Re: FSF, terminology, and marketing
Hi Brian, Very difficult topic to bring up without getting mired in politics :D On 18/09/09 23:07, Brian Cameron wrote: The Free Software Foundation (FSF) encourages the usage of the term "GNU/Linux" instead of the term "Linux", and also discourages referring to free software and licenses as "open source". Their argument, which I think is valid, is that doing so helps to highlight free software and bring positive attention towards the free software community. I would make a few points, which I think all stand independently, and I think there are a variety of different choices to make: 1. in general, the most important thing from the point of view of the project is - in my opinion - to be consistent about usage. 2. I think it's important to say "free" as in "freedom", but also "open source" is a well-known term - rather than have that dichotomy, "free and open source" seems to be an inclusive alternative. There is the gratis mix-up still in there, but I'm not sure it matters, since either is true. 3. I'm not sure "GNU/Linux" versus "Linux" is a political issue alone any more. Android is a "Linux phone", but it's not GNU and GNOME apps will not run on it (as I understand it, anyway). Assuming people are likely to encounter mobile devices, this distinction is important, particularly with respect to GNOME Mobile. For maximum clarity to the end-user, my vote (sic) would be "free and open source" and "GNU/Linux" respectively for the above reasons. I think some of the other points people have raised are somewhat apropos, I don't think this is an issue of being close to the FSF or not per se. Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Software Freedom Day Press Release
On 18/09/09 17:22, Lucas Rocha wrote: Can we say it is the default desktop environment in openSUSE? Not sure. AIUI, Enterprise editions of SUSE default to it (at the moment). OpenSUSE itself actually defaults to KDE, albeit only by pre-selecting an option for the user to choose between. Cheers Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: On Epiphany marketing, and income opportunities
Hi Alberto, I think I probably need to clarify something I said: On 20/07/09 13:19, Alberto Ruiz wrote: 2009/7/20 Alex Hudson: I think the basic problem with this plan is that GNOME has very little branding control. Most of what gets deployed is re-branded in some way, and the main GNOME desktops a. don't come with Epi and b. already have customised, branded search. Firefox has _much_ stronger control over its user experience. Well, I don't think this is all about branding control. I was just talking about promoting Epi among our own community. In any case this problem is orthogonal to the proposal I'm making. I don't think this issue is orthogonal, I think it's central. To get money for default search, advertisers/sponsors are going to be looking for basically one thing: audience(*). If they're paying for a default search slot, they're going to want to have a good idea of a. what type of people they will be reaching, and b. how many of them there will be. If I understand you correctly, you want to go to search providers and say "We'd like you to sponsor our default search feature", and they will ask what they get in return. At the moment, distros don't offer Epi and they override the default search feature anyway (at least, Fedora and Ubuntu do). Unless some search provider is willing to spend that money basically altruistically, I don't know how it would be possible to give them any substantial amount of traffic. Cheers, Alex. * - arguably Firefox wasn't sponsored because of their audience but for competition reasons, but it must make some sense on that basis also. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: On Epiphany marketing, and income opportunities
On 20/07/09 11:39, Alberto Ruiz wrote: I wanted to draw attention on an issue that it's been mentioned before. Which is trying to get some money out of the default search engine used in epiphany. Obviously, we won't get as much money as the Mozilla Foundation out of this, but it'll be worth knowing how much can we make out of it and there are other upsides about it besides the income. I think the basic problem with this plan is that GNOME has very little branding control. Most of what gets deployed is re-branded in some way, and the main GNOME desktops a. don't come with Epi and b. already have customised, branded search. Firefox has _much_ stronger control over its user experience. Personally, I think that GNOME should exert more pressure on downstream, but I think from a marketing perspective the value of Epi is very limited in terms of what people might be willing to pay. Sorry this is a negative reaction, but that is my initial thought. Probably still worth asking, though. Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Marketing, GNOME 3.0 and subteams
Hey Dave,
Dave Neary wrote:
Alex Hudson wrote:
While I agree with the sentiment, the situation is that for most people
Windows is gratis.
Yes, but it's not Free.
I agree, freedom is a hard concept to sell. Do we want to compare Linux
to the American civil rights movement in the 60s? Solidarity in Poland
in the 80s? The fight against Apartheid in South Africa? Perhaps 1984 or
Brave New World, the police state in the US and UK?
To be honest, even if there was a way to promote that image without the
'silly' as you later discussed, I'm not sure it's really that effective
a message anyway.
If someone uses a piece of free software instead of proprietary, what's
the main immediate benefit to them? Really, there isn't one - the value
of software freedom is a bit further down the road ("you won't be forced
to do in the future" or that kind of thing) and what we're
effectively trying to promote is something more akin to a promise or an
insurance policy.
Trying to market something on "jam tomorrow" is hard. I think it would
be especially hard when, for the most people, the non-free aspects of
proprietary software generally don't bother them. People don't feel
digitally oppressed, and no marketing campaign that we could launch is
going to bring them to any point of recognition imho. If you ask a
selection of people what problems they have with their computer, I would
be amazed if any issues that were more than tangentially related to
freedom came up.
We *must* find a way to frame the debate in terms of freedom, choice,
community. Those *are* our selling points. As Claus said, to the end
user, there is very little technical merit to choosing Linux over
Windows. So we have to frame the debate differently.
Well, I agree and disagree with that. I agree that a marketing message
has to be framed on the strengths, and I think you're correctly
identifying those. But I also think it has to be framed in a way that
users will recognise the value easily without having to be "educated" in
some way.
Let me give you an example. Software distribution in the free software
world works somewhat differently to the proprietary world, as we know.
You click on PackageKit or whatever, and you can go find apps, download
it and install it.
Ok, it's enabled by freedom, but it's a technical feature which delivers
immediate and obvious value to the end user. And I'm extremely confident
that it's a message which would work well because I see the exact same
message on my TV; except it's Apple spending millions showcasing their
iPhone app store and how wonderful it is.
