Hello Marketing Team Members and Interested Parties, I'd like to report on the session we had here at UDS regarding Ubuntu Marketing so that we can get a wider audience and allow everyone a fair chance to share their ideas, point of view, or prospective solution on the undeniable reality that the way the current marketing team is setup simply isn't working. I know a number of us have been putting effort lately into re-jump starting the team or furthering specific marketing initiatives but because there has been a lack of an individual who has stepped forward to clearly champion Ubuntu marketing, not much progress has really been made in terms of making the team as a whole useful again. There is certainly no shortage of great, creative ideas... we just need to figure out how to get things moving - getting the ideas off the idea board and into production.
This inconjuction with the observation that most loco teams seem to be doing an excellent job doing local (also known as "street") marketing, the idea was put forward to disband the marketing team as we know it and move to a decentralized model where loco teams collectively makes up the "Marketing Team". Before you object on principle, ask yourself "What is the purpose of the marketing team?", "What should it do?" and I think that you'll see that the loco teams are the ones that are clearly fullfilling that role already. Another idea put forth was seeing Canonical hire someone to lead the marketing team while maintaining a model similar to the one existing. Marketing is a huge job and it is completely understandable why there is no one to step forward and why previous teams leaders have either burnt out or became busy with other things (Such as myself with Xubuntu and being a MOTU). If Canonical were to hire someone, they would have to be hired to fill the role of the community marketing team leader and not employed to promote Canonical or its services. For the individual to be useful and effective, they must simply be any regular, old community contributor who just happens to be able to fill that role with the support they are recieving from Canonical. Jono said that he was unsure if this would be able to materialize due to Canonical growing so fast in so many directions but we did learn from the Mozilla folks at the session that having someone(s) hired to work on the marketing seemed to be instrumental in generating the required momentum. Another interesting tidbit was that Jono said that if a marketing iniativie requires funds or resources (that are unreasonable for the loco team or individuals on the project to be able to obtain easily or via a bit of elbow polish) that they could contact him and he'll be able to assist them (ie. he'll get his wallet out... erm, as in he'll act as a liasion to get sponsorship from Canonical). A third option was to rebuild the marketing team using a similiar model to the current one but sourcing a "loco team marketing contact" from each loco team to build the new marketing team. Possible leadership for this new team discussed was the loco council. So, what is your opinion? Thoughts? Concerns? Ideas? Personally, although I was put off by the idea of disbanding the marketing team as we know it currently, once I had sometime to think about it I've come to think that maybe that would be a good idea. We certainly have to do something and I'm happy, as one of the last active marketing team admins, to faciliate what ever we decide to be the best course of option. Big thanks to Jono, Nick Ali, members of the Firefox/Mozilla teams, and other community contributors who took part in the UDS session. To conclude, I'd like to note a point that was brought up durring the session. People seemed to think that Canonical was an authority when it came to marketing Ubuntu and that everything has to be approved by them. Jono clarified this: "Canonical is NOT an authority on marketing Ubuntu besides protecting their trademarks". So, please don't let that thought get in your way - we as the community have the power to make community marketing of Ubuntu successful and effective; it isn't Canonical's responsibility. :) Cheers, -- Cody A.W. Somerville Software Engineer Red Cow Marketing & Technologies, Inc. Office: 506-458-1290 Toll Free: 1-877-733-2699 Fax: 506-453-9112 Cell: 506-449-5899 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.redcow.ca
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