Ian Lynch schreef:
On Mon, 2006-01-30 at 18:06 +0100, Steven Pauwels wrote:
Hi all,
I have printed the marketing plan and read it very carefully, almost
immediately after deciding to try and help... in fact :) reading the
plan was the trigger to get me to volunteer :)
What is the difference between objectives and a plan to obtain the
objectives?? You set objectives, mostly long term. then draft a plan,
mostly year based, on how to get there...
What I find is mostly objectives... And I have to agree with Finn... an
extremely high level of ambition... Where is the strategy but to use
disruptive marketing? Again, I know my words seem hard and that it is
easy to comment on someones efforts... But only trying to help...
I would have to concur. I do write development plans for a living but I
don't really see how we can get beyond viral marketing unless there is a
budget. For the plan itself if it is to be a tool for meeting
objectives, there needs to be a lot less description of general things
and more about the specifics of how objectives will be met. I suspect
that this is the stumbling block since with a volunteer work force its
difficult to manage a conventional development planning scenario that is
written as if from the perspective of a corporate entity with budgets
and control mechanisms associated with control of resources.
In general, an objective is based on figures from the past calculated
into planned actions and thus getting a predicted result... Nothing we
can do is new... It has been done... everything... and therefore there
are figures available for each type of action to use when calculating
objectives...
But Ureka! We do not have to meet budgets :):) Yes! Hmmmm.... How about
setting a goal for sponsors? Local or Global? If Finn can find them, so
can I, or you...
Or setting a target for fund-raising to finance some of the other
marketing efforts. ie I don't see meeting budgets as a problem, having
no budget to finance anything is a far greater problem.
As I said on the art list: whe should define goals for the marketing of
the 3.0 release and be prepared to 'launch' it.
Let me compare it with the highly structured chaos of an antfarm...
Although it seems like no one knows what to do and looks like complete
chaos... Every ant knows exactly what to do and works together to obtain
one goal: the survival and victory of their colony.
But we're not ants :) so how about doing the things as all succesfull
things have been done in the past? I asume all of you are ambitious? :)
This is my suggestion:
Be it the first in a series of actions to get ready to define a
strategy, lets go back to the past. If everyone gets as much data on
past usage.... anything, marketing share... any data... (about OOo AND
competition... ) I will be happy to analyse them an present them back to
you all, commented and with suggestions on future actions... In order
to follow up on what has been done in the past, let me know what
actions you think were succesfull... an more important: data on the
succes of these actions...
I'm working in education in the UK. The most effective thing seems to be
strategies to make people aware that OOo exists and then to get them to
install it. (ok obvious :-) ) My own way of doing this is to use the
professional networks I am in to bring OOo to the attention of people
who would not otherwise see it. I have a certification strategy going
through the process of gaining government recognition here in the UK
which will hopefully generate an income that can be used to develop open
source educational applications some of which will be based on OOo and
ODF. Its not so much something that has happened in the past (not that I
am aware of). I studied work on disruptive technologies brought to my
attention by Christian Einfeldt, another marketing project member. I
used this and my knowledge of the education system in the UK and my
business contacts to devise a certification for IT that can be
universally applied in schools and we now have assessors in about 20
countries. Part of the certification was to contribute to the OOo
project in a meaningful way but I have broadened this to community
service in open source projects for a variety of reasons. There is still
a long way to go but we have made a lot of progress and there is some
chance of earning significant revenue in the future.
In short, I'm not sure I can provide any data on usage. I did start
trying to compile a list of the organisations using OOo but it didn't
seem to get me very far and it was taking up a lot of time. I decided
the strategy I have now makes best use of the knowledge and expertise I
have and I get support from OOo volunteers in a range of the communities
where they think its relevant to them.
I just wonder if a corporate plan of the type that companies use is
actually applicable in an Open Source community where the resource is
100% volunteers that each has his or her own reasons and interests for
being a member of the community? We can only get people to do things by
persuasion and mailing lists are not that good at conveying infectious
enthusiasm to get people to invest large amounts of time in areas in
which they have little interest. Indeed there is a risk in doing
anything lengthy that might not be accepted since the time and effort
invested then comes to nothing. That is the road to disenchantment.
I am aware that I am describing rather than solving a problem here but I
have given it a lot of thought over the last two years and I don't see
that there is an obvious solution.
If this is the general marketing list... I hope all Local projects read
and help out... as Finn says: I know this worked... why don't you try it.
Let me know how you feel... :)
Steven P
Hi Ian,
Any information I get from any volunteer tells me something about the
where OOo stands as a community and as a product. My aim is to find out
how mature it is as a project. If no data is known about usage, we
should launch a survey to get data and at least that gives us an idea
and if we are lucky (data in favor of OOo), it is a fine marketing
persuador as well.
These are my findings today (some of you might have noticed that I try
to post my findings every day, based on any new info I get, but I do
like my weekends :))
- Get a clue on about when a 3.0 release is planned (next year? ....)
and if there is no scheduled moment... get marketing ready asap...
- Create a separate product promotion website to launch 3.0
- Get data on visitors, office suite usage, downloads, etc... on that
website.. ( a happy user is a great source for data...) why not ask
users who download a new version to help us out by answereing a few key
questions?
- Define marketing goals and means for 3.0 and make them public to the
volunteers and local projects as part of the marketing strategy.
- Get the local projects to inter-act on a marketing level.
- I am sure I am starting to forget some of the things I mentioned
earlier..
Here is a thing I would like to discuss with all involved in marketing:
giving the product another name. (.org in a name is confusing, we can
not use OpenOffice without .org, there is a fine example:
Mozilla-->Firefox) Please let me know what you think and how you feel
about the product and community sharing the same name.
All for now...
Steven P
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