Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
On 10/30/12 12:14 PM, Rob Weir wrote: On Oct 30, 2012, at 4:19 AM, Jörg Schmidt joe...@j-m-schmidt.de wrote: When we have something to announce you can expect to read it in official places. It won't be something we'll be hiding in strange corners of the web. That means if an employee identifies proposals on XING does not correspond to the opinion of the IBM? Not officially? I think that's a strange point of view. I think sentences like: heute mal eine ganz andere Anfrage, IBM als eine der Firmen, die sich im Apache OpenOffice Projekt engagiert, macht sich auch über ein Service Support Konzept im Rahmen von Apache OpenOffice Gedanken. [...] Ich würde gerne mehr darüber erfahren, wer im OpenOffice Umfeld aktiv ist und an einer Partnerbeziehung auf dieser Ebene mit IBM interessiert ist. are absolutely clear. This sounds like research to me. exactly, I simply wanted to start a discussion on a further channel and I haven't offered anything concrete. It was an attempt of brainstorming without the success that I has looked for :-( The idea of such a partner network of course is that people or even companies can make use of it and can recommend each other on demand. Or ISV can work together on bigger deals if necessary. As Rob pointed already out if IBM receive a request for support for AOO but IBM can't help for whatever reason it would be good to have a partner network worldwide where we simply could recommend an ISV/partner. It's funny in the past people complained about the dominance of Sun/Oracle in the project, then people tried to put IBM in this position. But IBM don't want a special role in the project, we want be part of the overall community and want work together with others. It seems that you expect IBM should taking a leading role here. But I think the best way to show confidence in the project is a healthy, diverse and working community without a leading company and that exactly is what Apache guarantees. Juergen But no problem, I will contact IBM directly. Thanks for your clarification. If everything is absolutely clear to you then I don't know what you want clarifications on. But if you do have a question then just ask it, here or via private email if that is your preference. But I speak honestly when I say that I cannot figure out what your theory is here and what you think is occurring. Rob Greetings, Jörg
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
On 11/1/12, Jürgen Schmidt jogischm...@gmail.com wrote: On 10/30/12 12:14 PM, Rob Weir wrote: On Oct 30, 2012, at 4:19 AM, Jörg Schmidt joe...@j-m-schmidt.de wrote: When we have something to announce you can expect to read it in official places. It won't be something we'll be hiding in strange corners of the web. That means if an employee identifies proposals on XING does not correspond to the opinion of the IBM? Not officially? I think that's a strange point of view. I think sentences like: heute mal eine ganz andere Anfrage, IBM als eine der Firmen, die sich im Apache OpenOffice Projekt engagiert, macht sich auch über ein Service Support Konzept im Rahmen von Apache OpenOffice Gedanken. [...] Ich würde gerne mehr darüber erfahren, wer im OpenOffice Umfeld aktiv ist und an einer Partnerbeziehung auf dieser Ebene mit IBM interessiert ist. are absolutely clear. This sounds like research to me. exactly, I simply wanted to start a discussion on a further channel and I haven't offered anything concrete. It was an attempt of brainstorming without the success that I has looked for :-( The idea of such a partner network of course is that people or even companies can make use of it and can recommend each other on demand. Or ISV can work together on bigger deals if necessary. As Rob pointed already out if IBM receive a request for support for AOO but IBM can't help for whatever reason it would be good to have a partner network worldwide where we simply could recommend an ISV/partner. It's funny in the past people complained about the dominance of Sun/Oracle in the project, then people tried to put IBM in this position. But IBM don't want a special role in the project, we want be part of the overall community and want work together with others. The issue with Sun/Oracle wasn't business related but community related. At a point Sun usually wasn't really in a meaningful picture in many of the peripheral offices. The partner network was always something that was embraced during the BizDev project, but the relevance of this effort wasn't enough to capture possible consultants. Also beside the BizDev list, there was a need for more corporate push, like partner relations upstream and a real channel to discuss business-related needs of the software. We meet a couple of times with Simon Phipps to have Sun more engaged on OOo affairs, but bureaucracy and the internal struggles at Sun didn't make the idea go that fair in. It seems that you expect IBM should taking a leading role here. But I think the best way to show confidence in the project is a healthy, diverse and working community without a leading company and that exactly is what Apache guarantees. Juergen But no problem, I will contact IBM directly. Thanks for your clarification. If everything is absolutely clear to you then I don't know what you want clarifications on. But if you do have a question then just ask it, here or via private email if that is your preference. But I speak honestly when I say that I cannot figure out what your theory is here and what you think is occurring. Rob Greetings, Jörg -- Alexandro Colorado PPMC Apache OpenOffice http://es.openoffice.org
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 10:29 PM, Louis Suárez-Potts lui...@gmail.comwrote: Roberto, On 12-10-31, at 15:14 , Roberto Galoppini rgalopp...@geek.net wrote: On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 8:55 AM, Andrea Pescetti pesce...@apache.org wrote: On 29/10/2012 Roberto Galoppini wrote: A more diverse and sustainable project. For example, until few years ago having OOo integrated or at least able to interoperate with SAP was a distinct dream, is there any chance we can have the right SAP people to attend the AOO BoF, and discuss about this? This would be quite interesting too. I don't have any contacts, but it would be good to have SAP people there and, in general, devote a part of the session to exploring how OpenOffice can interoperate with other solutions (or what the OpenOffice community can do to allow others to be able to integrate with OpenOffice more easily), so not only the community in a strict sense but the ecosystem around it too. I have sent an email to my open source contacts at SAP, maybe other Apache members might have contacts too. I have my old friend from Sun, Erwin T., as well as others through him, and then some outside of open source. We've had discussions with SAP before—but that was prior-moulting, when we were still Oracles. I've dropped a couple of emails, but it's All Saints in Germany and it would be unlikely to hear back before Monday. Having been in the OOo migrations' business for some years, I firmly believe we should try hard to reduce the SI integration gap. Absolutely. Totally agree. Huzza. So let's. Can we perhaps formalize this in a wiki of Things That Are Important or At Least Worth It? We might do that, but a survey could probably do a better job in this respect, though. While actually for things like SAP we've heard that so many times from medium-large companies that likely we do not need to ask. Roberto Louis Roberto Regards, Andrea. -- This e- mail message is intended only for the named recipient(s) above. It may contain confidential and privileged information. If you are not the intended recipient you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail and any attachment(s) is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please immediately notify the sender by replying to this e-mail and delete the message and any attachment(s) from your system. Thank you.
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
On 29/10/2012 Roberto Galoppini wrote: A more diverse and sustainable project. For example, until few years ago having OOo integrated or at least able to interoperate with SAP was a distinct dream, is there any chance we can have the right SAP people to attend the AOO BoF, and discuss about this? This would be quite interesting too. I don't have any contacts, but it would be good to have SAP people there and, in general, devote a part of the session to exploring how OpenOffice can interoperate with other solutions (or what the OpenOffice community can do to allow others to be able to integrate with OpenOffice more easily), so not only the community in a strict sense but the ecosystem around it too. Regards, Andrea.