And actually, if we think about this, it's an area we should be strong
in but we're still being whipped by the proprietary boys. Apple have
this whole third-party apps ecosystem. Google/Android have the same
thing in development, WME has it, etc. etc. GNOME is really sorely
lacking in that area, we don't have anything like the same kind of
independent software authors contributing little apps.
However, that said, I don't think GNOME is marketable as mainstream
software - mainly because, it's not Windows. I don't think marketing
GNOME as a Windows competitor per se is a winning strategy either :)
You're allowing the game to be defined by the past, not the future.
Windows is a general purpose desktop operating system.
Competing against Windows as a general purpose operating system is a
losing proposition.
However, competing against Windows as a light, adaptible operating
system, with variants suitable for smaller form factors, could work.
Well, that was really what I was getting at. These variants aren't
really competing with Windows; they're competing with the specific apps
running on those devices, particularly the embedded stuff.
In fact, they make up a market that's pretty classic in terms of market
share versus mind share. Loads of people have TomTom. Only a minority
know they're running Linux. It could be Windows under there; they don't
care. Same can probably be said of phones, netbooks, digital TV, etc.
For me, marketing has to be about mind share, not market share.
Cheers,
Alex.
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Re: Marketing, GNOME 3.0 and subteams
Brian Cameron wrote: While I agree with the sentiment, the situation is that for most people Windows is gratis. Yes, it is a challenging situation. I would put it in stronger terms than that :D With the economy in the situation its in, perhaps people might be more interested in saving money. At any rate, the fact that free software solutions cost less is a point worth highlighting, even if it might not be the most significant motivator. Just to be clear; I absolutely agree with that. I'm not saying it's not worth making that kind of statement, or that it's worth telling people about the accessibility - in fact, I think those are hugely important messages. I just don't think it's going to get close to swaying most people, because from my experience they really don't give a hoot about it. However, that said, I don't think GNOME is marketable as mainstream software - mainly because, it's not Windows. I don't think marketing GNOME as a Windows competitor per se is a winning strategy either :) Then perhaps you are on the wrong mailing list? Obviously one major goal of this forum is to figure out how to overcome these issues. I don't think throwing up our hands and saying "it can't be done" is helpful. Or do you have any suggestions on what you think would make for a more successful marketing strategy? That's a great point, and clearly it's possible to overcome these issues in some way: Macintosh is, to me, an excellent example of an enthused user base which generates sufficient revenue from its customers that the people developing it can go forwards leaps and bounds. In the general case, I don't think free software is in that situation. Firefox, as a stand-out example, is funded essentially by advertising - and honestly, if Google disappeared for them tomorrow, I think they would be in serious trouble. I think my main concern is that trying to out-Windows Windows is basically a losing argument: they have a monopoly on the market, and it's locked in effectively by network effects. No matter how much better GNOME is virtually all aspects, it will have severe trouble competing on that ground. My approach would be to gain a beachhead in a specific but widely-used niche that GNOME can be specifically, but not exclusively, marketed into. Our huge, huge advantage over Windows - again, imho :) - is that GNOME isn't as competitive with third parties / ISVs / others as MS is, and doesn't have the same conflict of interests. That means that GNOME will integrate where Windows won't dare, and look out for the user as #1. Personally, that's how I would look to market it: you have the various DRM examples, even iTunes etc., where software is designed to do things that are not in the interest of the user - which comes down to the entire raison d'etre of free software. Going there is a place that other software (apart from Kde ;) cannot follow, so that would be my approach. But, I'm not like fixed on these ideas - you may well be right. I see things from a specific UK-small-busines bias, which is admittedly only a small section of life. I'm also not a GNOME developer really, but I do develop software that I want GNOME to integrate into and rock hard with, so that is also partially my bias. At the end of the day, it's vastly more important to a. agree on a message and b. hammer it home. I'm onboard with that, so insofar as the right mailing list is concerned, I think I'm on it :) Just chucking in my 2c! Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Marketing, GNOME 3.0 and subteams
Brian Cameron wrote: Shaun: To be frank, these are no benefits. For a potential user, it begs the question: "Why should I care whether GNOME3 is "free", "accessible" or "usable"? That is simply not true. Because GNOME is free, the software is far less expensive than other proprietary solutions. Therefore, people who might not be able to afford a proprietary solution could consider using GNOME instead. While I agree with the sentiment, the situation is that for most people Windows is gratis. Most people factor the cost of software into the initial acquisition cost. The cost of office for non-corporates isn't huge. I honestly think the cost argument is basically a complete loser; I've never met anyone who's had a cost problem with Windows/et. al. and wasn't a geek of some description. I absolutely 100% agree with your points about access for people with impairments, though - I think GNOME is extremely strong in that area; sadly, I don't think it's a marketing benefit in the wider sense: I think it's a relatively marginal issue. However, that said, I don't think GNOME is marketable as mainstream software - mainly because, it's not Windows. I don't think marketing GNOME as a Windows competitor per se is a winning strategy either :) Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Marketing, GNOME 3.0 and subteams
Stormy Peters wrote: + Identify our target audience(s). Do we want to communicate with existing GNOME users, all free desktop users, or try to reach out to non-free-desktop users? (I think we can safely leave communicating with developers up to the developers themselves.) + Identify our key messages. What's new/interesting/cool about GNOME 3.0. Who will it benefit? How? I'd like to proffer an observation on the above two points: part of what people are talking about being cool about GNOME 3.0 is the developer platform being streamlined and modernized. Although we want to evangelise the benefits, the most powerful message wouldn't be GNOME saying that stuff (we would, wouldn't we?) but having a series of other projects saying that. If there was an early marketing campaign toward developers expounding the virtues of the new platform, and the stuff you can do with it, by the time we get around to release maybe we could have the results of that to show as well - either independent apps talking up GNOME 3, or in-house dev teams saying nice things, that kind of thing. As a concrete example, with Firefox being Gtk-bound already, are there examples where the GNOME integration story there could be improved and/or new GNOME 3 hotness added to Firefox? I realise there may be better examples which conflict less with GNOME (=epi), but it would be pretty cool to point users at new stuff in Firefox which GNOME 3 enables. Other examples: why not Wordpress, Noserub, etc., and similar services? How is the integration with web stuff going to work? Can we say cool things about the likes of Dropbox for GNOME 3? (I care less for the non-free stuff personally, but it appears to be pretty popular). Perhaps the timescales are too short here, but I think it would be really cool if we could have others echo our messages, which in many ways might mean talking to developers and telling them about what's happening in GNOME world Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Friends of GNOME Cause on Facebook
