I think it might be useful to consolidate some of what I've seen popping up
on various threads regarding the importance of active and ongoing
communication of our project.
If we can coalesce on a common set of objectives, our individual voice will
help weave the overall story for folks. I'm starting this discussion on
ooo-marketing for now, but we may want to move it to ooo-dev shortly,
depending on how this shakes out.
Objectives:
1. *Speak to end users *of OpenOffice 3.x, encourage them to download
and install Apache OpenOffice 3.4. Explain what's new at Apache, and invite
folks to come learn and participate in a range of capacities.
2. *Speak to developers.* Highlight the 'new since OpenOffice 3.4 Beta'
elements. Consolidate a 'Getting Started as a Developer' wiki page(s)
3. *Speak to ICT Leaders in business, government and education
sectors* confused
and unsure of the future of OpenOffice since Oracle left the business.
Tactics:
- I volunteer to draft the Announcement post and review with folks on
list a post for the project blog, unless someone else is dying to get it
rolling first. We're seeing the endgame for the 3.4 release, so it's
definitely time to get this together and ready to publish. Timing of
publication should be coordinated with ooo-dev and infra folks so that we
are assured of sufficient download capacity. We also want to have Hagar and
others in the fora profiled so that end users know where to go with
questions.
- Who wants to volunteer to do a post 'speaking to developers'? Drew, I
saw you thinking in this direction, for example.
- Louis, do you want to tackle a post on 'speaking to ICT leaders...'? I
think this is an opportunity to broker the conversation between the
sponsors and the service / support providers.
- Interviews(!) ...yes, many thought these would be good to do for a
variety of reasons. Dave the Wave Fisher, is reviewing my interview of him
and getting it approved by his management for publication. The idea here
was to use the project blog for short profiles introducing folks to
folks....Let's get back to this... please. May I suggest that someone
volunteer to interview:
- Drew
- Kay
- Juergen
- Others...
- Mentor blogging. Ross and other ASF leaders have their blogs. Given
the adventure we've been having moving OpenOffice into Apache starting last
summer, I think there's plenty of material to illustrate the Apache Way
with the way we've been progressing despite some signficant challenges.
- Social media -- primarily twitter feeds to amplify the posts when they
happen with #openoffice, and #apache hashtags.
I'm sure folks have other ideas, so please add them to this discussion.
Let's also use the Marketing Planning wiki to capture the work planning and
drafting here *http://s.apache.org/82x*
