so on. YouTube is by far the most popular media to promote a product, plus you will have a more personal connection with people. Oops that was going to previous thread [reddit IAMA GNOME developer/designer] sooorry :) - alex - alex On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 2:35 PM, Seif Lotfy s...@lotfy.com wrote: Hello, First I love the idea of a community team. KDE already has such a team with a good mission (http://ev.kde.org/workinggroups/cwg.php).I think studying their history and experience would be beneficial to the community team. After discussing this Lydia from KDE, it looks more like a Public Relations team more than a Community Management team. Both do have some common tasks. I think a Community team should encompass a PR team. Agreed. We have a problem communicating our vision internally and externally. Internally it seems like not all of us are on the same page, e.g: theming will damage our brand. Or systemd dependencies etc. Do all high profile GNOME contributors agree on this? Before communicating to the outside world that XYZ is a fact we need to at least agree on it internally. Taking the liberties with ones own modules without general consensus inside the community leads to friction and arguments. This is something that a community team should work on, make people inside the community get along, reduce friction. As a community team another mission would be working on communication between devs, on mailing lists and bugs. Damage caused by snarky, arrogant or dismissive remarks should be controlled and positive communication efforts have to promoted and praised. Just my 2 cents Cheers Seif On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 12:38 PM, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org wrote: Hi, On 11/13/2012 06:53 PM, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: As a project, we are having trouble communicating our vision because everything gets lost in a sea of vitriol due to past actions or perceived actions. For instance, removing fallback is seen as yet again the GNOME project is removing a feature instead of an act of maintenance and sustainability. I think that as a project, we have had trouble communicating our vision, because as a project we are not sure what it is. There is a part of the project that has a very clear idea of their vision, but that vision has either not been clearly expressed, or what has been expressed has not got clear support from the community of contributors in the project. For instance, the insistence that theming will damage our brand, or that Cinnamon is not GNOME 3, has led to missed opportunities for the GNOME project, and has not got grass roots support among the GNOME community (and I'm not talking about users here, I'm talking about contributors - developers, translators, user group co-ordinators, and marketers). After all, GNOME design doesn't have any authority but is able to convince maintainers that doing their approach is best for their application. I disagree with your analogy. I'm envisioning a team of 10 volunteers. 10 volunteers who start out as community managers and then hopefully will be interested in doing other things within the project. I currently have four as of right now. Need to recruit six more! Sounds like a plan, and we certainly need to do something to stop the rot. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary, Lyon, France Email: dne...@gnome.org Jabber: nea...@gmail.com
Re: community managers
Hi Sri, On 11/13/2012 12:17 AM, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: But I am looking for some good people who can fill the role of community manager. Clearly, we have a problem relating to our user base and some of the decisions have become more controversial than it needs to be. Just for the sake of clarity, it sounds like you're suggesting an unpaid volunteer position to co-ordinate the promotion, website maintenance and welcome committee for the GNOME project. Is that correct? I like the idea of having some people who give more time to marketing and the other tasks. Not sure it would be called a community manager in the context of GNOME, and certainly I don't think that a GNOME community manager would be quite so invested with authority as Dawn Foster was for MeeGo and Tizen, for example. Let me know if you are interested. I will make a similar note on foundation list. Perhaps this kind of marketing role is something which could be fulfilled by the GNOME Foundation? We've paid for interns before, but a longer term full-time position under the ED would allow for us to structure our efforts, take care of all those no-one is giving it time and love stuff we all agree needs to get done... it is only a question of money, I think. I don't know if we'll have success finding one individual to take on all that responsibility as a part-time unpaid volunteer. Perhaps a group working together could do it... Or a paid individual. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary, Lyon, France Email: dne...@gnome.org Jabber: nea...@gmail.com -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: community managers
On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 12:47 AM, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org wrote: Hi Sri, On 11/13/2012 12:17 AM, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: But I am looking for some good people who can fill the role of community manager. Clearly, we have a problem relating to our user base and some of the decisions have become more controversial than it needs to be. Just for the sake of clarity, it sounds like you're suggesting an unpaid volunteer position to co-ordinate the promotion, website maintenance and welcome committee for the GNOME project. Is that correct? Not really. I'm suggesting an unpaid volunteer position to talk to users on various forums like lwn.net, slashdot, reddit, google+ and so forth. There are common themes and complaints that seem to come up over and over again and I would like volunteers to at least filter these complaints legitimate or otherwise. As a project, we are having trouble communicating our vision because everything gets lost in a sea of vitriol due to past actions or perceived actions. For instance, removing fallback is seen as yet again the GNOME project is removing