Apologies for being Facebook-useless, but... ... is there some kind of icon or other linky thing that we can put on blogs / sites / etc. ? I'm imagining something like the FSF have for their membership programme: http://www.fsf.org/associate/widget/ Thanks! Stormy Peters wrote: Hi Marketing folks, The Friends of GNOME Facebook Cause[1] is live! Please visit the GNOME cause page and show your support. In the three weeks since Friends of GNOME has launched, we've had 89 new people donate to GNOME. Almost half of those are monthly subscribers - people that have agreed to support GNOME every month. Obviously there is interest in supporting a free and open source desktop. By creating a GNOME Cause we can reach more of those people. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Cultural Issue with the Foot Logo
Thilo Pfennig wrote: Besides Thailand and Nepal due to the material online I would add: Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Quatar, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United, Arab Emirates and also Pakistan, Afghanistan and other muslim countries maybe those with +50% muslim population: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Muslim_world_map.png If we're looking at a cultural problem in Islamic countries, there is some precedent there for having separate logos: Red Cross / Red Crescent have different symbols because the cross is offensive in those areas too (even through unrelated descent). I believe they're different organisations, and they also have a third symbol - a diamond - as a reserve. GNOME could apply the same thinking, though. Would there be a problem using something like a stylised hand-print? It could be made to look recognisably "GNOME" with a G palm, yet still obviously a hand. Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Issuing a press release about GNOME 3
Luis, Luis Villa wrote: So, yeah. When we've figured out how to make people tell it's a damn upgrade, get back to me, until then, calling it 3.0 is a bad idea. Sorry again for the stop energy, but when I see things plunging off a cliff, and a huge opportunity wasted, I think it has to be said... You know what, I totally agree with you, although I wasn't at GUADEC so didn't hear the plan myself. But, here's the thing. I'm not sure 3.0 will come about if people just wait around for the 'big idea' to kick it off. Stuff like RedHat's online desktop and things are great, but I would compare that to the idea of time-based releases. Previously, people would release software "when it was ready", and the problem ended up being that ready never came (or, indeed, it came and went without people realising). Waiting for a new story for GNOME 3 isn't really going to work (and, imho, hasn't worked): people will argue over whether or not the story is new enough, or that it's different enough. Invariably, it won't be. So, I think you're right: a compelling, innovative and articulate vision for an improved desktop is needed. But I kind of have faith that it will come, to be honest. I think the biggest (and bravest) decision is saying that GNOME 3 will happen; deciding what it's going to be about will take time. Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Issuing a press release about GNOME 3
Vincent Untz wrote: Le samedi 12 juillet 2008, à 22:28 +0200, Dave Neary a écrit : I've already started to see a lot of bullshit about the GNOME 3.0 announcement and I think it would be useful for a GNOME release team press release announcing our plans for the 3.0 release [..] Yeah, we discussed this with Stormy. Definitely something to do. Also, I think we can start some document for the community, and some FAQ. Maybe also some slides that people can re-use to explain things. I would actually advocate taking a more non-document approach to this. So, although I see value in a press release, that's kind of a one-shot thing, and probably what's needed is a resource that people can point to again and again. Something pretty prominent on gnome.org would be better, like gnome.org/3 or something, almost like a kind of "what's new" but looking forward, with mock-ups where appropriate and that kind of thing. I think the bullshit is probably a direct result of not much information being out - for those of us not at GUADEC there's very little you can say about gnome 3 other than the date and the Project Ridley stuff. Understandable in a way, really, and promising: people don't speculate about stuff they don't care about. Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: About The GNOME Mobile & Embedded Initative
On Mon, 2007-04-23 at 12:24 +0200, Murray Cumming wrote: > Yes (no need for people to point out that selling == marketing. It's > still a useful job to do.). That's why I'd like people to work on the > GNOME Tour, which I started but never finished. It's also in the > gnomeweb-wml module. Totally agree. Davyd also did "Look at GNOME 2.14" which I thought was good: http://www.gnome.org/~davyd/gnome-2-14/ The presentation isn't amazing, but it does distill the release down into some headlines which people can take away and say, "Yes, that's why I should be using GNOME". Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: About The GNOME Mobile & Embedded Initative
On Mon, 2007-04-23 at 11:59 +0200, Murray Cumming wrote: > On Mon, 2007-04-23 at 10:00 +0100, Alex Hudson wrote: > > One thing I was majorly disappointed with was the release of 2.18: > > there is a huge perception that GNOME hasn't moved forward from 2.12/2.14 in > > any significant way. > > The release notes were crappy, that's all. (Gervais Mulongoy and Quim > and co did their best, but it was hopeless at that late stage.) I agree with that; but I don't think that's the only reason - Release Notes are great for listing all the changes, but I think most people get their information about the latest GNOME from the press. Release Notes are good at priming the press, but they don't get across any particular message other than "we've improved these things". For example, take ZDNet on GNOME 2.14: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,100121,39257913,00.htm The big news was the administration tools. They weren't new particularly, but the improvement was there and GNOME decided to have a named administration suite. In contrast, I don't think they even covered the 2.16 and 2.18 releases - while the quality of the release notes plays into that, it's not the whole thing. While it's too optimistic to expect killer new features in every GNOME, it would be great to be able to give say two or three reasons why someone should upgrade. Without that, it ends up being a "well, lots of things are a bit better" type of message - which I don't think will persuade people that GNOME is advancing at the rate it actually is. I think release notes are great for existing users; I don't think they pull in many new users, and my point was really more about the latter I guess: I think it should be a function of the marketing team to help create buzz about GNOME releases, and show people what they're missing when they're not using it. Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: About The GNOME Mobile & Embedded Initative
