Ok, I'll take it up a bit in-depth now as I have a little free time: I fully understand what you're saying, however this is basically a product development, marketing and support issue and there are existing best practices in the world, so we can learn from them. Here at Softronic (my workplace) we also have products developed and targeted to specific market segments, and the processes to promote and support are very much standard and same... Plus we produce thousands of pages of documentation for each custom development we do. My purpose is not to gloat about it :) but to bring to your attention the following:
1. There is no distinction between open source and commercial product when it comes to marketing and support model. Thus we only need to look at what are the best practices for success. 2. We don't have a commercial product, so increasing sales is not our target, so we need to define our target what we want? I suspect this would be something like "Making Crystal Space platform of choice for everyone for 3D application development". (and btw, we should stop saying game-development or else we're limiting the scope of our own product) 3. This "target" would mean at least the following three things: 3.1 that the market is very broad and include pretty much everyone, thus we need to support all major OS platforms etc. 3.2 that it is still basically targeted to "development" community, or in simple terms, 3D application developers. We will have to keep in mind that any 3D application development team consist of sub-teams such as artists, project managers, programmers, sales, PR & marketing and possibly many other. So the target-group we need to reach, impress and support is not just programmers. 3.3 Any of these various people in a team may have decision-making powers and may influence the decision of whether or not to use our product. 4. In light of above, we'd need to make following decisions: 4.1 Regarding 3.1 above, our "product" must be usable by people using any of the major platforms. What are those platforms exactly and do we currently support them all? What is our definition of "supporting" a platform? Is it sufficient to provide instructions in documentation on how to compile for a particular platform? OR should we do more ? If yes, then what more? 4.2 Regarding 3.2 above, what are our support and marketing/PR channels targeted to each subgroup. I suspect these are: A) Website B) Forums C) Documentation D) Tutorials E) Newsletter/Mailing-lists Therefore we must remember that if we have documentation as one channel, it has to be custom tailored for specific needs/requirements and mentality (patience-limit?) of each sub-group. Should there be one set of documentation describing everything for everyone or separate sets for each subgroup? Website and all other channels likewise. 4.3 Next is the question of presentation, i.e. The materials meant to "support" a subgroup would usually need a different approach and method than the materials meant to influence the decision-making process. For example, there would be no point to show the huge number of available features of our product in a document or website area focused to show the "ease-of-use" of our product... These are mutually exclusive. And so on. In conclusion, the content in documentation and website, as well as the forums, tutorials and mailing lists must be categorized as: A) Targeted to which subgroup ? (Artists, Programmers, Project Leaders/Business Managers/ Sales/Marketing and PR etc.) B) Targeted to achieve what purpose? (show ease-of-use, help with decision-making, help with programming, help with 3D design etc. Etc.) C) Required level of detail ? (How much complexity or explanation is really required to achieve the target?) Certainly there is a lot more, but I'd say if we achieve this much we'd be better than where we are today! Lastly, apologies for such long text, you didn't really had to read all this crap, if you did, many thanks :) Any comments, suggestions and/or productive criticism is most welcome. Regards, Tj. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jorrit Tyberghein Sent: reede, 3. veebruar 2006 11:34 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [CsMain] Re: Making Crystal Space Easier: Tutorials, documents, wiki, demos On 2/3/06, Tahir Javed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The area for beginners should provide pre-compiled install packages of CS, > some ready sample apps and a "User Manual" which is targetted to teaching > how to make a basic working application "without" going into any complicated > technical details and using only a single set of tools (for instance > Blender-Gimp-VC++ Express) and links to where these can be downloaded. The > intention would be to make the user "interesetd" and "excited" about CS and > it's capabilities, to "sell the package" so-to-speak! Focusing on only a single set of tools is really not a good idea IMHO. First of all there is no single set of tools that works on all platforms. On linux VC++ Express is not an option obviously. So we cannot ignore the different compilers that are available. When using Crystal Space people WILL have to make choices from the very beginning. That's unavoidable. Also even on windows people may prefer other compilers besides VC++ Express. Remember that VC++ Express is only free this year. Next year it is no longer free. Greetings, -- Project Manager of Crystal Space (http://www.crystalspace3d.org) and CEL (http://cel.crystalspace3d.org) Support Crystal Space. Donate at https://sourceforge.net/donate/index.php?group_id=649 ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Do you grep through log files for problems? Stop! Download the new AJAX search engine that makes searching your log files as easy as surfing the web. DOWNLOAD SPLUNK! http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=k&kid3432&bid#0486&dat1642 _______________________________________________ Crystal-main mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/crystal-main Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Do you grep through log files for problems? Stop! Download the new AJAX search engine that makes searching your log files as easy as surfing the web. DOWNLOAD SPLUNK! http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid3432&bid#0486&dat1642 _______________________________________________ Crystal-main mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/crystal-main Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
