idea! - Fedora Marketing Book Club
by Robyn Bergeron
Greg's blog post today
(http://gregdekspeaks.wordpress.com/2010/01/27/fedoras-goals/) has
rekindled (no amazon pun intended, i swear!) a thought I had a while
back on starting a marketing book club. Mchua and I had discussed it
a bit on irc sometime late last year, but I think we were focused on
something else at the time, and the idea was lost.
Until now! I would like to propose that we have a "book club" for
marketing-reading-material, but of course, not limited to marketing
team members.
The basics of what I'm thinking are:
* We start with a book in March. One book per month - at the end of
each month, we have an IRC discussion on what we've learned, and how
we can apply it to Fedora and what we're working on. Hopefully,
everyone will want to do things like blog about what they've read and
learned, or write about it to the fedora-mktg mailing list, or add a
review to the book club wiki.
* Everyone is welcome to join. Nobody is -required- to join.
* Books are on our own individual dime (books are good for you! better
than coffee!) - we should do our best to pick things that are likely
available at the library (ie: not just freshly released last week).
If budget for a book is a problem and it can't be found, we should try
to accommodate people so they can participate.
The goal here (yes, I bang that goal drum a lot!) is to increase our
collective knowledge about All Things Marketing, provide a forum for
discussing what we've learned, and provide us with some brainstorming
and inspiration on things we can do to improve Marketing.
Thoughts? Feedback? :) I've made a wiki page to get the ball rolling
- hopefully we can work out the minor details (things like, "I have no
clue how to run a book club discussion, do you?") between now and
March. This is meant to be fun / enriching - not MORE WORK! - so I
hope people are interested, and if anyone thinks that one book a month
is too much, please say so.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Book_Club
Cheers!
-robyn
13 years, 6 months
Swot
by Stefano Alberini
Dear Nelson,
ok, no problem, when you are ready and when you want, please advise me.
Swot it's very interesting for me.
Then we can try to do a marketing Fedora plan (an Open Source plan), we can
study something...
Ciao
--
Alberini Stefano
www.maxbelshop.com
www.maxbel.it
www.marketingpmi.135.it
13 years, 9 months
Fedora Insight sprint summary: 2010-02-28
by Pascal Calarco
Simon Birtwhistle (itbegins), Hiemanshu Sharma (hiemanshu), Pascal
Calarco (pcalarco), Karsten Wade (quaid), David Nalley (ke4qqq), and Jon
Stanley (jds2001) got together at various points on #fedora-meeting-1
throughout the day yesterday to work on Fedora Insight.
Minutes:
http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting-1/2010-02-27/fedora-meeti...
Minutes (text):
http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting-1/2010-02-27/fedora-meeti...
Log:
http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting-1/2010-02-27/fedora-meeti...
Here is a very brief summary that leaves out much detail. The team
accomplished an amazing amount of work with kudos particularly going to
Simon and Hiemanshu for doing the bulk of the work.
The team structured work around a set of TRAC tickets:
https://fedorahosted.org/fedora-infrastructure/ticket/2006
https://fedorahosted.org/fedora-infrastructure/ticket/2007
1. Upgrading Publictest6
-------------------------
The main work concentrated on upgrading the Zikula instance on
publictest6, from 1.1.2 to 1.2.2. Simon upgraded this by hand, while
Hiemanshu packaged the new Zikula 1.2.2. A new version (0.40) of the
Zikula module, pagemaster, was also installed on pt6. Once an RPM
package was ready to review, a note was sent off to David Nalley, who
joined in the channel a bit later.
2. Repository for Zikula 1.2.2
------------------------------
A discussion ensued about packaging guidelines and whether an exception
could be made for Zikula 1.2.2 around one of the deprecated
Zikula-specific bundled libraries included in the package,
zikula-php-gettext that had some packaging and licensing issues. Jon
Stanley joined shortly thereafter as well. A new TRAC ticket came out
of this discussion (thank you, Karsten):
https://fedorahosted.org/fedora-infrastructure/ticket/2008
3. Pagemaster templating
------------------------
Hiemanshu and Simon worked together to next focus on customizing the UI
templates for pagemaster, a Zikula module that the key for the content
model and workflow that we need for Fedora Insight.
The first content we are focusing on is that of Fedora Weekly News
(FWN), and so we worked on customizing the templates for that workflow,
with a more generic set of templates and workflow defined for general
news items. In Pagemaster terms, these are different publication types
and templates, with different workflow defined for each.
4. Iterative testing with FWN Content
-------------------------------------
Pascal Calarco started loaded past FWN individual beats, and the team
worked on having the template aggregate these into a given FWN Issue on
Fedora Insight. The two different workflows were used for this: FWN
pubtype for individual FWN beats, and then creating a posting for the
front page of Fedora Insight pointing to the aggregated issue:
http://publictest6.fedoraproject.org/zikula/index.php?module=pagemaster&t...