On Mon, 2007-04-23 at 09:45 +0100, Joachim wrote: > Anyway, while Thilo leaves (and I don't blame him at all), I'm going > to ask this: > Could the Foundation board decide whether Gnome needs a marketing > team? Could it either explicitly give a mandate to the marketing team > or let us know if we can just go home? I'm not sure a mandate from the Foundation would make this group work better - if the Foundation asks the marketing team to work on something specifically, that could work, but it wouldn't be much different to the marketing team sorting out for itself some concrete tasks. One thing I was majorly disappointed with was the release of 2.18: there is a huge perception that GNOME hasn't moved forward from 2.12/2.14 in any significant way. This is one of the big reasons talk about GNOME 3 keeps coming around - people don't believe GNOME will go forwards much without some kind of Topaz project. Although there has been talking about "what is marketing?", I think the danger there is that by trying to broadly define "marketing" we end up with a notion of the team taking part in all sorts of activities (which, rightly, it _could_) but with a brief so wide there's no-where to start. I think the marketing team needs to be seen to be doing things which matter, and that in the short term - to me, anyway - means promotion of GNOME. Right now, Firefox, Ubuntu and similar projects are leading the way - and really, GNOME isn't doing anything similar. If the marketing team could kick-start some buzz about GNOME again, highlight the progress that is being made, and get people talking about GNOME releases again, I think that would show people the marketing team can be successful and they'll want to involve the team more. I don't think the marketing team should be foisted on people. Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: About The GNOME Mobile & Embedded Initative
On Sun, 2007-04-22 at 12:54 +0200, Thilo Pfennig wrote: > On 4/22/07, Jeff Waugh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > GNOME is not a desktop project, it's a user experience > > project. > > Well then we should start telling the truth. From our front page: > "GNOME offers an easy to understand desktop for your Linux or UNIX computer." That is definitely a marketing problem. I actually agree with both of you; I think GNOME is a desktop project (and I think that's what most people recognise the project as being; at least, that's what people will say if you ask them). But, I think also what it means to be part of the "desktop" is much broader than it used to be, and certainly includes mobile devices. > Question is what the task of the marketing team should be? If the REAL > marketing is neither discussed nor decided on the marketing team I > rather suggest to dissolve it and officially give the foundation board > the task to do the marketing and then just have action groups for > doing specific tasks. I think that problem will solve itself, actually. If the marketing team can tackle real problems and make progress, it will automatically start being consulted more - it's a bit chicken and egg, but I think it has to be that way around. I think further that a lot of the discussion I see about GNOME, about what GNOME 3 should be, about what the project should do and what the future ought to be, are all in many ways marketing issues (to the extent that if you're building software for other people to use, it needs to be things people want, and if they've never used it before you have to tell them why they would want it). Personally, I think the marketing team could take the lead in developing that discussion and creating coherent vision for where GNOME is going, and I think that would also be invaluable (not least by articulating that vision in such a way that it brings everyone in the GNOME project together, even if they're not directly working on "The Desktop"). But I do think that, and other marketing issues, are things that need to be proactively addressed by the marketing team, rather than simply deferred to the team. Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: redifining GNOME office.
On Wed, 2007-04-04 at 23:30 +0300, Quim Gil wrote: > On 4/4/07, Alex Hudson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > we would lose an important constituency (those making purchasing > > decisions, etc.) > > Those making purchasing decisions don't look at GNOME alone, look at > distributions. They think in Firefox, they think in > Evolution/Thunderbird, they think in OpenOffice, they care to have > well covered the PDF, Flash, Java issues... and they don't really care > if application X is in fact GNOME or not as far it works properly. > > IMveryHO trying to marketing-wise (re)build a concept of GNOME Office > to compete against OOo is even more futile than putting energies into > beating Firefox's success with Epiphany. Sure, but I think you're misunderstanding me. I'm not trying to sell the concept of GNOME Office over OOo, because I agree, I don't think that would work. For those who really care about productivity apps on the free desktop, OOo is the most important app (IMveryHO also ;) What I'm saying is that "GNOME Office" needs to be about saying to these people, "GNOME is the best environment for running your OpenOffice/Tbird/whatever". It's not about promoting GNOME ahead of those apps, but promoting the idea of GNOME being the best environment for those apps. At the end of the day, people will choose GNOME for a very few reasons, but primarily I think their reasons will be based on the apps they want to run, not because they like the look of the desktop. We should be making their apps work better in GNOME, and telling them that if they want the best OOo/whatever experience, that GNOME is the desktop to run. Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: redifining GNOME office.
On Wed, 2007-04-04 at 22:08 +0300, Quim Gil wrote: > Why don't we do the opposite: close officially GNOME Office and keep > working on the interoperability and integration between GNOME > applications. I think we're in rough agreement; whether or not there is an official "GNOME Office", we're saying that there ought to be a broad idea of how office-type tools can work together in GNOME rather than a narrow idea of a single suite with a single set of applications. What users probably care more about is that their applications can read their files (so, I think OpenDocument is important, though users might not realise that), and that basic stuff that Ken mentioned works: open/save dialogs are all consistent, printing is consistent, and the UI fits with GNOME. But I think we also need to keep sight of the fact that office-type apps are very important to many users, especially those using GNOME for work. They are the main day-to-day productivity tools, and I think GNOME could do a lot better job integrating them. From a marketing point of view, I think we would lose an important constituency (those making purchasing decisions, etc.) if we didn't highlight GNOME as being excellent for Office tasks: whether or not that means having a GNOME Office, I'm not sure, but I wouldn't want to lose that concept completely. Things like being able to link e-mails from Evo into tomboy are just scratching the surface, we should be able to link all our data in there if we like (e.g., having a note for a project, and links to relevant e-mails, documents, etc.). GNOME's role in that kind of desktop is one primarily of ensuring apps talk to each other and work in concert, IMHO. I think we can still communicate something meaningful at that level which primarily applies to productivity apps. Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: redifining GNOME office.