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
On 10/30/2012 5:35 PM, Peter Junge wrote: I will not be in person in Sinsheim, hence we'll need one, better two moderators for that BoF session. The initial tasks seems quite simple. It's just saying hello to the attendees, making a short statement what the session is about, then kicking off the discussion with throwing in some key issues, e.g. collected from this discussion. After that it's a moderators job like any other. I'll raise my hand for this. Looks like the moderators will be myself and imacat. I'll collect up the topics that have been raised so far, and it looks like we can hope to have a lively and informative session. Andrew On 10/31/2012 1:06 AM, imacat wrote: It's a long list of discussion to read. There seems to be a lot to discuss in our BoF session. So, what is the help we need for our BoF session now?
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 8:55 AM, Andrea Pescetti pesce...@apache.org wrote: On 29/10/2012 Roberto Galoppini wrote: A more diverse and sustainable project. For example, until few years ago having OOo integrated or at least able to interoperate with SAP was a distinct dream, is there any chance we can have the right SAP people to attend the AOO BoF, and discuss about this? This would be quite interesting too. I don't have any contacts, but it would be good to have SAP people there and, in general, devote a part of the session to exploring how OpenOffice can interoperate with other solutions (or what the OpenOffice community can do to allow others to be able to integrate with OpenOffice more easily), so not only the community in a strict sense but the ecosystem around it too. I have sent an email to my open source contacts at SAP, maybe other Apache members might have contacts too. Having been in the OOo migrations' business for some years, I firmly believe we should try hard to reduce the SI integration gap. Roberto Regards, Andrea. -- This e- mail message is intended only for the named recipient(s) above. It may contain confidential and privileged information. If you are not the intended recipient you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail and any attachment(s) is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please immediately notify the sender by replying to this e-mail and delete the message and any attachment(s) from your system. Thank you.
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Roberto, On 12-10-31, at 15:14 , Roberto Galoppini rgalopp...@geek.net wrote: On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 8:55 AM, Andrea Pescetti pesce...@apache.org wrote: On 29/10/2012 Roberto Galoppini wrote: A more diverse and sustainable project. For example, until few years ago having OOo integrated or at least able to interoperate with SAP was a distinct dream, is there any chance we can have the right SAP people to attend the AOO BoF, and discuss about this? This would be quite interesting too. I don't have any contacts, but it would be good to have SAP people there and, in general, devote a part of the session to exploring how OpenOffice can interoperate with other solutions (or what the OpenOffice community can do to allow others to be able to integrate with OpenOffice more easily), so not only the community in a strict sense but the ecosystem around it too. I have sent an email to my open source contacts at SAP, maybe other Apache members might have contacts too. I have my old friend from Sun, Erwin T., as well as others through him, and then some outside of open source. We've had discussions with SAP before—but that was prior-moulting, when we were still Oracles. Having been in the OOo migrations' business for some years, I firmly believe we should try hard to reduce the SI integration gap. Absolutely. Totally agree. Huzza. So let's. Can we perhaps formalize this in a wiki of Things That Are Important or At Least Worth It? Louis Roberto Regards, Andrea. -- This e- mail message is intended only for the named recipient(s) above. It may contain confidential and privileged information. If you are not the intended recipient you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail and any attachment(s) is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please immediately notify the sender by replying to this e-mail and delete the message and any attachment(s) from your system. Thank you.
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
When we have something to announce you can expect to read it in official places. It won't be something we'll be hiding in strange corners of the web. That means if an employee identifies proposals on XING does not correspond to the opinion of the IBM? Not officially? I think that's a strange point of view. I think sentences like: heute mal eine ganz andere Anfrage, IBM als eine der Firmen, die sich im Apache OpenOffice Projekt engagiert, macht sich auch über ein Service Support Konzept im Rahmen von Apache OpenOffice Gedanken. [...] Ich würde gerne mehr darüber erfahren, wer im OpenOffice Umfeld aktiv ist und an einer Partnerbeziehung auf dieser Ebene mit IBM interessiert ist. are absolutely clear. But no problem, I will contact IBM directly. Thanks for your clarification. Greetings, Jörg
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
On Oct 30, 2012, at 4:19 AM, Jörg Schmidt joe...@j-m-schmidt.de wrote: When we have something to announce you can expect to read it in official places. It won't be something we'll be hiding in strange corners of the web. That means if an employee identifies proposals on XING does not correspond to the opinion of the IBM? Not officially? I think that's a strange point of view. I think sentences like: heute mal eine ganz andere Anfrage, IBM als eine der Firmen, die sich im Apache OpenOffice Projekt engagiert, macht sich auch über ein Service Support Konzept im Rahmen von Apache OpenOffice Gedanken. [...] Ich würde gerne mehr darüber erfahren, wer im OpenOffice Umfeld aktiv ist und an einer Partnerbeziehung auf dieser Ebene mit IBM interessiert ist. are absolutely clear. This sounds like research to me. But no problem, I will contact IBM directly. Thanks for your clarification. If everything is absolutely clear to you then I don't know what you want clarifications on. But if you do have a question then just ask it, here or via private email if that is your preference. But I speak honestly when I say that I cannot figure out what your theory is here and what you think is occurring. Rob Greetings, Jörg
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
If everything is absolutely clear to you then I don't know what you want clarifications on. But if you do have a question then just ask it, here or via private email if that is your preference. Hello Rob, Ok, thank you, I will send you a private email. Greetings, Jörg
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
On 2012/10/29 23:26, Rob Weir said: Then there is the secondary question of network effect and value of the network. The more AOO users there are they greater the value of skills in AOO extension development, of AOO training and certification skills, and of migration and deployment services, etc. These business interests all become more valuable the more users we have. Although nothing requires that business built on AOO contribute back to the project, in practice they often will, since helping to sustain the project helps their business as well. So aside from the volunteer pyramid we set up a second virtuous cycle with business interests. Unfortunately, in the few cases I've seen, this is just negative. In practice many of these business just don't help to sustain the project. I suppose many of them do help to sustain the project. Why some do and some don't is another interesting issue to be investigated further. I occasionally hear some local business doing OpenOffice support, but I cannot reach them. They just don't respond to us, and have no interests to connect to the open source community. (Afraid of us stealing their business? Afraid of us sharing their profit? Just afraid of communication trouble? Being conservative for Asian culture?) This inference is basically great, but there are some potential holes in it. -- Best regards, imacat ^_*' ima...@mail.imacat.idv.tw PGP Key http://www.imacat.idv.tw/me/pgpkey.asc Woman's Voice News: http://www.wov.idv.tw/ Tavern IMACAT's http://www.imacat.idv.tw/ Woman in FOSS in Taiwan http://wofoss.blogspot.com/ OpenOffice http://www.openoffice.org/ EducOO/OOo4Kids Taiwan http://www.educoo.tw/ Greenfoot Taiwan http://greenfoot.westart.tw/ signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
