Charles,
I will only touch on a few things here. inline
Charles-H.Schulz wrote:
Hello James,
James Walker wrote:
Charles,
Basically what this boils down to is,
Does a MarCon need permission from the community Council to attend, as
an Official Rep of OOo, a conference?
As a MarCon, he/she has certain deeds and rights. As a person, he/she is
free as in speech of course.
A MarCon can do some local PR but has to work in coordination with the
Marketing project.
In this regard, were Ryan, as a WestCoast-USA MarCon, to attend the DLS
and have a booth there, I think he should at least notify the Marketing
Project. But what I don't understand, and I know I'll make people angry
in writing this, is that when it comes to the US the community (or part
of it) is for some reason unable to think reasonably. Why, oh why, did
Ryan want to represent OOo, get some funding from the community,
represent the OD Fellowship and maybe even more entities to an event
that was seen as problematic as early as last year, while at the same
time putting Linspire people, Bob Sutor, and Simon Phipps in copy of his
mail?
This is what I think
Ryan copied Heather at Linspire because she is the one that keeps
calling him and trying to set something up.
Simon was copied because I beleve he went last year and Ryan wanted to
know if he wants to go again.
He first went to them before even knowing what the OOo cmmunity
would do with this. What do all these people have to do with this
decison? What does Bob Sutor and Simon Phipps have to do with Linspire?
Next time I'll hand up an OOo poster, I'll make sure to send Johnatan
Schwartz a mail reporting on this...
In any NL project, the community/representatives collect money locally
or do without, set a booth, print the documents listed on the MP website
or translated inside the NL project and post a nice comment about it on
the list.
collecting money for a NL project that does not exist is not possible
for english countries, we do not have a NL project.
it would be nice to get one started though.
Unfortunately, this list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] has been the place for
incompetence, endless chats, pathological inability to understand what
OOo is all about and, for that matter, one of the most useless mailing
lists in the entire FOSS history. The only thing that happened in
*months*, if I remember well here is Bernhard Dipphold's vote on the OOo
slogan
The very sad part about this is that there are a bunch of good people
inside the Marketing project. They are working on PR, on the Newsletter,
on strategy, etc. They keep doing their job voluntarily, and notice,
they do it in a consensual and non conflictual way. They do not dance
around what the To-Do's list like the great marketing experts some
others pretend to be.
I agree, there are some great minded people in the Marketing Project,
but some of those feel like what they would like to see happen is not
being allowed to happen. maybe not intentionally but it is happening.
And you want to know what's even sadder? Nobody gives a damn about
what's going on about the OOo development, and should I say, not even
about marketing. While we are talking, do you even realize we're having
problems for releasing the 2.0.1? Do you know that a huge number of
issues waits to be verified and/or closed? You don't need to be a
developper for this, far from that. So the only thing I have to say here
is: stop chit-chatting and get back to work.
I would love to help out on some of this, but I am finding Issuezilla to
be a pain to wade through, I tried downloading the source, could not get
that to work right either. I will try again with both this weekend.
All this is not the fault of the "OOo bureaucracy" as some tend to
explain. It is the fault of people who imho have nothing to do here.
Other comments inline.
Then the following problems present themselves. Most MarCons have a
Native Language project that helps them do things, some of these
discussions happen on the list for that language, The US and UK do not
have a Native Language project. so all discussions with those areas
happen on the main marketing list. By doing so the whole community
tries to decide whether or not something is appropriate for the US or
UK MarCons to do.
Well, same for the NL projects. Do you think that chinese volunteers and
MarCons do not talk among themselves (knowing that the Chinese community
encompasses PRC, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the diaspora)?
This seems to always spark heated conversations between several people
(most of these are about DLS, mainly because it is sponsored by
Linspire, though attendded by several companies)
Personally I do not think that a MarCon needs permission to attend a
Conference in there country, after all they were picked to represent
the community already.
James, I'm sorry to tell you this: Marketing needs coordination and
communication. You can't do anything you want with OOo's public image.
I'm sure Ryan understands now that acting as he did was unwise.
I am not saying that this should not be reported back to the Marketing
Project, but to feel like you need permission to gather people and make
a presence at a conference that is in your area should not happen. I
see all the time that on of the MarCons from another region went to a
conference and then they talk about what they did and how things went.
That is the first time you hear anything about it on the Marketing List,
nothing before, just what happened and how things went. That is what
should happen.
This is just how I see it, If I am totally wrong someone, I am sure,
will correct me and put me in my place.
It's not about "putting you in your place". I'm sincerely sorry to see
such things happen. Also, don't take my words here personally. I'm
frustrated by all this and seriously consider to unsubscribe myself
from this list.
I do not take offense to a good discussion, I would like to really know
how other people feel things should go. I too have thought about just
taking myself off the Marketing Project, but hopefully we can sort some
things out.
Just to summorize, what I think Ryan should be able to do is go to the
conference and represent OOo as a MarCon.
If he can get the volunteers to go and run a booth then he should be
able to do so. If the CC wants to send some money his way to help pay
for that then that is their decision to make, but if Ryan can find
funding in other ways and make things work, he should be able to do
that. He should be able to post to the Marketing List a request for
volunteers and donations to make it successful.
That is really what this is about.
Best,
Charles.
James.