On Wed, 2007-04-04 at 12:55 -0400, Ken VanDine wrote: > I definately agree. Not sure I agree with wikipedia says makes up > GNOME Office. But we need something that we can say works together, > abiword, gnumeric and gnome-db for sure. We still need a presentation > app, criawips also seems dead. Lets get these revitalized. I don't think "GNOME Office" needs to be short-hand for "the GNOME Office suite"; I think it does need to be much more about integration and collaboration. So, for example, I don't see why both Abiword and OO Writer can't be part of GNOME office. They appeal to totally different types of users, and don't really compete in terms of functionality. Both should be "first class" in terms of the GNOME desktop: yes, OOo is very sucky in some areas (mostly the UI), but that does seem to be improving very rapidly (and perhaps would be quicker with GNOME pushing it). I think it's more important that programs are able to work together well (e.g., good OpenDocument support, that kind of thing) and work well in the overall desktop. Programs like Abiword et al. are definitely worthwhile IMHO, but I don't see them replacing OOo in my daily work in the next few years - they're just not "big" enough. It seems important to me that they all work well in GNOME. Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: wgo Tour: which pages?
On Thu, 2006-11-23 at 15:09 +, Joachim Noreiko wrote: > A lot of the individual ideas in Topaz are good and > should trickled into 2.x. > But there's no sense of a solid plan for a new > desktop. Just a big tip of ideas, some of which are > good, some of which aren't. > I don't feel able to promote that without, erm, lying. Well, it depends on how you see that being interpreted. There's "here's what we're thinking about for the future, so you can expect GNOME to look like this in a year or two" - that would certainly be wrong, because you're giving people incorrect expections. But, "here's some current ideas about how we can innovate on the desktop: these are the types of improvements we're actively investigating to improve GNOME" is a totally different story. It's not a promise of "this is how it will look", but it's also not a development roadmap. It's a visionary statement about the ideals of the project. If people better understand the ethos of the project, they're also more likely to understand the design decisions already taken, and the feature set available. I think that could be very informative. Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: wgo Tour: which pages?
On Thu, 2006-11-23 at 14:36 +, Joachim Noreiko wrote: > No. > 10x10 is a pipedream and Topaz is nothing more than a > big dump of crazy ideas on the wiki. That's a bit harsh. There's a fine line between "vision" and "vapourware", though. > Somewhere there's a mostly CSS-based presentation > thingy. Does anyone else remember what I mean? S5, but it also needs Javascript. For most people it'd probably be fine, and you probably could hack it to fall back to non-Javascript for a specific presentation. Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: GNOME Logo Branding Guidelines Concerns
On Sun, 2006-10-29 at 08:56 -0500, Luis Villa wrote: > I would leave this up to the brand experts, but I have to disagree > with you here, Quim- as long as it is identifiably GNOME, people > should be encouraged to 'own' the brand and make it their own. If that > means customizing it for their country/team/whatever, great. I think we're still in the position where the GNOME brand isn't really strong enough to justify that strict a stance; I agree with Luis. Where I would agree with Quim - allowing people to do whatever they like with it is not necessarily great; we should probably point out some preferred customisations based on the GNOME brand. I would extend that out beyond just websites: it continues to pain me that within most distributions (Debian aside?) the GNOME logo isn't on the desktop. On my current desktop, I have the Ubuntu logo and "About Ubuntu" in the System menu; as a non-technical user I would have no idea what "GNOME" referred to, even though I have an "About GNOME" too. It would be great to have a brand which could be customised by various stakeholders, yet still be recognisably GNOME. Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: 2.16 splash screen and logos
On Fri, 2006-09-15 at 22:06 +0200, karderio wrote: > The splash seems to use a distorted foot, when compared to the foot on > the top left of the site. This is to be avoided, according to the logo > guidelines[1], which seems very understandable. I don't think the foot itself is distorted, if you're talking about aspect ratio. One is only a couple of pixels bigger than the other each way. Or are you talking about some other aspect? > That said, there appears to be a new logo on the guidelines page, which > seems to be the one on the splash. Has GNOME got a new logo ? Is this > logo in different proportions to the old one ? It's simply a different font, as I understand it, and the one on the splash seems to be the old font laid out side-by-side as in the new one. It's a shame the new font wasn't used. Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: I'm thinking of doing a 2.16 screenshot tour
On Wed, 2006-08-30 at 16:40 +0100, Alex Smith wrote: > Quim Gil wrote: > > The screenshots you are doing are all full screen. That's ok for a > > couple of cases to show how the whole desktop looks like, but the > > default should be a screenshot of a single window, in more detail. > > > > Look at http://www.gnome.org/start/2.14/notes/en/rnusers.html to see > > what we have done previously. > > Well, somebody else will have to do this as I don't have time any more - > the final release of Frugalware 0.5 is coming soon, and I'm spending > most of my time now finding broken stuff, fixing it, etc. [nb. different Alex] If it's just a matter of cutting out the windows, arranging and shadowing, I'm more than willing to do the donkey work - it would seem a waste to throw away what Alex has done? Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: wgo structure
