Hello, Dl Neil wrote: > One other dimension, the institutions can only offer classes in the languages (and >techniques/technologies) that > the trainers know and than they have the resources (hardware, >compilers/interpreters) to cover. > > Maybe therein lies an answer to the 'marketing' side too. The best way to 'market' a >new language, ie to cause > it to spread virulently (?virus-like) is by offering classes in the schools! >Certainly when my customers ask > about 'which tool' my first question is always, "what skill sets do the staff have?".
One good point about what you said is that one budgetless what to promote PHP is to use 'viral marketing'. Viral marketing is a way to market something by using a technique that spreads by itself, ie, no additional effort or money needed to be spent by the originator to have the notice of what you want to market spread like crazy. There are some bad examples of viral marketing, like chain letters or selling address lists for unsolicited lists, but viral marketing can be used to market a good thing. For instance, Hotmail did not use marketing in the traditional media. They just added a footer in their users messages to notice that they were sent using Hotmail. The rest is history. Hotmail grown like crazy so much that even Microsoft bought it instead of developing a competitor service. Anybody can think of viral ideas to market PHP. You just need to focus your brainstorm on what is really viral to make sure that with a little effort and no budget you can make a serious impact promoting PHP. There are certain caracteristics that distinguish what may become and what will not become viral. Instead of detail that here I recommend Seth Godin (former Yahoo marketing director) book "Unleashing the idea virus". Seth made the book available in full for free here to demonstrate the concept. Palm Pilot and PDF versions are available: http://www.ideavirus.com/01-getit.html The book does not tell you how to create viral ideas, but rather how to sort what ideas can become viral. With that topic in the mind, if you ever figure a viral idea to promote PHP, just share it here to prove the concept as well! :-) Regards, Manuel Lemos -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To contact the list administrators, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
