In my opinion two key points to support the new and stronger OFBiz marketing campains are: 1) Improve the OFBiz UI (we should at least reach this level: http://www.compiere.com/products/product-demos/tour/web_ui_demo.htm) 2) Have OFBiz self hosting
There is no better marketing then the product itself. -Bruno 2008/11/12 David E Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > First off, the conference was great and thank you to everyone who > participated. We actually has less attendance than the previous OFBiz User > Conference at the sessions, but more OFBiz-related people were there > overall. We had about 1/3 of the committers there, quite a few people who > SHOULD be committers (ie using OFBiz a lot, doing neat things with it, but > just not as involved in contributing back to the project as they could be... > you know who you are! ;) ), and quite a few people who are interested in > OFBiz that we spoke with outside of the OFBiz-specific sessions (including > one of the keynote speakers). > > On top of that, and one of the more valuable parts of this event, was the > chance to meet so many of the people who make the Apache Software Foundation > what it is. I've been amazed at how welcome they have made me feel, and > others have made similar comments. The community-driven philosophy at the > ASF is strong, and it is also one of the biggest differentiators between > OFBiz and other "open source" enterprise systems, which are really corporate > driven and are developed in a more commercial way rather than being > community driven. People at the ASF really get the difference and why it > makes a difference, and it's great to communicate and collaborate with them. > Real quick, a special thanks to Shane, Lars, Delia, Cheryl, and others on > the conference committee who helped make this happen. > > BTW, on a side note there was major sponsorship from a few companies that > do work based on OFBiz, including Hotwax, and Brainfood. On one notable > evening (Thursday), thanks to Brainfood, we had a jazz funeral parade in > honor of proprietary software. There was a marching band and police escort > and we even marched down Canal Street for 3 blocks with the police closing > it off for us (that's a major street in New Orleans, and it was pretty > cool), and we had around 150 people marching. > > In short, it was hugely valuable and for me it definitely helped to > solidify parts of a vision of what we can do with in this next era of Apache > OFBiz. > > Before getting into my more complete notes, it seemed that most of the > discussions at the conference focused around a couple of points: > > 1. more and better marketing of OFBiz > 2. organize ourselves better: > 2.a. now that base applications are fairly comprehensive, start refining > and extending based on open standards and community effort to create a > library of business process stories (like the universal data model OFBiz > started with) > 2.b. time to eat our own dog food (use OFBiz instead of Jira, Confluence, > etc), and once we get there expand to the rest of the ASF to replace these > tools > > Some more detailed notes about things discussed: > > Marketing > - new ofbiz home page - pretty and simple > - organize docs better > - docs with marketing/influence intent instead of informational > - promote community model and community-driven open source > - promote empowerment and software to fit the business, without all the > spreadsheets and supplemental systems! > - OFBiz Alliance w/ advertising, required internal use of OFBiz, etc - We > are Open For Business > - Viral marketing campaign, "I am Open For Business" on personal sites, > funny videos on YouTube saying the catch phrase, link to ofbiz.apache.org > - OFBiz no longer on first page of google search for "open source erp" > (near the top of the second page), and I don't see ofbiz in the first 10 > pages of "open source crm", for "open source ecommerce" we're on the 4th > page > - Google adwords and similar for "open for business", "I am open for > business", "we are open for business", "open source erp" (not paid by > "OFBiz", but rather by interested community members) > > Community Organize > - OFBiz Universal Business Process Library > - Mobilize test contributors (testtools, selenium, etc), allow separate > people to be involved in contributing tests and contributing features (don't > require test submission, but if anyone wants something to work in a certain > way, they should submit a test for it as our normal way of doing things) > - Links from tests to bus proc docs > - Pursuit of open standards - find and document desired standards, refer to > in process library, change service defs to be close to, eventually implement > messaging/etc according to (UBL, OAGIS, XBRL, etc) > - TODO: add XBRL/etc write up to confluence, send email > - Component groups and hierarchy > - TODO: upload diagrams of base apps dependencies, loosely enforced > - TODO: propose goal of framework, base applications, and special purpose > apps layers > - avoid dependencies between specialpurpose apps, push things that others > need to the base applications where cross-dependencies are natural > - Eat our own dog food > - Content management (replace confluence) > - Project management (issues/requests, tasks, upstream issues handled by > system (ie users promote to OFBiz, OFBiz promotes to Tomcat/Geronimo/FOP/etc > with ASF, ASF projects promote to ?) > - Framework release > - gather ideas from people in a confluence page (TODO: add my own) > - complex UIs, GWT, DOJO, etc renderers for widgets > - Testing tools: seleniumxml -> testtools + demo (need to look into > licensing problems) > > The "TODO" items are notes to myself for things to do. I'll be sending out > more messages soon about a few of these specific things. > > For others who attended, please feel free to share your notes on this > thread. > > For those who did not attend, please feel free to ask questions and share > your thoughts too. > > -David > > > >