(requires FAS test authentication)
http://publictest6.fedoraproject.org/zikula/
We substantially completed the FWN workflow, although a couple more TRAC
tickets will be opened up and worked on to further finesse the workflow,
create RSS functionality, and other items.
In the short term, none of the workflow from the FWN beat writers
perspective needs to change; the change is that the FWN editor reposts
content to Fedora Insight once it is posted. The Fedora Insight
proposed workflow for FWN (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/FIWorkFlow)
will be updated to reflect the outcomes.
What remains:
* upgrading Zikula and pagemaster on staging
* moving over database from pt6 to staging to reflect template customization
* creating RSS functionality for FWN at the beat and issue level
* defining and documenting authorization levels between conten
contributors, editors, administrators
* tweaking the FWN pubtype Admin menu to improve editing efficiency
* discussing, decisioning and documenting standards for FWN content from
wiki source
* testing generic news pubtype with other content
A huge thanks to Simon Birtwhistle (Zikula.org) and Hiemanshu Sharma
(Fedora Marketing), and Karsten Wade (Logistics/Community
Infrastructure) for the amazing amount of work we accomplished
yesterday! Lots of work to do yet, but we made substantial progress on
the core infrastructure for Fedora Insight.
- pascal
-----
Pascal Calarco
Editor, Fedora Weekly News
Fedora Ambassador, Indiana, USA
13 years, 9 months
Idea and Possible Event in Aveiro, Portugal
by Nelson Marques
Hi,
Not sure if people know, but in February 2001 I've organized an event
in Aveiro to promote Linux (I was back then the responsible for PLUG
online Documentation, PLUG as in Portuguese Linux Users Group). This
event was supported by SuSE GmbH (donated 2 crates of merchandise, cd's,
retail boxes, t-shirts, pins), Sun MicroSystems (500 CD's of Star Office
5.1), Red Hat (some stickers) and some other local companies (hardware
manufacturers, service enablers etc).
This event had over 400 visitors in the 2 days we were "opened" for
public. We used Aveiro's Congress Center for this.
Congress Center:
http://www.cm-aveiro.pt/www//Templates/GenericDetails.aspx?id_object=2748...
http://www.av.it.pt/aveirocidade/pt/congressos/index.htm
http://i.olhares.com/data/big/178/1780535.jpg
After this background, I was thinking in organizing another event, this
time to promote Fedora. From the previous experience, I know that if we
don't advertise, they can spare us some space in the Congress Center for
free, if we advertise, we need to pay. Back then we payed around 450$US
for the two days.
My idea was to do something different. First, no Congress Center,
instead ask for space on my University and host the event At IPAM Aveiro
(Portuguese Institute for Marketing Management).
http://www.e-u.pt/ResourcesUser/InstituicoesImagens/IPAM.gif
http://www.ipam.pt
IPAM is starting it's internationalization project, being present in
Portugal (Aveiro, Porto and Lisbon), Spain (Madrid, cooperation with
Universidad Rey Juan Carlos), in Brazil and Netherlands.
Aveiro school was appointed to be the center of it's international
community.
Through IPAM we can most likely get an anfi-theater for any
presentation/conference, rooms to be used and free space, with bar,
parking, etc.
I would also like to focus that the City of Aveiro has the former
Center for Telecommunication Studies (former CET), now known as Portugal
Telecom Inovação S.A., the Research and Development unit for Portugal
Telecom, where I worked in the past packaging and maintaining our Red
Hat 6 plataform on IBM RS4500 (replacing the Sun equipment and
Slowlaris).
Either way Aveiro also has one of the biggest Universities in Europe,
and in 2050 the biggest. Aveiro is the technological telecommunications
platform in Portugal (Portugal Telecom has operations worldwide in the 5
continents), and was responsible for great accolades, like the first
pre-paid GSM Card in the World, the second country in Europe to
establish a phone network without operator (automatic switching),
amongst other things.
There could be no better background for this.
My thing:
# Organize an event to promote GNU/Linux and Fedora.
# Gather support for space and resources in IPAM (to go zero costs).
# Promote a couple of background events related to Linux
- Possibility of someone from Fedora to present it?
- I can ask one of GNOME Brasero's maintainers also to speech (Luis
Medinas is from Aveiro).
- Corporate view of open-source by Portugal Telecom Inovação?
- Maybe someone from Red Hat ?
GOALS:
# Give to know and Promote Fedora.
# Promote Fedora with IPAM (see this as a first approach to try and
get IPAM involved with the Fedora community).
# Gather the local native population for this promotion event.
# Attract and attack the small business to favor open-source (might be
of interest to Red Hat).
