Hi
Whew. Lots of words... :-)
I'll try to be concise ....
On 2006-01-30, at 14:42 , Steven Pauwels wrote:
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...
We are not the only ones more or less clueless about 3.0. What I
urge you to do is go to the [email protected] list and also the
development project (http://development.openoffice.org) and see
what's there. There is continuing discussion, furthermore, about the
nature of our release cycle, with the trend being toward faster and
predictable releases. Unfortunately, developers being what they are,
not all decisions, actions, etc., have been documented. But I for one
would really appreciate it if marketing were to help here. So far,
there is an Action Item (AI) pending in the Community Council to get
me, Jacqueline Rahemipour, Matthias Huetsch and possibly others to
work on the fast release cycle and possibly a 3.0 schedule. You are
welcome to help out, but we need to get this started. Even reminding
me is helping.
- Create a separate product promotion website to launch 3.0
I would have to ask, Why? Keep in mind that our interest is not just
to issue a product but also to grow a community. I am not
unreasoningly against a new website for 3.0 but am curious what it
would accomplish. Why don't you flesh out the skeleton of an idea here?
- 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?
We already maintain a fairly good survey of downloaders and the data
are available to us. It gives us a sense of the user. But here's the
kicker: what do we want to do with the data? The developers do not
necessarily--read: don't--pay attention to it. Sun developers
probably pay more attention to StarOffice data. I've tried changing
that, by pointing out that OOo is fearsomely more popular than SO,
but....
If I had my druthers, I'd use the data to prioritize pending
desiderata/issues. Would marketing be willing/interested to help out
in that? If so, groovy. We had a short-lived product development
group (list, [EMAIL PROTECTED]) that went nowhere in part b/c people
weren't too interested and in part b/c it's not always very rewarding
work. But it's something that I think we should attend to if we can
represent our findings in a useful and compelling way. eg., in a way
that can lead to us offering, say, $ for development of this or that
widget.
- Define marketing goals and means for 3.0 and make them public to
the volunteers and local projects as part of the marketing strategy.
Totally agree, but this of course is a cart/horse issue. But we've
gotta start somewhere. Can I suggest this:
* let's have an irc meeting with Martin Hollmichel and others of the
ESC (Engineering Steering Committee) to discuss what we can do. They
may be too busy, not able, not very willing, but we can try. Our work
in Marketing, I think, is to work with the developers to try to
promote the product as well as to inform them of what the users want,
yes? So, let's see if we can set up a meeting. That way we can get
things done.
- Get the local projects to inter-act on a marketing level.
yes, but, as I've mentioned before, how? One way is to have periodic
meetings, say before an event; another way is to have quarterly goals
or foci, say to focus on migration of a big user, etc.
- I am sure I am starting to forget some of the things I mentioned
earlier..
But I think we need to start with basics. Can i suggest then we start
with a meeting (IRC) with Martin and others? and that we also see
about coordinating with the NLC on a quarterly basis at first, to see
what foci they have?
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.
Sigh. Ain't that possible for us. Believe me, this comes up again and
again and I've also been guilty of raising it....It ain't gonna
happen. But, as others outside of OOo have discovered, it's very
easy to do. Just look at Jambo Office. :-)
So.. let's simplify this list to top three things we *can* do....
Ciao
louis
All for now...
Steven P
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