It's a long list of discussion to read. There seems to be a lot to discuss in our BoF session. So, what is the help we need for our BoF session now? -- Best regards, imacat ^_*' ima...@mail.imacat.idv.tw PGP Key http://www.imacat.idv.tw/me/pgpkey.asc Woman's Voice News: http://www.wov.idv.tw/ Tavern IMACAT's http://www.imacat.idv.tw/ Woman in FOSS in Taiwan http://wofoss.blogspot.com/ OpenOffice http://www.openoffice.org/ EducOO/OOo4Kids Taiwan http://www.educoo.tw/ Greenfoot Taiwan http://greenfoot.westart.tw/ signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Am 30.10.12 17:41, schrieb imacat: On 2012/10/29 23:26, Rob Weir said: Then there is the secondary question of network effect and value of the network. The more AOO users there are they greater the value of skills in AOO extension development, of AOO training and certification skills, and of migration and deployment services, etc. These business interests all become more valuable the more users we have. Although nothing requires that business built on AOO contribute back to the project, in practice they often will, since helping to sustain the project helps their business as well. So aside from the volunteer pyramid we set up a second virtuous cycle with business interests. Unfortunately, in the few cases I've seen, this is just negative. In practice many of these business just don't help to sustain the project. I suppose many of them do help to sustain the project. Why some do and some don't is another interesting issue to be investigated further. I occasionally hear some local business doing OpenOffice support, but I cannot reach them. They just don't respond to us, and have no interests to connect to the open source community. (Afraid of us stealing their business? Afraid of us sharing their profit? Just afraid of communication trouble? Being conservative for Asian culture?) I beleve the main problem is that consultants see a product, and not a project. Same for big companies. I often hear from consultants I don't care about development. They also don't have the time to join a project, and if, then they join the marketing. I have had a load of talk with consultants, and showed the way for verry simple work like testing snapshots and duing bug reports. No one of them ever particip. What could work is if OpenOffice Committers start to sell a development packages We have to put our work into a service product. But this is not samthing that we do at Apache, it's samething for outside the ASF. Greetings Raphael
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 12:41 PM, imacat ima...@mail.imacat.idv.tw wrote: On 2012/10/29 23:26, Rob Weir said: Then there is the secondary question of network effect and value of the network. The more AOO users there are they greater the value of skills in AOO extension development, of AOO training and certification skills, and of migration and deployment services, etc. These business interests all become more valuable the more users we have. Although nothing requires that business built on AOO contribute back to the project, in practice they often will, since helping to sustain the project helps their business as well. So aside from the volunteer pyramid we set up a second virtuous cycle with business interests. Unfortunately, in the few cases I've seen, this is just negative. In practice many of these business just don't help to sustain the project. I suppose many of them do help to sustain the project. Why some do and some don't is another interesting issue to be investigated further. Been there; done that. You didn't see IBM very active in OpenOffice.org years ago, did you? There is a huge difference between a corporate-lead and a community-led open source one. A community-led one is much more welcoming to other large companies.. If a company wanted to get involved with OpenOffice.org before then there was all the messiness with dealing with Sun and wondering about whether Sun's priorities would dominate over everything else. Look at the constant battles Novell and Sun had, for example. This changes with the move to Apache. So I'd recommend that we point this out to companies, small and large. We shouldn't let past failures in this area discourage us too much. It is a new situation now. Now sure, some companies will just be interested in training or whatever, and have zero interest in participating. However, those companies will be at a disadvantage compared to competing companies that are participate. There is a level of information, skill, expertise, even influence that comes from participating on the inside, rather than watching from the outside. I occasionally hear some local business doing OpenOffice support, but I cannot reach them. They just don't respond to us, and have no interests to connect to the open source community. (Afraid of us stealing their business? Afraid of us sharing their profit? Just afraid of communication trouble? Being conservative for Asian culture?) A trainer can easily switch to training users for Google Docs, or Microsoft Office, if they need to. So they are not as dependent on the success of our project. -Rob This inference is basically great, but there are some potential holes in it. -- Best regards, imacat ^_*' ima...@mail.imacat.idv.tw PGP Key http://www.imacat.idv.tw/me/pgpkey.asc Woman's Voice News: http://www.wov.idv.tw/ Tavern IMACAT's http://www.imacat.idv.tw/ Woman in FOSS in Taiwan http://wofoss.blogspot.com/ OpenOffice http://www.openoffice.org/ EducOO/OOo4Kids Taiwan http://www.educoo.tw/ Greenfoot Taiwan http://greenfoot.westart.tw/
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
I will not be in person in Sinsheim, hence we'll need one, better two moderators for that BoF session. The initial tasks seems quite simple. It's just saying hello to the attendees, making a short statement what the session is about, then kicking off the discussion with throwing in some key issues, e.g. collected from this discussion. After that it's a moderators job like any other. On 10/31/2012 1:06 AM, imacat wrote: It's a long list of discussion to read. There seems to be a lot to discuss in our BoF session. So, what is the help we need for our BoF session now?
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
On 10/29/2012 10:16 PM, Donald Whytock wrote: About Peter's point #2...I suppose this is getting kind of abstract, but what is the payoff from expanding AOO's community? Typically marketing is performed to increase sales, which earns money; AOO has no sales, so what should the intended benefit from marketing be? I think this is not abstract for those who have been part of the former OOo community. In a typical Apache project you have developers, testers, people working on documentation. They join for different reason, some are delegated by their employers, some are freelancers who want to sharpen their profile as an expert for that project (among many other possible reasons) and some are volunteers who join for fun. With an end-user projects the same reasons apply for the marketing people. At OOo we had contributors who wrote a detailed business plan, just for fun. I, for instance, coordinated the efforts for OOo booth at the CeBIT in 2011 as volunteer, just because I enjoyed doing it. How does Apache gain from a larger user base for AOO? More users - more traffic - more demand for resources - more demand for people that maintain infrastructure and the money to pay for said infrastructure. What is Apache's interest in promoting its offering of AOO? I cannot speak for Apache, but as the ASF had accepted Oracle's grant, they now have the responsibility to deal with it. How does AOO gain from a larger user base? More beta-testing, more word-of-mouth exposure, more potential donors? More representative clout for acquiring resources from Apache? Did no one consider that? I'm not saying -- I would never say -- that making AOO available to the world is a bad or unnecessary thing. Given monopolistic business practices and commercialization of software available, it's important for there to be freely available alternatives to such things as an office productivity suite. But if marketing is going to occur, it would be good to know what said marketing is meant to accomplish, other than promotion for promotion's sake. Promotion for promotion's sake is the organizational manifestation of a viral idea. Many (unpaid) volunteers are working on such a viral idea successfully at LO and they are rewarded with a fair amount of donations from people who honor the efforts. But, doesn't a similar idea apply for Apache's HTTP server? Why does Apache produce it, isn't it simply production for production's sake? If there's to be a discussion on marketing, perhaps it should include a manifesto that's more concrete and strategic than Don't you think this is great? Let's throw money at it until you do. That's why it should be discussed in that BoF session we're talking about.