On Thu, 2006-08-10 at 13:04 +0200, Quim Gil wrote: > I still think "Learn" is better than "Ask". "Ask" is good to reflect > mail/forum/IRC, but shadows documentation. True, from "Learn" to > 'support forums' there is a gap, but I think the meaning is better > covered than using "Ask". I think "Get Help" covers all of those better than either "Learn" or "Ask" :-) "Learn" and "Discover" also overlap the "teaching you something new" idea space. > > The thing that's good about using nouns is that I usually come to a site > > looking for something > > Yes, but chances that your something matches a nav bar term are low. > Either if you find "Development" or "Create" you need to make an > assumption before clicking. Personally, I think if the probability the nav bar helps me find what I'm looking for, then it's basically failed as a piece of UI. I mean, that is the whole point of it, isn't it - finding specific things? Otherwise, we effectively force people to search (either using the search function, or manually clicking through pages) to find stuff, and I know that personally drives me up the wall. It just strikes me that attempting to distill the website taxonomy into a set of single-word verbs should be a lower priority than coming up with a navigation set which really helps people find stuff on the site. It would be great to come up with a list of key tasks that new users and old should be able to perform on the site, and test which setups work best. E.g., for me, finding a tour of the latest release of GNOME would be, as would accessing a web support forum. The marketing-ness of the nav bar should really be a secondary concern, imho. Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: wgo structure
On Thu, 2006-08-10 at 22:07 +1200, John Williams wrote: > I have come to this discussion late and am trawling through the archives > to get some context. Forgive me if I say something silly ;-) Me too.. .. :) > I really like the idea of using verbs instead of nouns in the > navigational structure. I agree that "Learn" is better than "Study". > My only concern is that when scanning the possible areas to visit, it is > not obvious where to go for help. (I know, I know: "Learn".) Also, > "Learn" is a bit too similar to "Discover" in this context. I'd like to insert a caveat into this: verbs on their own aren't really much good; as a user I need to know what is being verbed (ie., be able to work it out pretty quickly). The thing that's good about using nouns is that I usually come to a site looking for something: e.g., thinking about my personal usage of the web, when I'm not visiting news sites and the like, I'm on google searching for something, and then going to a site. E.g., "documentation for burning cds in gnome" or something. Having to transition from a noun-mindset (looking for an object) to a verb-mindset (which action is associated with this thing I'm looking for?) has tripped me up on many websites. > How about: > > [GNOME logo] Discover - Try - Ask - Create - Join For me, 'verb lists' only work when they're actioning the same item. So, "Discover GNOME" and "Try GNOME" work quite well and seem ok. "Ask GNOME" and "Create GNOME" don't seem to work, so then I need to re-think what Ask and Create is talking about. "Try" and "Ask" I'm not at all sure about. I'm not sure if two words are taboo, but "Find Help" and "Get Creative" seems better to me. Also - something I know nothing about - do single-word English verbs translate well? I would have thought not, but I don't know. Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Promotion campaign for GNOME 2.14 release?
On Fri, 2006-02-24 at 09:07 -0500, Rajiv Vyas wrote: > > his views on gnome won't change with a minor release, he simply > > doesn't like our concept of usability. it'd be great if he did, but > > he doesn't and he won't. > > That sucks. How about using Mark Shuttleworth? He probably doesn't mind Gnome, but I seem to remember him saying he was switching to Kubuntu when Dapper comes out? Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: real marketing or just catchy slogans?
On Tue, 2005-12-13 at 13:45 +0100, Murray Cumming wrote: > > On Tue, 2005-12-13 at 11:31 +0100, Murray Cumming wrote: > >> I would prefer to just link to LiveCDs for the distributions, but > >> 1) They don't provide these at the right time. > >> 2) They don't all provide them. > >> 3) They are not all a good user experience. > > > > Didn't Luis start an ubuntu-offshoot "pure" GNOME live CD? What happened > > to that? > > Er, that's what we are talking about. We had it for 2.10 and 2.12, and > we'll have it again for 2.14. Ok, I completely missed the point of the above, sorry. Back OT (I hope): I would think that the current setup of distributing Ubuntu but with their various mods removed is the best way forward. Each distribution is going to make various changes to GNOME, but I would hope that each derivative is closer to the base GNOME than it is to another distribution's modified version. Of course, if everyone started distributing GNOME with a similar set of patches applied (eg., navigation mode), that would be a marketing problem IMHO. Bringing in other distros would confuse the issue. Ubuntu just happens to be a vehicle; we're asking people to try GNOME though, not Ubuntu, and to present them with various choices which are effectively all the same thing would be confusing - people are afraid of picking the wrong option IME. Also, I know people have banged on about gnome.org a few times, but hiding the LiveCD in the download area is a shame. We should have some kind of 'Take a test drive' pretty prominently on the front page, if we think potential new users are coming to the site in substantial numbers. Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: real marketing or just catchy slogans?
On Tue, 2005-12-13 at 11:31 +0100, Murray Cumming wrote: > I would prefer to just link to LiveCDs for the distributions, but > 1) They don't provide these at the right time. > 2) They don't all provide them. > 3) They are not all a good user experience. Didn't Luis start an ubuntu-offshoot "pure" GNOME live CD? What happened to that? Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Pure?
On Sat, 2005-12-10 at 20:18 +1100, Jeff Waugh wrote: > How much do you think 'pure' resonates with, say, my Mum? Let's start from > the top: She doesn't understand or care about software freedom, and getting > her to use GNOME should not depend on that understanding. So, 'pure' as a > concept isn't that useful. As applied to "freedom" you're probably right - _however_, I think the idea does potentially have marketing value. We have a market where lots of people are delivering different versions of GNOME - some very similar to the baseline software, some slightly different. I'm sure we can all name UI changes that are made, from artwork to larger functional changes, and that is something which is pretty incompatible with the traditional idea of resale (the idea of trade marks, for example, doesn't work as well in this scenario - e.g., Firefox is free software, but they don't let people distribute it as such and keep the brand, which I think is a mistake). It's also something that we probably don't want to particularly discourage, since GNOME is Free Software. But, there is certainly an idea of what is 'GNOME', which is the ultimately pure version, and those versions that are modified and redistributed. I guess this is actually veering towards what Luis wrote on the GNOME 3.0 page wrt. Goals and Organisation (the standardisation stuff). Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: How interested in promoting GTK apps? [was Re: real marketing or just catchy slogans?]