Anyone, pull out comments, goals, objectives, pros, cons, anything
relevant. Keep in mind that the main event (despite of any other
involvements such as guest speakers and such) is the promotion of Fedora
as a reliable free alternative either for normal people, students or
eventually to new IT professionals. I can gather some manpower on local
LUGS and gather corporate support if required (hardware manufacturers,
open source enablers, etc).
I have also some bonds with ANSOL (http://www.ansol.org), the FSF
Portuguese branch, and also can get their cooperation almost for sure.
Also regarding to Aveiro, there is currently one company that is
supplying the students laptops through the governament. I know this
company for over 15 years and have developed work for them in the past
(installing and configuring Linux Servers (Red Hat) and Workstations
(SuSE). They currently use the Portuguese Caixa Mágica distro for their
pre-installed computers. We can try an approach to them as well so that
we use Fedora. We have something that Caixa Mágica can't offer, decent
support to new users. I've been lurking on the #Fedora channel, and such
resources are valuable and can make a difference in our favor here
(anyone has status of Portuguese PT_PT implementation on Fedora?).
I know this might be of interest to Fedora as a Community, and if it
is successful we might open new doors to our sponsor, Red Hat.
If we move on such thing, I would consider the following:
- March (too close and important city events)
- April/May (full of students events)
- June (exams)
- July (no great events on schedule)
I would point for May or July if such is to be done. I am making
myself available to develop contacts, rally support, find a space (I'll
try to go to zero costs) and do necessary local arrangements.
Is this of interest to Fedora? The event itself I was thinking on a
old fashion Linux Install Fest.
Waiting for feedback from the list.
Nelson.
13 years, 9 months
FOSS Reality Bites!
by bhutto aamir
I was surfing around searching for FOSS communities in Pakistan and then i found this article, thought whynot share it around with all of you.
FOSS CIO predictions from 2003 now becoming a reality by 2010?
Christopher Koch predicted possible scenarios in the CIO Magazine
Dec. 15, 2003 Issue titled "The Future of Software" that by the year 2010,
the world will make a major shift towards Free and Open Source Software
(FOSS) due to the fact that government and enterprise Chief Information
Officers (CIOs) probably would find themselves hostage to a few monopolistic
vendors that keep software expensive and complex. Many of Koch's predictions
are becoming a reality today and this analysis takes into account such
various emerging FOSS trends within both the Public and Private sectors
worldwide.
Koch presented the case that Free and Open Source Software will not
be the answer to integration problems and instead will drive down prices in
selected areas of the software infrastructure with the possibility of OSS
turning expensive databases such as Oracle and IBM's DB2 into commodities by
2010. Today the scenario is relatively different since integration is no
more a dream in the FOSS based products and services ecosystem as platform
independence, virtualization and distributed services are at the forefront
of information technology strategies. It has also been seen major enterprise
vendors are introducing new FOSS products and services in today's global
marketplace. A significant move has been made recently by Oracle Corporation
releasing its Unbreakable Enterprise Linux Support programme thus
commoditization of FOSS technologies and platforms by enterprise vendors are
hitting mainstream business activity.
It was also predicted that smaller vendors will move toward the FOSS
model keeping in view opportunities for low-cost market entry further
lowering marketing costs building a user base through word of mouth and then
sell services and add-ons thus simply giving it away. This too has been the
trend for the past few years and many Silicon Valley, European and South
Asian technology startups have adopted this FOSS model opportunity. FOSS
provides the opportunity to immediately enter target markets providing
consultancy, training and support services while the core product
development is carried on in parallel. This helps develop an adequate
customer base before actually releasing the core product into the market.
At the enterprise level, FOSS will enter into corporate
infrastructure and emerge as a major rival to existing dominant software
models if the integration issues are covered effectively and this too has
proven true with more advancement on the Linux front and major players Red
Hat, Novell, Canonical and even Google moving in towards providing
customization and integration with round the clock technical support and
training for Linux, this is also proving to be very valid. Moreover, for
developing economies or economies in transition, FOSS has appeared as an
alternative tool to combat software piracy encouraging protection of
intellectual property.
In terms of business and investment return issues, Koch predicted
that CIO's at Enterprise level will find them stuck in an outdated economic
model for purchasing, installing and maintaining software and fewer dominant
vendors will do business at much higher prices proving fewer choices with
very high migration costs and increasing vendor lock-in. In light of this
concern, vendors will sell applications as specific, configurable components
that upgrade automatically and integrate with any type of system at no
additional costs incorporating minimal effort thus buyers would pay only
when employees use these applications. However Koch also stated that this
model would not prove to be a major revenue generating model for major
vendors and won't buy in interest or stability on the Stock Exchange from
investors but it seems the other way around as the buy-as-you-use model is
now in practice widely and is also termed as the On Demand Services Business
Model widely employed by IBM and major vendors.