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
On 2012/10/31 08:35, Peter Junge said: I will not be in person in Sinsheim, hence we'll need one, better two moderators for that BoF session. The initial tasks seems quite simple. It's just saying hello to the attendees, making a short statement what the session is about, then kicking off the discussion with throwing in some key issues, e.g. collected from this discussion. After that it's a moderators job like any other. If we still need one moderator, I suppose I can help. ^_*' On 10/31/2012 1:06 AM, imacat wrote: It's a long list of discussion to read. There seems to be a lot to discuss in our BoF session. So, what is the help we need for our BoF session now? -- Best regards, imacat ^_*' ima...@mail.imacat.idv.tw PGP Key http://www.imacat.idv.tw/me/pgpkey.asc Woman's Voice News: http://www.wov.idv.tw/ Tavern IMACAT's http://www.imacat.idv.tw/ Woman in FOSS in Taiwan http://wofoss.blogspot.com/ OpenOffice http://www.openoffice.org/ EducOO/OOo4Kids Taiwan http://www.educoo.tw/ Greenfoot Taiwan http://greenfoot.westart.tw/ signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
On 2012/10/31 01:59, Rob Weir said: On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 12:41 PM, imacat ima...@mail.imacat.idv.tw wrote: On 2012/10/29 23:26, Rob Weir said: Then there is the secondary question of network effect and value of the network. The more AOO users there are they greater the value of skills in AOO extension development, of AOO training and certification skills, and of migration and deployment services, etc. These business interests all become more valuable the more users we have. Although nothing requires that business built on AOO contribute back to the project, in practice they often will, since helping to sustain the project helps their business as well. So aside from the volunteer pyramid we set up a second virtuous cycle with business interests. Unfortunately, in the few cases I've seen, this is just negative. In practice many of these business just don't help to sustain the project. I suppose many of them do help to sustain the project. Why some do and some don't is another interesting issue to be investigated further. Been there; done that. You didn't see IBM very active in OpenOffice.org years ago, did you? There is a huge difference between a corporate-lead and a community-led open source one. A community-led one is much more welcoming to other large companies.. If a company wanted to get involved with OpenOffice.org before then there was all the messiness with dealing with Sun and wondering about whether Sun's priorities would dominate over everything else. Look at the constant battles Novell and Sun had, for example. This changes with the move to Apache. So I'd recommend that we point this out to companies, small and large. We shouldn't let past failures in this area discourage us too much. It is a new situation now. Yap. I mean, your business theory is great. But there are some holes in it on the reality side that we need to overcome. It may work for IBM, but not all the other business. Maybe some more mails? Some more talks with people? Some other strategy? Now sure, some companies will just be interested in training or whatever, and have zero interest in participating. However, those companies will be at a disadvantage compared to competing companies that are participate. There is a level of information, skill, expertise, even influence that comes from participating on the inside, rather than watching from the outside. I occasionally hear some local business doing OpenOffice support, but I cannot reach them. They just don't respond to us, and have no interests to connect to the open source community. (Afraid of us stealing their business? Afraid of us sharing their profit? Just afraid of communication trouble? Being conservative for Asian culture?) A trainer can easily switch to training users for Google Docs, or Microsoft Office, if they need to. So they are not as dependent on the success of our project. I do not know if they are trainers or else. Someone refer me to them that they are doing OpenOffice jobs (technical? training? application development? anything else? I don't know.) and they may need my help. They never respond. That said, there are some holes in your theory. -- Best regards, imacat ^_*' ima...@mail.imacat.idv.tw PGP Key http://www.imacat.idv.tw/me/pgpkey.asc Woman's Voice News: http://www.wov.idv.tw/ Tavern IMACAT's http://www.imacat.idv.tw/ Woman in FOSS in Taiwan http://wofoss.blogspot.com/ OpenOffice http://www.openoffice.org/ EducOO/OOo4Kids Taiwan http://www.educoo.tw/ Greenfoot Taiwan http://greenfoot.westart.tw/ signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
On Wednesday, October 31, 2012, imacat wrote: On 2012/10/31 01:59, Rob Weir said: On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 12:41 PM, imacat ima...@mail.imacat.idv.twjavascript:; wrote: On 2012/10/29 23:26, Rob Weir said: Then there is the secondary question of network effect and value of the network. The more AOO users there are they greater the value of skills in AOO extension development, of AOO training and certification skills, and of migration and deployment services, etc. These business interests all become more valuable the more users we have. Although nothing requires that business built on AOO contribute back to the project, in practice they often will, since helping to sustain the project helps their business as well. So aside from the volunteer pyramid we set up a second virtuous cycle with business interests. Unfortunately, in the few cases I've seen, this is just negative. In practice many of these business just don't help to sustain the project. I suppose many of them do help to sustain the project. Why some do and some don't is another interesting issue to be investigated further. Been there; done that. You didn't see IBM very active in OpenOffice.org years ago, did you? There is a huge difference between a corporate-lead and a community-led open source one. A community-led one is much more welcoming to other large companies.. If a company wanted to get involved with OpenOffice.org before then there was all the messiness with dealing with Sun and wondering about whether Sun's priorities would dominate over everything else. Look at the constant battles Novell and Sun had, for example. This changes with the move to Apache. So I'd recommend that we point this out to companies, small and large. We shouldn't let past failures in this area discourage us too much. It is a new situation now. Yap. I mean, your business theory is great. But there are some holes in it on the reality side that we need to overcome. It may work for IBM, but not all the other business. Maybe some more mails? Some more talks with people? Some other strategy? Now sure, some companies will just be interested in training or whatever, and have zero interest in participating. However, those companies will be at a disadvantage compared to competing companies that are participate. There is a level of information, skill, expertise, even influence that comes from participating on the inside, rather than watching from the outside. I occasionally hear some local business doing OpenOffice support, but I cannot reach them. They just don't respond to us, and have no interests to connect to the open source community. (Afraid of us stealing their business? Afraid of us sharing their profit? Just afraid of communication trouble? Being conservative for Asian culture?) A trainer can easily switch to training users for Google Docs, or Microsoft Office, if they need to. So they are not as dependent on the success of our project. I do not know if they are trainers or else. Someone refer me to them that they are doing OpenOffice jobs (technical? training? application development? anything else? I don't know.) and they may need my help. They never respond. That said, there are some holes in your theory. -- Best regards, imacat ^_*' ima...@mail.imacat.idv.tw javascript:; PGP Key http://www.imacat.idv.tw/me/pgpkey.asc Woman's Voice News: http://www.wov.idv.tw/ Tavern IMACAT's http://www.imacat.idv.tw/ Woman in FOSS in Taiwan http://wofoss.blogspot.com/ OpenOffice http://www.openoffice.org/ EducOO/OOo4Kids Taiwan http://www.educoo.tw/ Greenfoot Taiwan http://greenfoot.westart.tw/ Great thread. So many interesting topics to explore at a BoF. Here are some thoughts related to broadening our skills set and transforming the project from open source development to open source product design and development. In support of the community development goals, perhaps the discussion could also explore academic partnerships. A strong academic partner can bring a variety of skills to the effort: business, technical and design. Could be a great win win relationship. Regards, Kevin
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
On 10/31/2012 11:11 AM, Kevin Grignon wrote: [...] Great thread. So many interesting topics to explore at a BoF. Here are some thoughts related to broadening our skills set and transforming the project from open source development to open source product design and development. In support of the community development goals, perhaps the discussion could also explore academic partnerships. A strong academic partner can bring a variety of skills to the effort: business, technical and design. Could be a great win win relationship. Great point. Certainly worth including it in the discussion. Peter
