+1. You know, the more this runs, the more I think that the number one priority for the marketing project is to raise some money. The reasoning is as follows:
The marketing project has some excellent people, people who would cost a company 100s of thousands of dollars in salaries alone. These people are far less effective than they could be simply for the sake of very small amounts of money. From a management perspective this is very inefficient. The temptation is to say look at all this talent Sun is getting for free, they should pay, but this is just breeding a dependency culture when we want an enterprising culture. So let's do it ourselves, let's raise the money ourselves and determine how we use it ourselves. Let's use money to attract more money. We can say to a company, look if we raise 50% will you put in 50%? etc. If we free things up for merchandising there is the potential to earn shedloads. To be honest, I started INGOTs because all the arguments about setting up non-profits etc were not getting anywhere. Unilateralism is a great strength of Open Source :-). Let's not find all the reasons not to do it, let's just give it a go. As Daniel says, its not about is it perfect, its about is it better? I'd hasten to add, this is not an attack on the leadership. Leading this project must be like herding cats at a distance, so spare a thought for Jacqueline and John. It might be seen as such because its not the main thrust of the develoment plan. I write 4 year organisation development plans for a living. They should be dynamic and changing documents, not tablets of stone, a central guide not a limitation to innovation. When I used to inspect schools, the plans I liked the ones with the coffee stains, the dog ears, the amendments the crossings out. Why? Because the thing was being used. The pristine ones straight off the printer were the ones just done for the inspection and most likely to be consigned to the bottom draw of the filing cabinet. Let's work together on this and make it happen, let's not be put off if the first idea or two don't work, let's keep plugging away until something does click. Having some money in a marketing budget will make the job of the Lead and Co-lead a lot easier. (They'll just then have the nice problem of managing the arguments about how to spend it :-) ) -- Ian --- Adam Moore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: From: Adam Moore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2005 01:16:33 -0800 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Marketing] Banners for booths at conferences Here is what I would propose. We sell a maximum of 10 spots on the banner. We ask for 300 USD a spot. With that money we buy 4 banners. 1 for Europe, 1 for Asia/Australia, 1 for North America, and 1 for South America. We then also fund 1 weeks time towards the database. Anyone who went to the linux desktop summit can attest to how important that was to many people there. That would be a total of approximately 2100 USD that would give an extra 900 USD for the marketing team to use as they see fit. Generic business cards, pamphlets, booth design, etc. Now maybe we want to buy just two or three banners where we have a larger presence of marketing reps. But that's just an idea. Adam M. > And all those others that use OOo right now, Redhat, Mandrake, IBM, > Corel (Xandros), Flexiety etc. > I'm up for sending these guys a grovelling letter, but I think such > would be better coming from the marketing leads. > > After all it's in their interests. People will only switch OSes because > of the available apps within that OS. > OOo is arguabbly *the* major app that crosses people over. > > Bit of payback would be nice. > > Cheers > Yo > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
