Chinese marketing

[Gerard Braad]

Hi Paul,

> Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2010 11:28:22 -0400 From: Paul Frields 
> <stickster at gmail.com> Subject: Re: Chinese marketing Message-ID: 
> <l2sef93afcf1004250828m73202e71v6c243f347c6422b0 at mail.gmail.com>
Sorry for breaking the thread; issue with the tools, digest-mode and 
Gmail's IMAP.

I recently got involved in the Chinese Fedora Community... and try to 
assist them anyway possible by being the bridge between language and 
culture.

With several ambassadors I set out a long term vision for the Chinese 
community: "Growing the Chinese community into a self-organizing and 
healthy community. The main goal is to enlarge the Chinese Fedora 
Community and seeking new talents to contribute to the mainstream 
development. We pursue a very good involvement with and from the Western 
Fedora Community and having a yearly FAD"... and show China can be a 
host for a FUDcon in the APAC area ;-).

In a document I set out several points to focus on: Mirroring 
possibilities, Packaging and Development, Translation work, MIPS port of 
Fedora, Organizing a Fedora event, Ambassadors and Mentoring, Creating a 
better platform for the community and Marketing.
> For a start, Gerard, maybe you can identify some of the primary gaps
> we have. What questions to Chinese Fedora users and potential
> contributors have? In what areas can we improve information we offer
> to Chinese speaking people?
>    

A solution to the gap and have the Chinese community more involved, was 
to have the Chinese mailinglist hosted by Fedora. This is now done... 
but still more can be done. As you pointed out in another email, having 
the planet hosted in the same way would be great!

The biggest issue is that the Fedora brand is not very well known. That 
is the reason why I want to focus on the marketing side of Fedora. 
Distributions like Ubuntu and Gentoo have a large group of followers and 
enthusiasts; IMO Fedora would be a perfect solution between these. But 
for this there needs to be means to convey the message; who we focus on, 
what we provide, the four foundations, etc. At the moment, this kind of 
material is non-existent.

I would seldom talk about them, but the other issue is of course the 
'cultural difference'. For example, most Chinese I spoke did not have 
the sense of Summer Coding... as they saw this as Western-only 
'competition'. After explaining them what it means and could provide 
them, it opens them up more and they see it as a competitive 
advantage... but until now, I have not seen any of them enter the FSC.

But we also have simple problems which can easily be addressed: the 
Fedora Ambassadors have no shirts. I am planning to have these made in 
China, according to the logo guidelines, so we can issue these. Goal: 
the Ambassadors should be able to promote the brand during for instance 
a local Software Freedom Day 2010 event! (and of course as a general 
means to show their involvement).
> Another question in which I'm keenly interested is, where do Chinese
> users get Fedora? If they're using mirrors in China, are there enough
> of them? Can we find more administrators willing to distribute Fedora
> on mirrors?
>    
This was the first thing I started to work when I approached Mel an 
Kaio. By that time four active mirrors were available for all of China. 
Mike McGrath told me that Chinese seldom approach them about mirroring 
options; this is also not something in the nature of the Chinese. My 
goal was to gain two new mirrors before the release of Fedora 13. After 
a long haul we finally gained an extra mirror in Beijing. For the moment 
I think we have a good foundation to cope with community and userbase 
growth (a good start to focus on the brand and getting people involved) ;-).

As you can see, a lot has been started... but it is far from done.

kind regards,


Gerard - 吉拉德

Fedora Ambassador
Project-lead Fedora-MIPS
Member of Fedora 中文用户组