Howdy chaps, I'm relatively new to the Marketing Team and, with the demise of the UbuntuPeople.com forums, I don't know if this has been discussed previously.
During our chats on the IRC channel, it's clear there are two or three projects, within the team, that have some momentum: - SpreadUbuntu - Ubuntu Magazine - and I'm pretty keen on a press/media relations team, within the wider team. There's a lot of enthusiasm and energy bubbling around the IRC channel at the moment and I'm eagerly awaiting our meeting later today. I'm no marketing expert but I have a little professional and academic experience. When I first started to study marketing, I began to realise what a varied and disciplined subject it is. The most successful marketing is justified by how it relates to the organisation's objectives. Everyone I've spoken to has a strong idea of why they want to be involved in a particular project. However, I think we can give our efforts a much greater chance of success if we make sure we know why we're doing what we're doing. In marketing, and project management generally, people talk about SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time Bound) objectives. An example might be: * Ubuntu to be the operating system for 10% of all web-servers, as measured by NetCraft, by 1 September 2008. It's certainly specific, it's measurable by objective means, we'll assume that we've decided it's achievable based on resources etc, and we'll assume that it's relevant to overall strategy. The date is very important, as it makes planning possible. I believe that it would be helpful if we could decide upon some marketing objectives for Ubuntu before we start to discuss the specifics of individual projects. We're in an unusual position, in that Ubuntu is a volunteer project led by a strong commercial sponsor. As a volunteer community, we need to collectively agree on objectives and then win round those people who contribute to the marketing effort. With a commercial sponsor, we need to ensure that they're fully involved in deciding upon the team's objectives. Usually, marketing objectives would be designed to fulfil corporate objectives. We *could* take bug #1 to be our sole corporate objective, but this is the sort of thing we need to discuss as a team, with the wider community and with Canonical. I'm not suggesting we should try to tell people what they should be doing. I do, however, believe that we can be far more effective if concentrate our efforts on trying to achieve an agreed set of objectives. So, we need to advocate working together to fulfil the objectives. For example, if the Ubuntu Magazine team believe the best way they can help Ubuntu is through a magazine, then we all find a way in which that magazine can help fulfil the objectives we've agreed. In a traditional situation, it'd be the other way round: i.e. the objectives would be set, then you'd find ways to fulfil them. However, this is not a traditional situation :) This isn't meant to be a heavy corporate indoctrination session :) There's a lot we can learn from marketing, though, that can help us to be more effective. I want Ubuntu to succeed for many reasons, not least of all because I believe it's one of the most effective ways we have to spread free software. I reckon marketing techniques will enable us to be more effective. I know it's tempting to dive in and get to work, but I think it'll be worthwhile taking a step back and deciding on some SMART objectives, before we look at the specifics of individual projects. Gnome is a free software project with an excellent marketing team. Dave Neary has some thoughts about all of this on his blog: http://blogs.gnome.org/portal/bolsh/ and Gnome journal has some good stuff too: http://gnomejournal.org/article/26/marketing-gnome http://gnomejournal.org/article/39/marketing-gnome-part-two-segmentation-targeting-and-positioning I've also written some thoughts on this: http://www.understated.co.uk/writing/marketing-open-source/ I'd love to hear your thoughts on all of this. -- Matthew Revell www.understated.co.uk -- ubuntu-marketing mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-marketing
