Hey, all -- I'm not sure I'm following this proposal correctly, so I may need a little help. So maybe a little clarification might help, please. <div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 5:22 AM, Gregory Zysk <<a href="mailto:gz.int.project@gmail.com">gz.int.project@gmail.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">Dear Marketing, One of the first things I see in order to help in marketing is the establishment of measurement systems. Measurement systems allow us internally to gauge how we are doing, and what needs to be improved. This is true also for the those viewing the community from an external standpoint. These measurements will provide us with more legitimacy and provide a platform where we are transparent about our results and that our results are measurable (and not some abstract way that no one can understand). I can see <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing_research" target="_blank">https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing_research</a> that we have begun to start an formulate research that will be used to produce these statistics, but fail to see any methodologies that are used to base these questionnaires off of. </blockquote><div> OK, that's fine. I'm with you so far, until we get to here: </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> One thing I would like to start with to help all of you form a marketing mindset is to ask the question of "What happened in June of 2009 within the Fedora Project? As you can see: <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/fama/wiki/AmbassadorMetrics" target="_blank">https://fedorahosted.org/fama/wiki/AmbassadorMetrics</a> views that we have had a steady increase since measurement began in January of 2006. That is until June of 2009. Once we can answer this question, we can begin to answer these sub-questions: 1) Who were these ambassadors? 2) What specific contributor groups were they apart of? 3) Where did they go after they left the ambassador group? </blockquote><div> Joerg can probably help out here -- please do, Joerg -- but wasn't June 2009 when we implemented the mentor program for Ambassadors? Before this program, basically, the only requirement you needed to be a Fedora Ambassador was that you had an e-mail address, a regular pulse and steady breathing (although the breathing part didn't have to be steady, as long as you were breathing). Now there's a more detailed process to follow, which a.) scares off those who are not committed to Fedora and only want "free stuff," and b.) allows us a to cultivate a better quality of Ambassador. As Joerg may have mentioned also, I believe around this time the Ambassadors list was purged of non-participants. Messages were sent out and those who did not respond (or responded that they were no longer interested) were taken off. That could explain largely why numbers "dropped," providing a false negative when you look at the numbers without applying the changes. I could be wrong about the timing of the mentor project's initiation, but I would bet that's why numbers dropped. </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> Please feels free to give me your comments and suggestions regarding this issue, so we can start to problem solve some issues to help us provide better and more improved results, as we do technically with every release.</blockquote> <div> Unfortunately, I don't have as much time to participate in the marketing group as I would like, but I'd be more interested in analyzing external developments, like why did record numbers of people download Fedora 11 and what are their experiences (good/bad/indifferent) and build a marketing scenario around that, rather than use the time and effort to look internally at how many people participate in Fedora and why. Maybe I misunderstand your proposal, Gregory, but you asked for comments, so here are mine. Larry Cafiero Regional Ambassador, U.S. West Coast states Fedora Project </div></div>