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Hello Rob, *, -Original Message- From: Rob Weir [mailto:robw...@apache.org] I think the challenge is to change the thinking that says a project can only be successful if it raises money. Yes, you're right. But success is measured, in my opinion, in the dissemination of AOO, for private users *but also* for use in companies. In my experience this purpose, the work on the ground is essential. AOO must be present to the public and decision makers in companies already have AOO be seen as a real alternative to MS Office. This calls for talks as a relevant framework in Germany at Chamber of Commerce Events. I personally have several months ago on the phone with a German IBM manager and to illustrate the relevance of such things. What concerns me is not about money (or primarily to money), but about collaboration in the communitybecause IBM, I and the German community are parts of the international community. I have also read the demands of IBM, on XING, to create a partner network, and I think that's a good idea, but unfortunately I put demand on the fixed nothing concrete happens. Collaboration in the community is not a question of money but of doing and at the same time, this cooperation also key to the success of service providers, e.g. such under which: http://www.openoffice.org/bizdev/consultants.html are listed. Currently I am professionally e.g. in negotiations for a major consulting company, which either LO or AOO want to use (instead of MS Office) on hundreds or thousands of workplaces, but these companies want to see visible presence of AOO. Such companies want from me, as an expert, impartial advice and not the reference to other companies. For Germany, I would wish for the future practical cooperation of consultants like me, medium-sized businesses, large companies, such as IBM, and the community, for mutual success. I'm ready for this for a long time, and as many of the German community, but we must finally start real actions. LibreOffice is everywhere in Germany, but where are we? Where AOO is really visible in Germany? Besides exhibitions (e.g. CeBIT or as the LinuxTag in Berlin), were IHK meetings an important opportunity. In the next year it will be an event of FroDeV commercial users give (http://www.frodev.org/konferenz), I'm sure that LibreOffice will be there, but also Apache OpenOffice? greetings Jörg
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
On 10/29/2012 2:22 PM, Jörg Schmidt wrote: Hello Rob, *, -Original Message- From: Rob Weir [mailto:robw...@apache.org] I think the challenge is to change the thinking that says a project can only be successful if it raises money. Yes, you're right. But success is measured, in my opinion, in the dissemination of AOO, for private users *but also* for use in companies. In my experience this purpose, the work on the ground is essential. AOO must be present to the public and decision makers in companies already have AOO be seen as a real alternative to MS Office. This calls for talks as a relevant framework in Germany at Chamber of Commerce Events. I personally have several months ago on the phone with a German IBM manager and to illustrate the relevance of such things. What concerns me is not about money (or primarily to money), but about collaboration in the communitybecause IBM, I and the German community are parts of the international community. I have also read the demands of IBM, on XING, to create a partner network, and I think that's a good idea, but unfortunately I put demand on the fixed nothing concrete happens. Collaboration in the community is not a question of money but of doing and at the same time, this cooperation also key to the success of service providers, e.g. such under which: http://www.openoffice.org/bizdev/consultants.html are listed. Currently I am professionally e.g. in negotiations for a major consulting company, which either LO or AOO want to use (instead of MS Office) on hundreds or thousands of workplaces, but these companies want to see visible presence of AOO. Such companies want from me, as an expert, impartial advice and not the reference to other companies. For Germany, I would wish for the future practical cooperation of consultants like me, medium-sized businesses, large companies, such as IBM, and the community, for mutual success. I'm ready for this for a long time, and as many of the German community, but we must finally start real actions. LibreOffice is everywhere in Germany, but where are we? Where AOO is really visible in Germany? Besides exhibitions (e.g. CeBIT or as the LinuxTag in Berlin), were IHK meetings an important opportunity. In the next year it will be an event of FroDeV commercial users give (http://www.frodev.org/konferenz), I'm sure that LibreOffice will be there, but also Apache OpenOffice? Good points Jörg, I hope you'll be at the BoF session at the ApacheCon EU in Sinsheim to plead for them. Peter
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 2:22 AM, Jörg Schmidt joe...@j-m-schmidt.de wrote: Hello Rob, *, -Original Message- From: Rob Weir [mailto:robw...@apache.org] I think the challenge is to change the thinking that says a project can only be successful if it raises money. Yes, you're right. But success is measured, in my opinion, in the dissemination of AOO, for private users *but also* for use in companies. In my experience this purpose, the work on the ground is essential. AOO must be present to the public and decision makers in companies already have AOO be seen as a real alternative to MS Office. This calls for talks as a relevant framework in Germany at Chamber of Commerce Events. I personally have several months ago on the phone with a German IBM manager and to illustrate the relevance of such things. What concerns me is not about money (or primarily to money), but about collaboration in the communitybecause IBM, I and the German community are parts of the international community. I have also read the demands of IBM, on XING, to create a partner network, and I think that's a good idea, but unfortunately I put demand on the fixed nothing concrete happens. Collaboration in the community is not a question of money but of doing and at the same time, this cooperation also key to the success of service providers, e.g. such under which: http://www.openoffice.org/bizdev/consultants.html are listed. The ooo-marketing list is a great place to coordinate international campaigns. And we have a German list for local events, yes? Currently I am professionally e.g. in negotiations for a major consulting company, which either LO or AOO want to use (instead of MS Office) on hundreds or thousands of workplaces, but these companies want to see visible presence of AOO. Such companies want from me, as an expert, impartial advice and not the reference to other companies. For Germany, I would wish for the future practical cooperation of consultants like me, medium-sized businesses, large companies, such as IBM, and the community, for mutual success. I think the consultants directory is the best option here. I see companies looking for AOO support, but they are sometimes too small to interest IBM. But they would be a good size for smaller companies. I'd love to be able to refer them to a local small company. I'm ready for this for a long time, and as many of the German community, but we must finally start real actions. LibreOffice is everywhere in Germany, but where are we? Where AOO is really visible in Germany? Besides exhibitions (e.g. CeBIT or as the LinuxTag in Berlin), were IHK meetings an important opportunity. In the next year it will be an event of FroDeV commercial users give (http://www.frodev.org/konferenz), I'm sure that LibreOffice will be there, but also Apache OpenOffice? Suggestion: 1) Take one of the general overview presentations from ApacheCon and clean it up. Make it into the standard' AOO overview presentation. Put it on the marketing wiki. Get it translated into various languages. Maintain it so it remains current. 2) Start a wiki page to lists events-of-interest. List event, date, location, link to website, etc. Project members who are local to that event can volunteer to present there. Many are doable as a day trip. CeBit is in Hanover, 92 minutes from Hamburg on the ICE train, for example. 3) For critical events where there are no local project members we can check with other Apache members, from other projects, to see if they can help cover it. In return, maybe we help promote related projects at events we are able to attend. 4) If any critical conference is still not covered, then we look at other options. -Rob greetings Jörg
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Hello, The ooo-marketing list is a great place to coordinate international campaigns. And we have a German list for local events, yes? Yes, we have a German list, but there can discuss only. The practical work but needs a lot of different things. First people, but also material things and not a case by case, but permanently. The German community is working on this, but it is also necessary here to address such things. I think. I think the consultants directory is the best option here. Unfortunately, no. It is necessary but not sufficient, because it takes more than just information. AOO business users need confidence in the AOO and this is growing with major partners. I see companies looking for AOO support, but they are sometimes too small to interest IBM. But they would be a good size for smaller companies. I'd love to be able to refer them to a local small company. In this case, please explain to me why IBM calls publicly to a partner network. see: https://www.xing.com/net/aoo/allgemeines-diskussionsforum-698796/partner-netzwerk-rund-um-apache-openoffice-41041065/ Or is that not a valid question? Sorry Rob, just the very real problem that I see is that IBM does not understand that small companies can help to open up markets *for IBM*. But because the small companies can, IBM should take care of it. It would be good if IBM would consider the experiences of the past which consist of OOo, SUN and Oracle. Here on the mailing list, not the place to talk about these things, but I and other experts know how to act would be to achieve a win-win-situation for IBM and small companies. This is not a pure IT question but an business question. (Note: I have studied business administration.) Suggestion: 1) Take one of the general overview presentations from ApacheCon and clean it up. Make it into the standard' AOO overview presentation. Put it on the marketing wiki. Get it translated into various languages. Maintain it so it remains current. 2) Start a wiki page to lists events-of-interest. List event, date, location, link to website, etc. Project members who are local to that event can volunteer to present there. Many are doable as a day trip. CeBit is in Hanover, 92 minutes from Hamburg on the ICE train, for example. 3) For critical events where there are no local project members we can check with other Apache members, from other projects, to see if they can help cover it. In return, maybe we help promote related projects at events we are able to attend. 4) If any critical conference is still not covered, then we look at other options. These things are true, but they are no real answer to the problems that I have tried to explain. It's not a problem of people, time or money, it is first a question broadest possible cooperation of all concerned. Not only for individual events, but rather strategically. Greetings Jörg
