On Tue, 2006-07-04 at 22:18 +0200, Jan Vancura wrote: > Jan Vancura wrote: > > Aaand, it's me again. > > Spreadubuntu is just itching to move. And what's the next step? We need > > a graphics mockup. If any of you are good at web design, please give it > > a shot.
> And my very own, very new, sitemap here: > http://sh.nu/~crimsun/mirror/ubuntu-marketing/Spreadubuntu-060628-jenda.png > Be sure to check out https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarketingTeam/SpreadUbuntu > as well soon - I'm working on it at the very moment. Hello, I've been lurking on the #ubuntu-marketing irc channel and have recently subscribed to the mailing list. I thought I should just fire off an introduction before too much longer. My name is Matthew Nuzum, but you'll find me on freenode as newz2000. I've recently joined the staff as the Ubuntu webmaster. I've been helping out here and there for a little over a year now, including helping design the current website back in March 05 or so. I'm excited to see so much energy relating to the marketing team and even have some ideas to toss out of my own when the time is right. I'm willing to help facilitate the spread ubuntu concept any way I can. One way that I can facilitate things is to give some advice. This advice comes not from me as a canonical employee, but someone who has managed many successful and unsuccessful web projects over the years. I'll just make two points, but both points are very long-winded: Point #1 Make sure to pick your projects and your projects' scope carefully. There is already an ubuntu website so make sure that you don't duplicate the wheel. Ask "what exactly do we want to accomplish" and "just what will spread ubuntu need to do that is distinct from the ubuntu website." By narrowing the scope of the project to just the answers to those questions you'll avoid running out of steam by re-inventing the wheel. Here are some thoughts: Spread firefox did an excellent job of organizing a grass-roots campaign by: * creating attractive looking web-buttons and ads for people to put on their website * tracking click-throughs of people as they were directed to the mozilla website * 'rewarding' people who directed traffic to the mozilla website. The reward was getting their name listed in the rankings on the website and providing back-links to the website. * providing an avenue for people to share posters, graphics, videos and other marketing material that they created I'm not suggesting with these bullet points that the spread ubuntu campaign needs the same scope, but that the spread firefox campaign had a rather narrow focus. The wiki lists 6 goals. Here they are: * Raise awareness of Ubuntu as a viable option for an operating system. What will the team do to raise awareness? * Guide the visitor through the thought process of choosing whether or not to use Ubuntu. Excellent! How will you do this? * Provide clear information on the benefits of Ubuntu, and Linux in general. Are you sure this isn't better answered on the main website? * Steer the freshly convinced user straight to passing the word on to his 'neighbours'. * Provide him/her with all the info and material available and necessary. Excellent! * Serve as a repository and database of community DIY material. Point #2 Before you start building a web-site, I would rough-draft the above points in the wiki. My experience is that websites that are well thought out and drafted on 'paper' are much more successful than websites where people just start making it. Flesh out the above ideas and then say to an artist, "We want a website that does X Y and Z. Here's what X is going to need to do, Y will do this and Z needs this and that." Its also helpful to look at other websites and find things you like and don't like about them. For example, you might say, "I like the inkscape website because it has xxxxx but I don't like it's yyyyy" Doing this will make the artist so happy, because the alternative is for you to say, "OK artists, go make us a website!" then when they put all their work and effort into a design you'll say, "Umm... it looks nice, but could you change everything except for that blue square there? Yes, and actually, I think the square should be orange, not blue. Try again and then we'll tell you some more stuff to change." So the two questions to ask are: # what exactly do we want to accomplish # just what will spread ubuntu need to do that is distinct from the ubuntu website And the two points are: # narrow your scope # draft out as much as possible in advance using the tools we already have I can't wait to see what turns out. -- Matthew Nuzum newz2000 on freenode -- ubuntu-marketing mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-marketing
