Re: [Inkscape-docs] how about some marketing and outreach?

[mihaela . jurkovic]

Hi all! Thank you Brynn for your intro and welcoming me back to the community 😊 it's great to be back and you can count me in all Inkscape activities except programming :) Some years ago I used to know every little detail happening around Inkscape development and in the community. I wasn't very vocal on the lists, mainly because I'm not a programmer and couldn't contribute that way, and there didn't seem to be a lot of non-programming discussions, but I read all the news, triaged bugs in the tracker, compiled nightly builds often and tested my behind off. I also helped in the forum, at first with the usual questions about using Inkscape, since I knew a lot of tips and tricks, and later fighting spam :p I probably won't be able to commit as much time now, since I'm not giving up on Drupal, but I hope to come close. I can block a certain number of hours to Inkscape each week. I'd love it if you (devs, forum and website committee, users) would steer the efforts around website, forum and user community in general. Every project needs more users, a larger and more active community. But setting a more specific goal can better the chances of success and clarify which areas are more beneficial to focus on. What type of community members do we most direly need more of: developers, testers, professional designers who use Inkscape, hobbyist users, evangelists...? And how many? Do we have any stats about the current state? How many new developers and their quality/time commitment would be ideal in the next year? Should Inkscape be branded more as a vector editor in general or SVG editor (SVG has become a buzzword in web community)? Inkscape has been mentioned as not the best editor for SVG for the web, which I can't agree with. Is this something you think we should try and change? Should we position Inkscape more strongly with respects to other vector and SVG editors (Sketch, AI)? What kind of articles would help spread Inkscape (tutorials, reviews, user testimonies, comics...)? Where should they be published? ... any other topic that should be considered? I hope you don't mind me opening with a bag of questions instead of an actionable plan, I haven't forgotten the "code first, ask questions later" guideline, but with this type of work questions are the proper procedure to start with in order to achieve results more efficiently.  Areas where I can help are the forum (installation, migration? and as a mod), website (limited), marketing and branding, FLOSS manual, and the usual testing and bug tracking. Let me know if you think I should focus more on some and less on the other areas. I can't not mention Tav's manual, to continue on Brynn's thought. That manual was what brought me to Inkscape and made me stick with it, and it made me skilful. (I'm also a proud owner of the printed version, hefty book Tav in many ways!) And then it makes sense to ask: What is the usual way users discover Inkscape? What makes them stick? Thank you again for welcoming me back, I hope we boost Inkscape community in the next year! Mihaela aka prkos -- https://launchpad.net/~prkos http://www.inkscapeforum.com/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=233 On 09.10.2016 17:56, Brynn wrote: Hi Friends,        I've recently been contacted by a long time Inkscape user and former active moderator on InkscapeForum.com.  (Technically she still is a moderator, but not active for some years.)  And I think she also used to help with bug management and testing.  And many of you may recognize her as the co-author of PacktPublishing's "Inkscape 0.48 Illustrator's Cookbook".        Mihaela, aka prkos, is ready to become reinvested in the project, after having drifted away to work on other things for awhile.  She has some good ideas for outreach and bringing in more diversity, and I think some ideas related to marketing, which she will have to explain, because I don't understand that kind of thing.  I don't know if she wants to help with bug management again, as before, but maybe after she catches up to the version 0.92 era.  And she said she wouldn't be opposed to working on a sequel to the Packt project.        Ooohh!  Mihaela, I forgot to mention this privately.  Recently within the project, there has been some drive to create an open manual, which would be editable by the community.  And we also want to make it more of a step by step manual, and more focussed to beginners.  And this is as opposed to our current manual, which is copyrighted (can only be edited by the author), presently out of date, and a little more theoretical, and helpful for advanced users.  It's a great manual, which has served the project well.  But there have been a lot of complaints from beginners about a lack of documentation at their level.  So we don't want to get rid of Tav's manual, but just have another manual available.        The current state of those discussions is to use a project which was started by a French team (aaii, why can't I remember to save that link?!). It's another FLOSS manual.  We're waiting for it to be translated to English.  And once it is, we hope to be able to use it as a base to build the new open manual from.  Maybe you might like to help with that?        Also, some of her ideas will help us with the forum project too! And I'll be letting the committee know about that privately.        So, welcome back Mihaela!  As you remember the developers' mantra - code first, discuss later - please feel free to jump back in with both feet :-) All best, brynn

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