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
About Peter's point #2...I suppose this is getting kind of abstract, but what is the payoff from expanding AOO's community? Typically marketing is performed to increase sales, which earns money; AOO has no sales, so what should the intended benefit from marketing be? How does Apache gain from a larger user base for AOO? More users - more traffic - more demand for resources - more demand for people that maintain infrastructure and the money to pay for said infrastructure. What is Apache's interest in promoting its offering of AOO? How does AOO gain from a larger user base? More beta-testing, more word-of-mouth exposure, more potential donors? More representative clout for acquiring resources from Apache? I'm not saying -- I would never say -- that making AOO available to the world is a bad or unnecessary thing. Given monopolistic business practices and commercialization of software available, it's important for there to be freely available alternatives to such things as an office productivity suite. But if marketing is going to occur, it would be good to know what said marketing is meant to accomplish, other than promotion for promotion's sake. Promotion for promotion's sake is the organizational manifestation of a viral idea. If there's to be a discussion on marketing, perhaps it should include a manifesto that's more concrete and strategic than Don't you think this is great? Let's throw money at it until you do. Don
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 3:16 PM, Donald Whytock dwhyt...@gmail.com wrote: About Peter's point #2...I suppose this is getting kind of abstract, but what is the payoff from expanding AOO's community? A more diverse and sustainable project. For example, until few years ago having OOo integrated or at least able to interoperate with SAP was a distinct dream, is there any chance we can have the right SAP people to attend the AOO BoF, and discuss about this? SugarCRM's CEO wrote in early May [1] wrote that he they were looking at how they can integrate with OpenOffice, it would be great to see things like this happening. Roberto [1] http://lmaugustin.typepad.com/lma/2012/05/apache-releases-openoffice-34-sugarcrm-looking-at-how-we-can-integrate-with-openoffice-httpowlyanyok.html Typically marketing is performed to increase sales, which earns money; AOO has no sales, so what should the intended benefit from marketing be? How does Apache gain from a larger user base for AOO? More users - more traffic - more demand for resources - more demand for people that maintain infrastructure and the money to pay for said infrastructure. What is Apache's interest in promoting its offering of AOO? How does AOO gain from a larger user base? More beta-testing, more word-of-mouth exposure, more potential donors? More representative clout for acquiring resources from Apache? I'm not saying -- I would never say -- that making AOO available to the world is a bad or unnecessary thing. Given monopolistic business practices and commercialization of software available, it's important for there to be freely available alternatives to such things as an office productivity suite. But if marketing is going to occur, it would be good to know what said marketing is meant to accomplish, other than promotion for promotion's sake. Promotion for promotion's sake is the organizational manifestation of a viral idea. If there's to be a discussion on marketing, perhaps it should include a manifesto that's more concrete and strategic than Don't you think this is great? Let's throw money at it until you do. Don -- This e- mail message is intended only for the named recipient(s) above. It may contain confidential and privileged information. If you are not the intended recipient you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail and any attachment(s) is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please immediately notify the sender by replying to this e-mail and delete the message and any attachment(s) from your system. Thank you.
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 12:18 AM, Louis Suárez-Potts lui...@gmail.com wrote: On 12-10-28, at 23:33 , Rob Weir robw...@apache.org wrote: That's the way to grow. Raising money to send the existing volunteers to travel to more places is only growth for the airline industry. It is not growth for the project. We need to find people who are able to succeed in a business based on enhancing or supporting the OpenOffice product to businesses and users.. A business based on promoting the OpenOffice open source project is not really a business model. I don't think we want to encourage anyone to think of making a career as a professional OpenOffice community manager or anything like that. hey! ;=) Though your contempt for community management is, I have to say, a little ironic, given that's pretty much what you do. I don't have contempt for the role. It was fine as a corporate-defined role in a corporate-led and sponsored open source project.I just don't see the role as applicable in a community-led meritocracy. But actually I agree with you here, in that what would work to enlarge the community of contributors is not sending ambassadors here and there to little effect but to (and here I extend the argument) to provide the resources for regional ecosystem growth. Those resources are, I think, cheap. They are: website, badge, banners; guidelines for trademark; wiki for suggestions, additions, and minimal provisions for beer and pizza (and its equivalents) for initial meetings. In short, what you normally find at a LUG or so. louis
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
On 10/29/12, Donald Whytock dwhyt...@gmail.com wrote: About Peter's point #2...I suppose this is getting kind of abstract, but what is the payoff from expanding AOO's community? Typically marketing is performed to increase sales, which earns money; AOO has no sales, so what should the intended benefit from marketing be? Usually donnations, most of OOo community income came from donations, and some grants from Sun. You can read more agbout the budget on the wiki: http://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Community_Council/Funding_And_Budgets/Budget_2011 How does Apache gain from a larger user base for AOO? More users - more traffic - more demand for resources - more demand for people that maintain infrastructure and the money to pay for said infrastructure. What is Apache's interest in promoting its offering of AOO? Not sure, but is a good question. Then again, why do apache would want to add projects to their foundation on the first place? That answer should loosely apply to this one. How does AOO gain from a larger user base? More beta-testing, more word-of-mouth exposure, more potential donors? More representative clout for acquiring resources from Apache? I'm not saying -- I would never say -- that making AOO available to the world is a bad or unnecessary thing. Given monopolistic business practices and commercialization of software available, it's important for there to be freely available alternatives to such things as an office productivity suite. But if marketing is going to occur, it would be good to know what said marketing is meant to accomplish, other than promotion for promotion's sake. Promotion for promotion's sake is the organizational manifestation of a viral idea. If there's to be a discussion on marketing, perhaps it should include a manifesto that's more concrete and strategic than Don't you think this is great? Let's throw money at it until you do. Shouldnt this be on ooo-marketing? Don -- Alexandro Colorado PPMC Apache OpenOffice http://es.openoffice.org
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 12:59 PM, Alexandro Colorado j...@oooes.org wrote: Shouldnt this be on ooo-marketing? Probably. But it was in response to Peter's questions about ApacheCon EU discussion topics, one of which was about end-user software vs. the typical Apache offering, and how a big difference is that AOO needs a big marketing effort to reach its users and constantly growing that user base. I just think such a discussion should include thoughts on what said marketing effort can and should hope to accomplish for a FOSS product vs. a commercial one. Don