On Fri, 2005-12-09 at 22:43 +0100, Quim Gil wrote: > We are saying that GNOME is not a product downloadable by itself but > something that can be just tasted and tested through a disto and that > the strong label in Desktop Linux. I think actually we're talking about what value 'GNOME' might have as a brand, and what that brand should represent. > Apart from this, if Abiword is part of the GNOME project I don't see why > the GNOME marketing team should discard the possibility of promoting it > also in its MS Windows, if this is one of the best products we have. I don't think it should either - for one thing, if Abi gets great OpenDocument support, that puts it in a position where people could offer it as a file viewer/reader option when publishing OD format documents for people who are unable to access them - OOo is never going to fulfil this task. I would see the role of GNOME apps elsewhere much like the OS X apps that have w32 ports - iTunes, while running on Windows, is clearly not a Windows application, and I think PC users with iPods are being turned onto OSX through such applications (well, a friend of mine is doing exactly that right now: I suspect it's common, but I don't know how common). I don't think there is anything wrong with giving people w32 versions of Free Software, but telling them that they are GNOME apps (for example). I think there probably is a strong 'gateway drug' effect, and if people begin to want GNOME apps, they will begin to demand the best environment to run those apps (GNOME itself). And to that end, I think being able to refer to GIMP/Abi/etc. as GNOME apps rather than GTK+ apps would be a bonus - I think it's a lot easier to explain to users why they would be interested in GNOME than GTK+ for a start ;o) Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: How interested in promoting GTK apps? [was Re: real marketing or just catchy slogans?]
On Fri, 2005-12-09 at 10:21 +0100, Quim Gil wrote: > En/na Murray Cumming ha escrit: > > I see no need to have separate GTK+ and GNOME brands. Let them be GNOME > > applications. > > This is all I wanted to read. If it's clear we have 'GNOME applications' > able to run on MS Windows, then we can shameless promote GNOME as (also) > damn good free software you can easily download and try on MS Windows > (as well). I agree fully with this, I would actually see this as a branding thing for developers also, tbh. There are lots of valid reasons for not wanting to link into GNOME - not wanting to depend on GNOME, not wanting the extra memory requirement, whatever. Maybe there should be a "GNOME Basic Profile" and "GNOME Full Profile" or something? I think it fits the kind of thing Project Ridley is basically doing, and would be easier to describe to people (e.g., 'the full profile is the basic API plus features X, Y and Z') - it works for other technology; Java is split up similarly. This would have huge benefits, too, if the basic profile were something you can run on embedded devices like maemo. So, you can run GNOME apps on w32, embedded, wherever, and the "full cream" desktop is positioned as a real step up. I don't know if this idea fits neatly with reality (in terms of the actual software), but it simplifies the various technical jargon in the GNOME world, and a more unified brand is pretty obviously going to be a stronger one. Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: real marketing or just catchy slogans?
On Fri, 2005-12-09 at 09:46 +0100, Murray Cumming wrote: > They can at least _try_ it easily, with a Live CD. A large amount of > anecdotal evidence suggests that this has been an incredibly successful > route to Linux/GNOME adoption for new Ubuntu users. > > VMPlayer images could be even better. I'm going to pimp http://www.colinux.org/ even though I've never used it and don't have w32. It looks to my naive eyes that it could be as simple as adding another kernel and a bit of runtime to a live CD. > Recently I've (amateurly, probably wrongly) concluded that we need to > create a simple positive brand association, not convince people of little > details such as this program is better than this program, or that GNOME > starts here and stops there. It's why we hate the Intel/Coke/Cigarettes > marketing, but it's probably why the Intel marketing is successful. I think you're probably right. I would think, though, that the apps are still the most important component, so the way the brand would need to work would be that people would recognise an app as being a GNOME app, and associate that with the "benefits" of GNOME (e.g., simplicity, integration with nautilus, or whatever). So, when people see a new GNOME app, they want to try it out. And they ask for a GNOME environment so they can get access to their favourite apps. I know this runs contrary to the thinking on usability (that user data should be the first class object, not the app), but I can't see another way the brand could work? Anyway, for the brand to work that way (i.e., GNOME implies good app), we need some examples of the inverse (X good app is a GNOME app) in order to build that association. How you make clear the latter link I don't know; the GNOME stuff is filed off on many distros (e.g., you get a RedHat/Ubuntu menu rather than a foot menu...) > At some point, we might want to stop being so deferential, and accept that > we are winning. We are the only viable Linux Desktop, simply because of > usability. I know that's not a politically wise position for us as an > organisation, but it's my opinion. If you're saying marketing shouldn't be deferential, I agree - I'm not sure where else being less deferential would benefit GNOME, though. Ideally, you want other people to tell you you're winning ;) Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Desktop personas (draft)
On Wed, 2005-12-07 at 11:25 -0300, Santiago Roza wrote: > at least from a marketing point of view, you can't ask me to "forget > trying to cover my userbase"... that's suicidal; we'd be telling > anecdotes, not segmenting anything. You're still missing the point, I think. The general idea is to cover the user base, but the idea of personas is not to cover the userbase. If you think of a bell population, you have 80% within two standard deviations (I think?). Personas are a tool whereby you attempt to design 'average' users that you think most people are going to be pretty close to. By aiming at those personas, you're trying to design something which is pretty good for most people. It's attempting to recognise that the distribution of wants, needs and skills across human populations isn't uniform - most people want roughly the same thing, most people have roughly the same skills (for some definition of roughly), and that there is some polarisation there too. Personas attempt to cover a large range of people, but also includes a weighting of what you think the most important issues are. You can't make everyone happy all the time; personas is just a tool to help figure out how to prioritise who to make happy when, if you see what I mean. Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Desktop personas (draft)
