Marketing goals, revisited: the 4 Foundations

[Paul W. Frields]

On Mon, Jan 04, 2010 at 01:27:12AM -0800, Mel Chua wrote:
[...snip a bunch of brilliant stuff with which I agree...]
> > I've written a bit down about each foundation - this is of course just
> > me brainstorming a bit, I would love to hear more ideas on solidifying
> > these if other team members think it is a good idea.  (And by
> > solidifying, I mean into slightly more concise statements :D ) Under
> > each one, I've listed some of the tasks that might fall into that
> > category. (The task lists aren't comprehensive - I've just typed
> > things in here, so don't get mad if your idea isn't here!)
> > 
> > 
> > Freedom:  Use FOSS tools as much as possible (or practical) in
> > production of Marketing materials, and do our best to support
> > solutions that may work in the future. (Side note: See mizmo's post to
> > the marketing list on making the fedora video - it wasn't entirely
> > practical, but bugs were filed, discussions are ongoing, this is GOOD!
> > And awesome video btw, I know you've heard it already but I'm just
> > sayin' it again :D.)  Give marketing contributors the freedom and
> > knowledge to work on projects as they choose.  Practice openness, and
> > give process more transparency.
> > - HOWTO's on how to make all Marketing deliverables
> > - translations and i18n workflow for marketing stuff
> > - Cross-training of team members for things like Zikula
> 
> Design does something similar, and there's been some conversation in
> the Docs team about making that explicit in the Docs mission
> statement as well (see
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Talk:Docs_Project_mission_statement)
> - I think making sure that there's a FOSS toolchain with which
> *anyone* can do open source marketing is a great idea and we should
> specifically call out the things in that toolchain at some point -
> it might make a good presentation at a marketing conference, for
> instance.

We always use 100% FOSS to the greatest possible extent, exclusively
as possible.  In areas where we have to deviate, we should be open
about that as well.  Marketeers realize there is a huge audience we
can't reach without making materials available in ways they can
digest.  (Think MP3 for podcasts, and using Twitter or Facebook as
examples of Web platforms where we can send out material.)  Wherever
possible we should use 100% FOSS *tools* even if they are a conduit to
a platform that's not completely free.

Hopefully it's a given that we should try and drive attention to and
interest in the free alternatives! :-)  This comment was maybe a
little off topic but it often comes up when talking about marketing
tools.  We should hit the topic head-on when documenting marketing
tools though.

> > Friends: Continue to develop and extend not only the Fedora marketing
> > community, but also the Fedora community in general.
> > - Grow the number of marketing contributors
>
> - teach Marketing classes in Classroom to grow the depth of the
> Fedora community's knowledge about marketing, what it is, how to do
> it, etc.
>
> > - Convert 100 users of non-Fedora distros to Fedora as their primary desktop OS
>
> Personally, I find the next goal far more interesting...
>
> > - Encourage 100 college students to sign up as Fedora contributors and
> > each contribute at least one thing.
>
> I'd love to get a marketing class working on this - actually, I
> would love to see a case study (see
> http://www.hbs.edu/mba/academics/casemethod.html) on Fedora.

What would be really interesting is feeding back the process for
meeting this goal into a discovery of what worked to captivate and
motivate college students to follow through with a contribution.
Maybe that's what you mean by the case method?  It's hard to tell from
the page in question, it's a bit vague but I'm guessing you have some
experience with or knowledge about the method yourself.

> > - FUDCon
> > - Talk up Fedora at at least 20 different LUG meetings worldwide
>
> This one's Ambassadors, imo - but the two groups should continue to
> find ways to work more closely together.

Agree, Marketing's goals include production of material that helps
Ambassadors present Fedora effectively.

> > - Marketing FAD
> > - RH Summit
>
> Yep, we should find out what's going on with this - not having been
> to one of these before myself, I'm not sure what the opportunities
> here look like, or how we fit in, but I think it's definitely worth
> exploring. Mo and Paul and several others on this list have been at
> the Fedora booth at RH Summits before (I think Mo and Paul went to
> the one this past summer) but that's about all I know.

This is a great topic now, while planning is underway for that event
(refer to http://redhat.com/summit for details on the 2010 Summit).
There will be a Fedora presence at the event, and it will depend
somewhat on who can be available in Boston to staff the booth.  That
presence will not be a FUDCon, although we may endeavor to do more
than simply have a booth.

At the last Summit in Chicago, we organized setup, booth duty,
etc. based on the available time of Fedora contributors.  It was
sometimes ad-hoc because many of the available people were actually
attending the show on their own (or company's) time, but overall the
booth work was very well spread out, everyone pitched in admirably,
and we had a *LOT* of visitors.

With a Boston-located Summit, we will have the potential benefit of a
large number of Fedora contributors from the area who can help out at
a booth, organize a series of campground talks (which are essentially
ad-hoc, volunteer speaker sessions), and so on.

I will start asking the organizers now about:

* Booth passes for volunteers who are interested in helping out --
  these might be limited to show floor only but it's still a valuable
  opportunity

* A reserved room of some sort for Fedora and related next-generation
  technology talks

The more we get into show representation, the more we probably want to
migrate this specific topic over to the Ambassadors list to include
all the right folks.

Some Marketing specific deliverables might also include production of
special show-timed flyers that give people general information about
Fedora, and/or production of a Fedora 13 Live USB key for the event.

> > - Podcasts
> 
> > Features: Enhance Fedora's marketing presence with new features, and
> > ensure that Fedora distro features are highlighted in a timely way.
>
> Bingo. Most of Marketing's work in the past has centered around this
> area, but there's still a lot we haven't explored (most of the
> things on the list below are brand-new or haven't started yet).
>
> > - Spin Chooser
> > - Fedora Insight
> > - Develop a sustainable cycle / schedule of marketing materials.
> > Developer Interviews, In-depth features, etc.
> > - Improve cross-team communication between marketing, docs, and QA for
> > improvements in material
>
> - marketing research - and eventually, when we get good at it, how
> it can feed more directly into the feature process as another stream
> of input for developers figuring out which itches they'd like to
> work on scratching.

This is a brilliant idea too.  I wonder whether, for example, Richard
Hughes' development of the new color management system for GNOME was
in part a result of discussions with people like Mo Duffy -- who as a
designer needs good color management on the desktop.

> > First: Do New Things, and continually come up with New Ideas; review
> > their effectiveness when they are complete, and don't be afraid to
> > say, "That didn't work."
> > - Marketing Kits
> > - Fedora Print Magazine
> > - Time-Based Schedule
> > - Fedora Membership / Fellowship
> > - Keeping track of new ideas
>
> - a brief History of Marketing (major Marketing milestones for each
> release - when did we start doing X, when did we try Y and find out
> that it didn't work, etc?) - this might make an entertaining story
> session during the FAD.

Also serves as good briefing for new marketeers so we don't have to
retread old ground unnecessarily.  It's always good to revisit topics
when there's something new to say about them -- it keeps us from
stagnating, and we get the opportunity to feed new facts into the set
of questions we ask like "Why do we do <X> and not <Y>?".  At the same
time, when there aren't any new facts, a new contributor might simply
want a direct answer to that question, for which a history & FAQ is
the clearest and most direct solution.

> > Like I said - this is a brainstorm, of sorts, so I'd love to hear
> > feedback.
> 
> +infinity is my main comment here, honestly - this is great stuff.

Disco!

-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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