To clarify the stuff I wrote, an example might help: Let's say we'd target semiprofessional and professional musicians and composers. Then, we'd have something to work on:
1.) We can do a list of FOSS ISV's with the same target market, and present advantages and benefits to them, so they extend their use of GNOME technologies. 2.) We can do a list of proprietary ISV's to present similar arguments. 3.) We can do a list of distributions targeting this segment. A simple google search reveals at least three distributions. Then, we present arguments to them for using the GNOME desktop. 4.) However, none of the above will work quite well without a foot in the real target market. This could be reached by a.) Visiting conferences for musicians with proper LiveCDs in our hands. b.) Trying to get GNOME build applications for musicians widely distributed by ba.) pushing windows builds for the OpenCD (or make our own GNOME Open CD with Windows builds), and bb.) delivering an add-on CD for Linux distributions with autopackages of these applications. c.) Promote these applications, and thus the desktop by ca.) writing articles about them in journals targeting musicians, cb.) writing about them in Linux journals and the planet, and cc.) find journalists with an interests in both to feed them with proper informations so that they write about GNOME, and GNOME build applications. It doesn't mean to make GNOME a musicians desktop! The goal would be to push enought for momentum to catch. We'd then pick another target market, preferably one that is 'close' to the previous one. There's nothing wrong with picking two or three different target markets in the beginning if there are people to support these targets, and the markets are properly defined. In fact, this would be a good idea to spread the risk of picking the 'wrong' target. Now this was just an example. I don't think musicians and composers are a valuable target for us; KDE seems to be better equipped in this segment. But maybe it shows that a proper definition of a target leads to easy TODO lists and plans. We'd just need a proper infrastructure for building contact lists, and then work on these lists. IMHO, this is better than trying to work with general constructs such as "ISV", "distributions", or "end users". Cheers, Claus -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list