On Wed, 2005-12-07 at 10:35 -0300, Santiago Roza wrote: > yeah, and i agree with this of course. what i don't like is the idea > of creating "living" characters, at the cost of making them A LOT less > representative of your target audience. > > for example, alex replaced marcus' typical teenager with someone who > uses openoffice, firefox and gaim... that must be like 5% of > 18-year-olders (who have computers), with the other 95% not even > knowing that alternatives to ms office, internet explorer and msn > messenger actually EXIST. Right, but you're actually conflating two problems here (and it's quite subtle): i. the persona is not representative ii. personas are not representative The first one is easy: a bad persona is useless. So, in my example, if I've invented a persona that doesn't really reflect our user base, then it's a bad persona. Care does need to be taken to get them close to reality. Number two is harder. The intuitive side of you probably doesn't like the idea of detailed persona: this is true of everyone, I think, even Cooper admits that they are counter-intuitive. The "footprint" of a persona - how much of your userbase it covers - is clearly going to be very small. But, forget trying to cover the userbase: what you're after is a number of stakes in the ground, hopefully evenly dispersed, which represent important points. It's a bit like averages. It's a common saying over here that the average family has 2.4 children (whether or not this is still right, I have no idea). Of course, *no* family has 2.4 children. But, the important point is that (assumption: population follows a bell distribution) families are likely to be near that figure. If you can think of it that way, you're likely to see the use of personas. Of course, like any tool, they can be over-used, but it's a different idea to market segmentation (which I think is another valid tool to be used). Does that make sense? [It's also valid to argue that personas are not a useful tool; many people hold that viewpoint. I don't, personally, but there are significant limitations to how you can use it IMHO] Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Desktop personas (draft)
On Tue, 2005-12-06 at 22:44 +0100, Marcus Bauer wrote: > there are three groups of desktop personas: > > 1. private > 2. business > 3. public sector I'm going to make a quick comment about personas before people go too far in this direction - if you follow Cooper (and I'm not exactly sure how personas are supposed to apply to marketing), you're not trying to define a target audience per se. What you're doing is actual characterisation, as a novelist might do: dreaming up some example users in some actual detail. The goal isn't to cover our audience 100%, but come up with a 80% or so coverage. As an example, instead of 1.1 Youngster (which is quite a general description), you would have: 1.1 Joe Evans [you should name the persona] Joe is 17 years old, and is attending high school. He uses his PC to do homework - writing up science experiments in OpenOffice.org, doing research on the web with Firefox. He has a Livejournal and uses his AOL instant messenger account with gaim to talk to his friends. He has a k750i camera phone which can also play a small number MP3s. He has a small collection of CDs and DVDs for entertainment, and occasionally plays games on his playstation. He also enjoys watching sports on TV and plays soccer every Saturday afternoon. Now, the above example obviously means this persona doesn't cover voip, the 17yo using their computer as a home studio, or any of the other myriad different users there might be. That's not the point of a persona: they're basically characters. The way you use them is along the lines of "being able to enter maths equations really easily would help Joe with his homework", that kind of thing. Cooper usually says that five or so persona are more than enough: they should be pretty distinct. "Inmates..." also only gives a really brief overview of what they are and how they're used: to be honest, they seem mostly a kind of logic razor to me, cutting out inconsequential rubbish - stopping people focusing on corner cases and other arcania, and making them think about the big picture. It also prevents design-by-committee. A lot of what Marcus wrote down was tasks to do with media manipulation - the image manipulation program described by "Inmates.." is gold, and well worth the read. I would be happy to help contribute to some personas if people think it's worth doing. Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: real marketing or just catchy slogans?
On Tue, 2005-12-06 at 12:24 +0100, Murray Cumming wrote: > > There were criticisms in there of Nautilus, the menu editor, performance > > and usage of GNOME VFS (without specifics, it has to be said). Did those > > ever get sent back to the Nautilus developers? How about a proposal to > > include SMEG in 2.14? > > OK, but don't think it's going to help our marketing to have a discussion > about whether spatial nautilus is good or not, as long as this mailing > list remains as poorly informed about the user experience as the average > slashdot commenter. As an outsider butting in :o), I would say it does, and being "poorly informed" probably helps this list more than it hinders it. I'm not sure what model most people have of marketing (in terms of, how does it actually work, and how do you seek to achieve things using it?), but for me the idea is that you're trying to get someone to draw a conclusion or make a decision based on the materials/information you give them - usually, a decision to buy (which may not be the case here). The most convincing argument you usually hear is the one you make to yourself. Now, you aren't able to do that by arguing the toss with someone: the customer is always right, no matter what the circumstance. If people don't like Nautilus, they're right, whether you agree or not. The goal of marketing wrt. Nautilus, then, might be to tell people about the cool stuff it does, so that they can draw different conclusions (and if they don't, well, that tells you something ;) This is similar to your organic food producer: going around telling people that they are slowly poisoning themselves and what they're eating is wrong is unlikely to win sales; telling people that organic food is totally natural and selling the lifestyle to them, on the other hand, seems to work wonders - in the UK, the market for organic food has grown 1000% over the last decade (confirming, in part, that choice of lifestyle is one of the largest factors in modern marketing: people have an ideal about how they live, and purchase products which match that ideal). So, going back to marketing, selling people on usability is more than "You're wrong, and here's my study which proves it" - most people wouldn't be convinced by that, and is a reason I think Microsoft's TCO advertising fails miserably (in contrast to their rather good WXP TV advertising). But, usability is a big feature of GNOME, and is surely relevant to all the sectors any marketing strategy would attempt to target. It has to be possible to market that in a way that doesn't say "We do this better than you". And also, before I relurk again, I would suggest not trying to do too much too soon - i.e., start small. Personally, I would attempt to hit developers: getting people enthused about the GNOME platform to build cool stuff for it. Developers build demand, users drive it IMHO - MS have been fantastic at that in the past. Beagle, dashboard, F-spot, that kind of app already generates buzz and excitement. There are surely some quick wins there. Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Proposal for GNOME press release about Nokia device
On Wed, 2005-05-25 at 20:25 +0200, Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller wrote: > Attached is a press release draft I wrote, edited and cleaned up a bit > by Murray. I think the sentence about patents should be dropped - Nokia are one of the largest pro-software patent forces lobbying in Europe right now. Thanking them for making some patents available to a single free software project condones their patenting behaviour. Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
