Re: [Evangelism] promoting WPD

2009-03-12 Thread Karl Horak

In Albuquerque, we've never had more than a Plone Users luncheon or happy
hour.  We took a baby step last year by using WPD to hold a
Python/Zope/Plone open house.  Our corporate daily newsletter gave us a
paragraph to explain that we were discussing content management and web
solutions to a variety of problems.  Our attendees were most of the local
Python community and many from the corporate web group.  Only when someone
arrived did they then learn that the event was a WPD one.  

This year we're going to expand our outreach into the broader community,
involve other Plone shops, and see how it goes.  I like the idea that Plone
is quick web communication.  I also think we'll emphasize the intersection
of web content management, social software  collaboration, and enterprise
portal capabilities.  

If you explicitly promote WPD, I think you must be prepared to immediately
follow that up by answering the question, What the heck is a Plone and why
should I care?  We dodged that by calling the event one thing and using WPD
as the motivation, rationale, and the international glue.

-- Karl


Chris Calloway wrote:
 
 On 3/11/2009 1:35 PM, Scott Paley wrote:
 Thinking more about this though, who does WPD target? Are we trying to
 target those who don't have any idea what a CMS is?
 

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Re: [Evangelism] promoting WPD

2009-03-12 Thread Dylan Jay

Chris,

This is probably the most astute comments on Plone I've read.

Plone does have a marketing value proposition problems. It should  
either admit its an ECM/consultantware/framework (which is more or  
less how we at Pretaweb market it now), or ... well I don't think are  
many other niches left for it. With marketing as an ECM Plone has lost  
its opportunity with Alfresco getting traction with it's The open  
source ECM slogan. Plone is possibly the only openly developed high  
bus number ECM but that's harder to market. Either way plone doesn't  
market itself like this so any individual effort isn't very effective.


In terms of making plone approachable to developers I've been being  
trying my best to muddle through ways to get some of this done in the  
last year.
With documentation, I've agitated on teh documentation list and  
individuals the conference and managed to piss some people off but at  
the same time with pushing from plenty of others I think the direction  
is better with a focus on manuals being the only official  
documentation.
The single understandable developer manual is still too daunting  
however for the doc team to consider and I agree it shouldn't come  
from the doc team but the developers.
Myself and Rok Garbas have been trying to get buyin for a sphnix based  
way of publishing plone developer documentation, with the idea that if  
plone documentation in svn is visible then it will get written better  
(or at all). There are political problems there too.
but perhaps your monetarism idea is what is needed. Perhaps developer  
documentation needs to officially taken away from teh docteam and  
given to core developers.


All I can think of saying is we need more people like you saying these  
things


Also I'm working on a tool called hostout to make hosting more  
manageable for amateurs.


Making plone simple enough for amateurs is the only way to grow the  
community and survive I think.


---
Dylan Jay, Plone Solutions Manager
www.pretaweb.com
tel:+61299552830
mob:+61421477460
skype:dylan_jay



-Original Message-
From: evangelism-boun...@lists.plone.org
[mailto:evangelism-boun...@lists.plone.org] On Behalf Of Chris  
Calloway

Sent: Thursday, 12 March 2009 12:07 PM
To: evangelism@lists.plone.org
Subject: Re: [Evangelism] promoting WPD

On 3/11/2009 3:00 PM, Calvin Hendryx-Parker wrote:
I'd be interested in hearing as many of these stories as possible  
so we
can help others not make the same mistakes.  I bet that rarely  
Plone was
the issue, but the people involved in the project just didn't know  
what

power they really had.  I could be wrong and would still love to
leverage this info if possible.


You'd like to hear about it on this list? With open archives?

I think you'd be asking for blog-fodder for our competitors.

Because they really aren't stories about people not knowing what power
they had.

And a lot of it was to do with Plone, its community, and its culture.

This is why I don't have a blog. :)

I'd be glad to give you private run downs. I'm sure I have given you
some already. :) I'm sure some are well know to you already because  
you

swim in these waters, Calvin.

The biggest horror story is one I'm not supposed to even talk about.
It's not like everybody around the Triangle doesn't know it. It's just
that it involved a couple million dollars of charitable funds and some
highly placed people lost their jobs over it. So all the observers  
have

been asked to have respect for the dead and shut up. By their bosses.
And it just gets talked about privately, usually by the bosses with  
the

checkbooks whenever someone brings up Plone because it is some damn
succulent gossip.

But I can *categorize* some of the main problems on this list,  
starting

with the aforementioned case and some others like it.

The number one problem has been great variability in the abilities and
ethics of consulting companies operating in the area. Not yours. Yours
and a couple of others have been the mop up people called in to  
clean up

some of the previous disasters. Most of the crap companies have been
outed and have left the area, leaving behind only their legacy of
don't-use-Plone in their wake. But we have at least one problem  
company
still muddying the waters here. As you might see, there would  
liability

in telling enough of the story to identify that company.