a feature instead of an act of maintenance and sustainability. The constant negativity can cost us users and we need to take that seriously. In the past, we could ignore it because it was the default desktop of Ubuntu which has fairly large marketshare. But now it's a little harder and we need to strengthen our brand or risk weakening it. We do not have data either way, so we should be paranoid all the same. I like the idea of having some people who give more time to marketing and the other tasks. Not sure it would be called a community manager in the context of GNOME, and certainly I don't think that a GNOME community manager would be quite so invested with authority as Dawn Foster was for MeeGo and Tizen, for example. It's a little different than Meego and Tizen. There is definitely some authority. But that doesn't mean we can't have something similar. After all, GNOME design doesn't have any authority but is able to convince maintainers that doing their approach is best for their application. We can apply a similar structure but between release team, design and community manager team. It won't be easy, culturally like every other open source project we like to do what we want as we see fit. Nothing wrong with that, but as the project gets larger we do need to make sure that we are listening to community concerns and avoid needless conflicts. Release team and designers of course will be free to accept or not accept what we hear. But at least there will be able to get a sanitized feedback rather than what we have today which is designing within a bubble without any idea how things are being perceived in the general community. Let me know if you are interested. I will make a similar note on foundation list. Perhaps this kind of marketing role is something which could be fulfilled by the GNOME Foundation? We've paid for interns before, but a longer term full-time position under the ED would allow for us to structure our efforts, take care of all those no-one is giving it time and love stuff we all agree needs to get done... it is only a question of money, I think. We can do interns, but I have had a number of people already interested in doing what I'm envisioning. It's no different than what they are already doing today but they have the power at their descretion to use the royal we as opposed to I. (which I sometimes I use for particular people who I am interested in hearig feedback from) I don't know if we'll have success finding one individual to take on all that responsibility as a part-time unpaid volunteer. Perhaps a group working together could do it... Or a paid individual. I'm envisioning a team of 10 volunteers. 10 volunteers who start out as community managers and then hopefully will be interested in doing other things within the project. I currently have four as of right now. Need to recruit six more! sri Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary, Lyon, France Email: dne...@gnome.org Jabber: nea...@gmail.com -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/**mailman/listinfo/marketing-**listhttps://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
community managers
Greetings! I know that we have a bunch of new people who joined the list. We haven't done any thing to use you people. Sadly, an epic failure on our part. But I am looking for some good people who can fill the role of community manager. Clearly, we have a problem relating to our user base and some of the decisions have become more controversial than it needs to be. I know that there are some like Brett who sort of doing this anyways. But perhaps we could be a little more aggressive. For instance, we can stake out various websites that we can monitor and then address people there. Let me know if you are interested. I will make a similar note on foundation list. sri -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: community managers
On Mon, 2012-11-12 at 15:17 -0800, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: But I am looking for some good people who can fill the role of community manager. Clearly, we have a problem relating to our user base and some of the decisions have become more controversial than it needs to be. Could you elaborate a bit more what you expect a community manager to do, especially refering to GNOME? andre -- Andre Klapper | ak...@gmx.net http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/ -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: community managers
On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 4:12 PM, Andre Klapper ak...@gmx.net wrote: On Mon, 2012-11-12 at 15:17 -0800, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: But I am looking for some good people who can fill the role of community manager. Clearly, we have a problem relating to our user base and some of the decisions have become more controversial than it needs to be. Could you elaborate a bit more what you expect a community manager to do, especially refering to GNOME? Sure. Here is what I envision: The community managers are the interface between the general community and GNOME project. Primarily, their goal is to communicate GNOME design goals, address concerns and common mis-characterizations of GNOME. CM will monitor mailing lists, blogs, and other places and engage. I used to do this quite often back during the 3.0. I will say that it was somewhat effective. It was especially effective with kernel developers who I think have a better opinion of GNOME than initially, but the contact must be continual. Additionally, I want to add a filter on issues that are relevant or different than the common complaints we have. That might require filing bugs on their behalf or maybe suggesting solutions. Like I did for Linus or others. Another important aspect is that you want to also raise the profile of community management. They should have some input in release-team decisions. At work, community managers exist for Yocto and are a big part of how Yocto works and something we take seriously. CM will need a thick skin, and will probably need to give a steady drumbeat of information with an even, friendly tone, without getting emotional. sri andre -- Andre Klapper | ak...@gmx.net http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/ -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