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Customers don't come to IBM looking only for OpenOffice. I mean companies, not simple users. And these companies ask me if they should use AOO or LO and they look around in the market. These companies need my help, but they also need the confidence in the future of AOO and for many companies this is not a question of what the community is saying, but to say what its large community of partners (eg IBM). Views on the document of February 2012: http://ebookbrowse.com/symphony-apache-future-faq-02-2012-pdf-d359761565 and I tell you, that is the question many companies: When will The Apache OpenOffice IBM Edition on the market? They are looking for a bundle of software and services and OpenOffice might enter the discussions as a small part of the overall deal. We commonly work with business partners, subcontractors, etc., where specialized skills are needed. This includes partners large and small. But what IBM is doing in practice? It is your colleague who wrote the following: https://www.xing.com/net/aoo/allgemeines-diskussionsforum-698796/partner-netzwerk-rund-um-apache-openoffice-41041065/ and when I speak of, as a consultant for AOO, IBM I get no useful answer. That is the fact. Sorry, that's just the truth. I you can not post details here, but I mean what I say. I doubt the opportunities will flow from small companies to IBM. I do not, because it is grown in Germany OOo in business sector. The truth in this case is the OOo was as last in higher esteem than StarOffice and that was the merit of small German companies, not from Sun or Oracle. Or is that 'too much' truth? It would be good if IBM would consider the experiences of the past which consist of OOo, SUN and Oracle. And you might consider IBM's experience with Linux, where we invested over $1 billion into Linux development, but we don't sell Linux. But we're glad to work with partners on deals involving Linux. Yes, you're right. And many potential partners would be for the future of similar transactions with IBM wish regarding AOO. Statements in: https://www.xing.com/net/aoo/allgemeines-diskussionsforum-698796/partner-netzwerk-rund-um-apache-openoffice-41041065/ are correct, they need to be filled with life Again, sorry for my statements ... I know these are not issues for the list here, but there are important issues for small companies and consultants like me. And it should be important issues for IBM. Greetings Jörg
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
On Oct 29, 2012, at 6:40 PM, Jörg Schmidt joe...@j-m-schmidt.de wrote: Customers don't come to IBM looking only for OpenOffice. I mean companies, not simple users. I mean companies as well. And these companies ask me if they should use AOO or LO and they look around in the market. These companies need my help, but they also need the confidence in the future of AOO and for many companies this is not a question of what the community is saying, but to say what its large community of partners (eg IBM). Views on the document of February 2012: http://ebookbrowse.com/symphony-apache-future-faq-02-2012-pdf-d359761565 and I tell you, that is the question many companies: When will The Apache OpenOffice IBM Edition on the market? I'm sorry if you think that IBM product plans will be reviewed and discussed on this list in advance. But that is not how it will work. I think we've made it clear that the distinguishing features in the IBM Edition will be a set of extensions that connect AOO to various IBM middleware products. But the feature details and timing are not this project's concern. Similarly we have no right to demand that Yuri detail his OS/2 business plans or that Adfinis Sygroup discuss the details of their Solaris business plan. They are looking for a bundle of software and services and OpenOffice might enter the discussions as a small part of the overall deal. We commonly work with business partners, subcontractors, etc., where specialized skills are needed. This includes partners large and small. But what IBM is doing in practice? It is your colleague who wrote the following: https://www.xing.com/net/aoo/allgemeines-diskussionsforum-698796/partner-netzwerk-rund-um-apache-openoffice-41041065/ and when I speak of, as a consultant for AOO, IBM I get no useful answer. That is the fact. Sorry, that's just the truth. I you can not post details here, but I mean what I say. When we have something to announce you can expect to read it in official places. It won't be something we'll be hiding in strange corners of the web. Until then you'll need to deal with FUD when developing your business just like we do. Remember the move to Apache and our recent graduation are both pro-stability events. These make it safer to invest in AOO. I doubt the opportunities will flow from small companies to IBM. I do not, because it is grown in Germany OOo in business sector. The truth in this case is the OOo was as last in higher esteem than StarOffice and that was the merit of small German companies, not from Sun or Oracle. Or is that 'too much' truth? How Sun lost money on OOo is not really relevant to what we do today. It would be good if IBM would consider the experiences of the past which consist of OOo, SUN and Oracle. And you might consider IBM's experience with Linux, where we invested over $1 billion into Linux development, but we don't sell Linux. But we're glad to work with partners on deals involving Linux. Yes, you're right. And many potential partners would be for the future of similar transactions with IBM wish regarding AOO. Statements in: https://www.xing.com/net/aoo/allgemeines-diskussionsforum-698796/partner-netzwerk-rund-um-apache-openoffice-41041065/ are correct, they need to be filled with life Again, sorry for my statements ... I know these are not issues for the list here, but there are important issues for small companies and consultants like me. And it should be important issues for IBM. Honestly I still have no idea what your concern is. Sorry. -Rob Greetings Jörg
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
On 9/27/2012 8:49 AM, Andrew Rist wrote: On 9/24/2012 9:46 PM, Peter Junge wrote: Dear OpenOffice Community, During ApacheCon Europe 2012 (ACEU 2012; http://apachecon.eu/), we will hold a 90-minute session on the state of the community. Our topic is as broad as the community and includes discussion on how to develop and further the community of contributors and users making up AOO. We hope you can be there and add your voice! We seldom have opportunity to meet in person, and this will be a great occasion to go over where we are as a community, what we need to do to improve the operations of the community, and what can be done by us all to take AOO to top-level status. Everyone is invited—and to encourage you further to participate, we hope to welcome the Apache mentors who are helping AOO move ahead. At the moment, I'm responsible for this session but due to the fact that I'm located in Beijing I will not be able to attend in person. Hence, it would be great to find one or two volunteers to host this BoF session about the AOO community at the ApacheCon Europe. I would be interested, Peter. Andrew @Andrew, sorry for replying quite late, but I guess my first posting came to long before the event anyway. @All: Let's discuss what what could be talked about during the BoF session on AOO community in Sinsheim. (Note: I'm not attending the ApacheCon EU.) After reviewing a couple of threads in the mailing list archives, I'd like to point out the challenges below: 1) The challenge of dissimilarity of community and community culture: We've seen it in a couple of discussions on the mailing lists. The Apache Way and the former OOo community work quite different, a couple of time disagreement with the mentors arose. Apache is a community where committers leave their affiliations behind (at least in theory) while OOo was under the hood of a single company. At Apache the individual needs to earn merits to be promoted as a committer and later as a PMC member, while OOo everybody just could right away. Apache has a hierarchy of roles (contributor, committer, PMC) but no real leaders (except the PMC chair), while OOo didn't know such hierarchy but had appointed project leads who had certain administrative powers. At Apache, I assume, at least 80% are developers because so far the majority of projects were about producing software by developers for developers, while OOo and still AOO is a large piece of software for end users. At the old OOo community, and I guess many of them are still around but not visible here, more then half of the people involved were not developers, but many volunteers working on localization, QA, documentation, user support and marketing etc. The OOo community was strongly heterogeneous, many native language projects had their own websites and communication channels, detached from the core community. So, the first challenge is: How does that all fit into the Apache way, but still keeping the identity of OpenOffice and leaving room for the satellite communities that do great work e.g. by offering OO support in many different languages? 2) The challenge producing end user software at Apache: As said above, Apache was so far (at least AFAIK) only producing software from developers for developers, contrarily AOO is an end user software. The former usually doesn't need any special promotion effort. Developers and users just come by if they need a particular piece of software. With an end user software like OpenOffice this is much different. AOO needs a big marketing effort to reach its users and constantly growing that user base. At the former OOo community many volunteers have been attending trade fairs (e.g. the CeBIT in Hanover, Germany) and innumerous other events to reach the public. Driving such efforts costs a fair amount of money that should not be solely shouldered by the volunteers who already contribute a fair mount of their time. So, the second challenge is, how to raise funds, either within or outside Apache, to continue with appropriate marketing efforts for AOO? 3) The challenge of building the community: The AOO community needs steadily working on developing the community by recruiting developers, QA, translators and people doing documentation and marketing. The third challenge is, how to reach them? A part of this effort can certainly go along with the former challenge as 'marketing to developers'. Being present at events usually reaches many different kinds of people. Other challenges are welcome. Best regards, Peter P.S: and there's still the challenge to find one or two moderators for that BoF session. Andrew, are you still willing?