Anyway, that problem is kind of taking care of itself. The bad  
companies
have been identified and blacklisted. But not without leaving long  
term
problems for Plone marketing in my locality. Plone got started in a  
big

way pretty early here. There were big ass Plone projects underway here
even before Plone 1.x was out. It took until sometime in Plone 2.x to
get the bad companies banished because it took awhile to really figure
out just how bad they were.

So this relates to the number two problem. Because you might think,
well, bad consulting companies are equal opportunity employers

Re: [Evangelism] promoting WPD

2009-03-11 Thread Scott Paley
Hey Chris,

Thinking more about this though, who does WPD target? Are we trying to
target those who don't have any idea what a CMS is?

Scott

On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 12:04 PM, Chris Calloway c...@unc.edu wrote:

 On 3/11/2009 9:49 AM, Roberto Allende wrote:

 Then... considering what the communication people say, do you think that
 if we use Content Management Event or Day, instead of Plone could be better
 in terms of communication ?.


 People who don't know what Plone is also don't know what content management
 is. And if you've heard of content management, you've probably heard of
 Plone. At least, that's my experience.

 So I don't know that an alternative name change leaving out the Plone brand
 helps those people who don't know what content management is, or those who
 do.

 WPD might need a secondary slogan to communicate what Plone is to those
 people who don't know what Plone *or* content management is, though.

 In simplest terms, what a CMS does is help people get their content on the
 web quickly.

 The word content, however, is kind of jargon-y for most people. When I
 use the word content with people who don't know what Content Management
 is, their eyes just glaze over. And that's most people. Who need content
 management. And don't know it yet.

 Additionally, content is a means to and ends. Content is something you want
 to communicate to people. And that's what a CMS really does. It
 *communicates* content. On the web. And people understand what the words
 communicate and web mean without having to understand the context of
 what content management is.

 So I would just suggest the title, with a secondary slogan like:

 World Plone Day: Communicate on the Web

 or

 World Plone Day: Quick Web Communications

 (I like the first one because it manages expectations. I find it really
 important to manage expectations up front when doing a marketing event.)

 You could incorporate that into your logo as well. Just put Communicate on
 the Web below the logo in smaller type. Or encircle the logo with that
 secondary slogan. I'm not really good with that part. I'm sure somebody can
 figure that out.

 It tells people, hey, I'm going to an event that will help me communicate
 on the web. (Possibly quickly.) And that's really what people want Plone
 for.

 And it tells people what Plone is even better than an elevator speech.

 So, yes, I think explaining that Plone helps you communicate on the web is
 an good thing to communicate.

 On the web. :)

 --
 Sincerely,

 Chris Calloway
 http://www.secoora.org
 office: 332 Chapman Hall   phone: (919) 599-3530
 mail: Campus Box #3300, UNC-CH, Chapel Hill, NC 27599





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Re: [Evangelism] promoting WPD

2009-03-11 Thread Chris Calloway

On 3/11/2009 1:35 PM, Scott Paley wrote:

Thinking more about this though, who does WPD target? Are we trying to
target those who don't have any idea what a CMS is?


That's a good question, Scott.

I was just trying to help Roberto clarify what he wants from suggesting 
we rename WPD.


I will say, that the WPD event my user group held last year only 
attracted people who already knew what a CMS is, already knew what Plone 
is, and, well, were already using Plone.


I don't think that was a good use of our time. It was fun seeing 
everybody. But it wasn't a good use of department time during business 
hours on a work day.


Part of that was, Plone is already marketed to death in my area. It's 
been very visible since the beginning here and we've trained just about 
everybody who is a candidate for Plone training here. There are 
commercials for Plone on the local public radio station here, 
ferpetessake. There was also non-profit here that was making free Plone 
sites for just about any other local non-profit that wanted one right 
from the beginning of Plone. So everybody here has had a Plone site at 
one time or another and they're mostly kind of over it now.


There have also been some monumental Plone and Zope project failures and 
unmet expectations due to Plone over-marketing in my neck of the woods 
that have given Plone a bad name in many quarters around where I live. 
It's very hard to market Plone here to anyone who knows what content 
management is because they have X number of Plone horror stories to draw 
upon already as their main knowledge of what content management is.


So I can't really say what would be good for your area.

But in my area, about the only people left to market Plone to are people 
who don't know what a CMS is yet, but who may need one.


And I'm not sure if I'm ready to manage the expectations of people in 
that category, given past experience.


--
Sincerely,

Chris Calloway
http://www.secoora.org
office: 332 Chapman Hall   phone: (919) 599-3530
mail: Campus Box #3300, UNC-CH, Chapel Hill, NC 27599




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