Hi all, I only just joined the marketing list last night, so I'll reply to Corey's mail instead.
Corey Burger wrote: > On 7/20/06, Chris Kenyon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> There appears to be universal demand for case studies on Ubuntu usage. I >> would welcome comments on the following proposal to get a success-story >> engine in place! >> >> Summary >> >> We need to establish a channel by which they are relayed to us >> and a mechanism for then producing and publishing them as case studies. Adam contacted me with his idea for a similar project (what he has called the "switch project on this mailing-list) about a week or so ago, and suggested that we could collaborate. His idea was based on a slightly different format, though.He wanted to have people who were all new to Ubuntu blog about their experiences as they experienced Ubuntu and describing how they slowly got more proficient with it. Chris' project sounds much wider with a great variety of use cases which will make processes (both community- and research-wise as well as actual editorial work) much more complex, requiring people with different focus groups in mind to participate (people interested in high performance computing are rarely the same people who would be worried about migrating their email from Outlook to Thunderbird). I think both ideas are very good and relevant, and also that they're so close that they need to be integrated into one. Full credit to Adam for taking the initiative for getting people interested in the community, and kudos to Chris for recognizing the importance of it. >> To deliver this we need a set of processes to identify, research, >> produce and publish success stories.. >> >> 2) Proposed processes >> >> a) Identifying stories >> >> To help customers inform us of their uses of Ubuntu, a simple email >> address ( e.g [EMAIL PROTECTED]) will be set up. I think that a simple mail address will not suffice. If we want people to contribute their own use cases, then we need to show them what format we would like them in. This would require for us to write a few example case studies or testimonials to get people inspired and put them out for people to see. It would be fun to have 3 different use cases on the Fridge, Ubuntu.com and SABDFL's blog (the latter should obviously be his own use case, however extreme that might be!). Ideally we should have the website where we'll be wanting to publish these stories or cases ready right from the beginning so that people can link to a specific place on which to focus the (blogging) buzz on. For a blogger, it is often frustrating to blog about a cool thing, and then to not have a link where people can read more for themselves. Also, we would want to stress that individual case doesn't have to be exceptional to be a good case story. Often, covering the most basic situations is what will be the most reassuring for prospective users. Given that we will be looking at case studies from many different levels of expertise and use of Ubuntu, we need to consider how we want to announce this case study generation. If we want to maintain our interest in getting case stories from people who are new to Ubuntu, we have to consider how we would get in touch with such people. It is my impression is that a lot of people in the community are helping others to use Ubuntu, and it is these others that we want to get in touch with - those not currently active in the community, but who have already switched with little trouble. If we can get the community to involve these the real end-users who have no or very little contact to the Ubuntu community - then we'll have accomplished a fair bit. These are the people that we want testimonials from. Because it is these people that other "switchers" in general will be able to relate to. We probably can't do a Switch campaign like Apple does it (รก la "There is no Step 3"), but we do have a very good word-of-mouth way of spreading Ubuntu. That is what we want to continue. That is: showing real people using Ubuntu. I think that when introducing this project, we also need to ask: "Have you helped others to use Ubuntu? Are you one of those new users? Then we'd like you to help us..." >> b) Researching stories >> >> Stories of particular interest will be followed up on to check >> out details and ensure that we have an accurate and complete >> picture of the story. >> >> c) Producing stories >> >> We will use set-templates to write-up customer stories in a >> consistent way. >> >> d) Publishing stories >> >> Stories and case studies would be published through various media >> including, word of mouth, Ubuntu.com, the Fridge and electronic >> brochures. Again, we have to consider which questions that we want people to answer in such a case story/study. To me, there are 2 central questions to ask: Why and How. Why did you switch to Ubuntu? How are you using Ubuntu? (or What are you using Ubuntu for?) I think we shouldn't underestimate the first of these questions as that will give people a chance to reflect on the social/ideological aspects of Ubuntu, which I find most people consider a big selling point (just look at the recent poster slogan suggestions). Users and developers have all sorts of interesting and intriguing reasons and stories to tell about why they chose to use F/OSS and Ubuntu specifically. Offer it up as a chance to wax lyrical on what they enjoy about F/OSS and how it has worked for them. As a source of inspiration compare the short stories football fans write to explain how they came to support their favourite club. For instance, on the Manchester City mailing-list, they have a segment called "Whe Blue" where people describe how they came to support that rather grim football club. For some people it was all there was, for others it was a string of incredible coincidence. This works well, because not only do people get to tell stories, they also get to share and compare them with others. This is central to a community. Eventually, we could well add the third question: How do you contribute to the Ubuntu Community? To show how people are involved/getting involved/ can get involved. This could well be done through blogs as Adam initially suggested. If we get some people to writing really good why/how stories, we might well encourage them to open a blog of their Ubuntu experiences and get them deeper involved with the Ubuntu community. If we can have a blog roll of Ubuntu users (rather than developers or long-time contributors) on the planet or the Fridge, that would also be a way to say "You don't have to be an expert to do Ubuntu." I would love to help out with this project, as it somewhat related to my own project [https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuFieldwork]. And I think that my anthropological background might be helpful with regards to the researching and producing of these stories. Best regards, Andreas -- https://launchpad.net/people/lloydinho -- ubuntu-marketing mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-marketing