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
On Sun, Oct 28, 2012 at 8:16 PM, Peter Junge peter.ju...@gmx.org wrote: On 9/27/2012 8:49 AM, Andrew Rist wrote: On 9/24/2012 9:46 PM, Peter Junge wrote: Dear OpenOffice Community, During ApacheCon Europe 2012 (ACEU 2012; http://apachecon.eu/), we will hold a 90-minute session on the state of the community. Our topic is as broad as the community and includes discussion on how to develop and further the community of contributors and users making up AOO. We hope you can be there and add your voice! We seldom have opportunity to meet in person, and this will be a great occasion to go over where we are as a community, what we need to do to improve the operations of the community, and what can be done by us all to take AOO to top-level status. Everyone is invited—and to encourage you further to participate, we hope to welcome the Apache mentors who are helping AOO move ahead. At the moment, I'm responsible for this session but due to the fact that I'm located in Beijing I will not be able to attend in person. Hence, it would be great to find one or two volunteers to host this BoF session about the AOO community at the ApacheCon Europe. I would be interested, Peter. Andrew @Andrew, sorry for replying quite late, but I guess my first posting came to long before the event anyway. @All: Let's discuss what what could be talked about during the BoF session on AOO community in Sinsheim. (Note: I'm not attending the ApacheCon EU.) After reviewing a couple of threads in the mailing list archives, I'd like to point out the challenges below: 1) The challenge of dissimilarity of community and community culture: We've seen it in a couple of discussions on the mailing lists. The Apache Way and the former OOo community work quite different, a couple of time disagreement with the mentors arose. Apache is a community where committers leave their affiliations behind (at least in theory) while OOo was under the hood of a single company. At Apache the individual needs to earn merits to be promoted as a committer and later as a PMC member, while OOo everybody just could right away. Apache has a hierarchy of roles (contributor, committer, PMC) but no real leaders (except the PMC chair), while OOo didn't know such hierarchy but had appointed project leads who had certain administrative powers. At Apache, I assume, at least 80% are developers because so far the majority of projects were about producing software by developers for developers, while OOo and still AOO is a large piece of software for end users. At the old OOo community, and I guess many of them are still around but not visible here, more then half of the people involved were not developers, but many volunteers working on localization, QA, documentation, user support and marketing etc. The OOo community was strongly heterogeneous, many native language projects had their own websites and communication channels, detached from the core community. So, the first challenge is: How does that all fit into the Apache way, but still keeping the identity of OpenOffice and leaving room for the satellite communities that do great work e.g. by offering OO support in many different languages? I don't know if I'd make this be a large focus. Look around. By my count the majority of the current contributors to the project are new to it from Apache. They don't all have the baggage from OOo experience. They understand AOO on Apache terms. We're doing it Apache style. It is working. We're getting new language volunteers every other day or so. Maybe it is time to let go of OOo style community thinking and embrace what we have at Apache. It may not be perfect. But it is working. 2) The challenge producing end user software at Apache: As said above, Apache was so far (at least AFAIK) only producing software from developers for developers, contrarily AOO is an end user software. The former usually doesn't need any special promotion effort. Developers and users just come by if they need a particular piece of software. With an end user software like OpenOffice this is much different. AOO needs a big marketing effort to reach its users and constantly growing that user base. At the former OOo community many volunteers have been attending trade fairs (e.g. the CeBIT in Hanover, Germany) and innumerous other events to reach the public. Driving such efforts costs a fair amount of money that should not be solely shouldered by the volunteers who already contribute a fair mount of their time. So, the second challenge is, how to raise funds, either within or outside Apache, to continue with appropriate marketing efforts for AOO? I think the challenge is to change the thinking that says a project can only be successful if it raises money. 3) The challenge of building the community: The AOO community needs steadily working on developing the community by recruiting developers, QA, translators and people doing
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
On 12-10-28, at 23:33 , Rob Weir robw...@apache.org wrote: That's the way to grow. Raising money to send the existing volunteers to travel to more places is only growth for the airline industry. It is not growth for the project. We need to find people who are able to succeed in a business based on enhancing or supporting the OpenOffice product to businesses and users.. A business based on promoting the OpenOffice open source project is not really a business model. I don't think we want to encourage anyone to think of making a career as a professional OpenOffice community manager or anything like that. hey! ;=) Though your contempt for community management is, I have to say, a little ironic, given that's pretty much what you do. But actually I agree with you here, in that what would work to enlarge the community of contributors is not sending ambassadors here and there to little effect but to (and here I extend the argument) to provide the resources for regional ecosystem growth. Those resources are, I think, cheap. They are: website, badge, banners; guidelines for trademark; wiki for suggestions, additions, and minimal provisions for beer and pizza (and its equivalents) for initial meetings. In short, what you normally find at a LUG or so. louis
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
On 9/24/2012 9:46 PM, Peter Junge wrote: Dear OpenOffice Community, During ApacheCon Europe 2012 (ACEU 2012; http://apachecon.eu/), we will hold a 90-minute session on the state of the community. Our topic is as broad as the community and includes discussion on how to develop and further the community of contributors and users making up AOO. We hope you can be there and add your voice! We seldom have opportunity to meet in person, and this will be a great occasion to go over where we are as a community, what we need to do to improve the operations of the community, and what can be done by us all to take AOO to top-level status. Everyone is invited—and to encourage you further to participate, we hope to welcome the Apache mentors who are helping AOO move ahead. At the moment, I'm responsible for this session but due to the fact that I'm located in Beijing I will not be able to attend in person. Hence, it would be great to find one or two volunteers to host this BoF session about the AOO community at the ApacheCon Europe. I would be interested, Peter. Andrew Best regards, Peter
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Hi On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 1:46 AM, Peter Junge peter.ju...@gmx.org wrote: During ApacheCon Europe 2012 (ACEU 2012; http://apachecon.eu/), we will hold a 90-minute session on the state of the community. Our topic is as broad as the community and includes discussion on how to develop and further the community of contributors and users making up AOO. We hope you can be there and add your voice! We seldom have opportunity to meet in person, and this will be a great occasion to go over where we are as a community, what we need to do to improve the operations of the community, and what can be done by us all to take AOO to top-level status. Everyone is invited—and to encourage you further to participate, we hope to welcome the Apache mentors who are helping AOO move ahead. So good! At the moment, I'm responsible for this session but due to the fact that I'm located in Beijing I will not be able to attend in person. Hence, it would be great to find one or two volunteers to host this BoF session about the AOO community at the ApacheCon Europe. And I in Brazil, If you have a volunteer to go to the event. (: Enjoy the event well anyone. Albino
