Hi Sophie,
sophie wrote:
Hi all,
For information, I'm still subscribed to the list, so no need to cc me :)
Peter Junge wrote:
Hi Louis, all,
this triggers a topic I was planning to write about since one or two
weeks. I'm BCCing [EMAIL PROTECTED], because I think my intention is more
general. I hope I can win some of you guys to join this discussion. The
members of BizDev is a quite small circle.
We first have to find out, what the community wants to do beside the
technical dimension of OOo. As well we have to count the resources and
ask ourselves, what *can* the community do in this direction. Let's for
example have a look at the professional contributers of OOo. I would
guess at least 98% of people being payed by their employer to join OOo
is technical staff. Really, you seem to be the only non-technician
working for OOo full time. Consequently, we have a significant shortage
of human resources at projects like BizDev.
There is also a lot of work done in the native-language community on a
non technical level and paid by some employers, but of course, it's not
full time. But this is how we achieve localization, QA, documentation, etc.
The difficulty I see is more on coordination and having good tools to
ensure this coordination.
Yes, there are may uncoordinated efforts besides each other, which have
no real interfaces of communication. So, I think OOo as a project and a
community real lacks of transparency and it is currently too complex.
The tools are definitely one of the main factors for this. You can see
it at [EMAIL PROTECTED] and many projects. Lot's of people are unhappy with
the situation, so the call "Let's change our project pages" is often
heard. Unfortunately, this can lead to actionism and fuel the problem,
as the pieces of the community drift further apart. For example
documentation and QA project sites have recently been redesigned, but
come to very different solutions. See:
http://documentation.openoffice.org/
http://qa.openoffice.org/
To keep some consistency, they embed themselves in the 'old' page
design. Is this really desirable?
What the project need is a audit of the status quo, emphasizing the
weaknesses we currently have. Then we have to analyze and define
requirements for a better shape of the project as a whole thing.
In the past all the effort in this direction was mainly handled by the
marketing project with a one size fits all approach. Recently we saw the
education project finally breaking loose from marketing, which is IMHO a
big step in the right direction. Besides marketing, BizDev and education
we would also need projects for Public Relations and NGOs
(Non-Governmental Organizations), maybe more, to cover the whole
spectrum of different organizations to be targeted by OOo. Especially
the NGOs I would find very interesting, as there seems to be a lot of
benefit for them to use a free product. But, as I said, we have to find
out, where we find the resources for it. I know, there are a lot of
volunteers out there, but I think, they would really need some more
support of people working full-time on OOo. Hard to see, where they
should come from in the moment.
Education project is settling a non for profit association, may be this
is the way.
Yes, to use the gaining experience could be very helpful for other
projects, when we manage to transfer the knowledge.
Please find some direct remarks to your posting in-line.
Louis Suarez-Potts wrote:
I am the supposed lead of this project and I am not leading it at all,
unless one counts leadership by neglect. I would like to change that
as much as feasible :-)
Louis, as I stated above. You are the only one working full-time for
such projects in the OOo community. You cannot be all places all of the
time. You're the lead for several projects and jetting around the world
in between. I think you simply lack of time to manage all of this. But,
a solution is not easy to see. I hope I'll be able to help in the future.
Make a clone of Louis ;)
:-) :-) :-)
The project has some problems: it's purpose is not clear and it
maintains a large unwieldy database (actually just large list) of
businesses. We have no real policy to filter this list and we ought to.
There are basically two ways for us to do Business Development. First,
there is a passive approach like we're doing it in the moment. We give
companies, consultants and people, that base their business on OOo, a
platform to promote their business cases. Second, there is the active
way to do BizDev, by reaching potential customers etc directly and
promote OOo to them. But can the latter really be a goal for an FOSS
community? I think not. It needs a lot bigger effort to go this way. As
well it might create competition and redundancy with the companies
selling products based on OOo. We should leave active BizDev to them and
work on the platform for the SMBs.
I think that we miss a lot of feedback from those companies. They are
between the technical part and the users part. I know most of the
companies that are listed on the FR project, but for most of them, they
do not interact with the project. Why?
- this is small companies that do not have resources to put in the project
- they don't know how they could help and protect their business at the
same time
- they are not aware that they can give feedback and don't know how.
All three thoughts could be surely true. I would like to add other ones:
- The page they appear at is not so attractive
- They do not get any customers from the OOo pages, so they stop the effort
I think the Extension project will give an opportunity for them to
contribute when it's about code. But the UX project could have also a
lot of to gain by having those companies on their side. They are in
direct relationship with users and IT, they know what is needed for the
product and its future.
I'm also having big hopes on the UX project.
I have been working on related issues: to see about creating a filter
for consultants offering support and services for OOo. The idea would
be that those who offer services of a certain quality get listed;
those who do not are not, at least not by OOo. As you may imagine,
that's not been so easy.
Do you have a link, where I can see the result? I'm not sure, if I
understand you.
I remember that we discuss about charging to be listed, is it still an
idea to develop ?
How do we want to charge. OOo is AFAIK no legal entity, who can do so.
Still, I think it's a worthwhile goal. We need to make it easier for
users--gov'ts, companies, individuals, education--to find and buy
support and services.
OK, we should support this as business cases filed by the consultants.
(Disclaimer: my employer, Sun, offers support and services for OOo;
but my goal is not to promote that company but the ecosystem.)
So: two things.
* let's create a database for the consultants' directory. Several of
you over the years have volunteered. If you are still interested in
helping, please step forward again.
How do we assure, if the entries in the database are up-to-date?
Currently for what I do in my project, it's a real pain. You have to
check every now and then if the company still exist and is listed with
an accurate adress, if it still provides OOo services on their site,
etc. It's a lot of work and very time consuming.
I'm afraid that's the only way. Another thing that could help, we do not
have it yet, is a button on the consultant page, where people browsing
the page could report dead and inappropriate links.
All names would be transferred over.
* let's work on the certification process. The Community Council last
year (and year before) agreed that OOo can and should come up with
criteria for support. Not much happened; a boring subject for many.
Last September, we moved this forward, and since then, there has been
work. Sophie Gautier (cc'd here) has stimulated work to build on this
certification syllabus [0]. Discussions are on
[EMAIL PROTECTED], and you can see the
archives. [1]
Setting up certifications seem to be a clear topic for the documentation
project, I would agree on that. But again, we see the lack of full time
non-technical staff. BizDev can of course promote the consultants
offering certification services, but only if we get the training
material done.
Be sure that I try :) But there is no other way to push the initiatives
than when we have time for them. Even if we (non technical members part
of the community) spend a lot of time and energy on the project, we are
only volunteers that need to have a day (or night) job ;)
I would discard the 'only' in front of 'volunteers' as your position is
quite understandable.
My interest again is in promoting the consultants. But the current set
up makes it nearly impossible. Yet these consultants are key members
of the OOo ecosystem, and we need to grow that.
Thanks Louis and I agree with you that's a very difficult task for the
moment.
Yes, I'd like to thank Louis too and I do not envy him.
Best regards
Peter
--
Peter Junge
Open Source Strategy Director
北京红旗中文贰仟软件技术有限公司
Beijing Redflag Chinese 2000 Software Co., Ltd.
Building No.2, Block A, Huilongsen, 18 Xihuan South Street
Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area
Beijing - P.R.China
Tel：+86-10-51570010 ext.6183
http://www.redflag2000.cn
http://www.redflag2000.cn/english/index.htm
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