It was also predicted that CIOs focusing on establishing low-cost
infrastructure that would be easily maintainable and less reliant on a
handful of vendors to function will have the upper hand in price
negotiations with vendors and the ability to adopt innovative new solutions
more quickly and easily than those CIOs locked in to a vendor's software
release schedule. This too has been made possible by companies investing in
the development of their in-house technical support teams employing the FOSS
model since updates are being made available for free and require reduced
vendor support for FOSS Linux distributions including the facility to
customize FOSS while benefiting from optimal IT infrastructure performance.
In the second scenario Koch predicted the possible Public sector
market responses towards vendor lock-in and open standards compliance that
by 2010, European and Asian governments will lead the way towards the
adoption of FOSS while American CIOs will be following their footsteps with
the risks identified that reliance upon a handful of vendors for their IT
would prove dangerous. Governments in Europe and Asia would shift their
purchasing and development dollars to FOSS and this has been evident within
the last three years with more joining in on the FOSS alternative. Once
again the most important risk mitigation will be seen towards reducing
vendor lock-in; defeating vendor dominance models, security of information,
compliance to open standards with calls for compliance to vendors should
they be interested to continue doing business with governments. Such a trend
would force vendors to comply towards creating FOSS within Open Standard
specifications.
Open Standards compliance has been evolving at a very fast rate
including the prominent case of the Open Document Format and Massachusetts
scenario. A dominant company like Microsoft has now included Open Document
Format support within their office and business productivity tools due to
compliance and further similar activity is predicated from other vendors who
had ignored such issues in the past. The trend is to continue within the
Public sector sharing the surge with the Private sector where governments
continue to mandate FOSS for communication with vendors forced to comply
with the new FOSS market trends. It may also be possible that governments
and enterprise CIOs have had enough of endless complex licensing agreements
and upgrades on enterprise software and instead opt for FOSS alternate
licensing models turning everything they've paid for out to the market for
free. Such a trend has been seen recently on SourceForge.net and
e-government websites worldwide where public and private sector
organizations are continuously making their FOSS technologies and platforms
available for free encouraging inspection of source code and extensive
testing before considerable use by stakeholders.
Koch's prediction regarding Europe's largest manufacturing companies
deciding to freeze all spending on enterprise software until vendors agree
on a standard set of truly open, free integration technologies to hook their
packages together also seems to be becoming a reality with the example of
Microsoft's ban in the EU marketplace until it paid huge sums of fines and
made compliance to such standards as set forth by the EU. Adding to it, the
EU has been investing heavily into FOSS research and adoption by both Pubic
and Private sectors within all member countries and each of them making back
considerable contribution to the development of FOSS.
Another successful prediction presented a strong case for enterprise
level availability of FOSS technologies and platforms by 2010 emerging from
all corners of the globe with major vendors backing and supporting such
solutions. Key factors would be customer unhappiness combined with FOSS
based commodity threats forcing major vendors to completely revamp their
licensing, pricing, sales, installation and technical support models. Many
vendors have already initiated the process of releasing two models of
software, one freely developed and distributed by FOSS communities and the
other as enhanced derivations from the latter. As an exception in some
cases, some vendors are also making available older versions of their
software free-of-cost while selling paid support.
The predicted services model is also present today where smaller
vendors are also making money by selling paid supplementary consultancy,
training, deployment, migration and technical support services around FOSS
technology and platforms developed by larger enterprise vendors thus an Open
and Inclusive open standards based ecosystem is in evolution. This is also
helping CIOs changing their role into architecture experts taking hands-on
roles creating cheap, standards-based IT infrastructures building highly
customized IT-enabled business processes based on FOSS standards as
predicted by Koch. The "Don't pay for the software but pay only for
services" business model is in full play today.
Nick Gall, SVP and principal analyst for Meta Group has also
predicted that "Open source and commoditization is a bottom-up process. It
will move slowly up over the next 20 years to the top of the stack. It will
be a slow, painful process for vendors." This may also be true since no one
model for FOSS business fits all and every entity has to explore which
services model suits its product. Some FOSS business models have not made
money with respect to pay for service and instead have relied on Venture
Capital supporting their sustainability. It has also been witnessed that
many online businesses provide all sorts of services free to their members
but make money out of targeted opt marketing strategies.
Koch also predicted an emerging market for FOSS based ERP and CRM
solutions opposed to the expensive ERP solutions from major vendors but the
fact remains there are only a few FOSS based ERP solutions in the market.
This prediction is still valid and very beneficial in terms of ERP solutions
being developed under FOSS and open standards complying with international
GAAP, financial, electronic data interchange and transaction procedures. The
market may prove to be really big and fruitful. Various companies that have
attempted to use FOSS based ERP and CRM solutions have invested in custom
development projects to add functionality to these packages freely
incorporating the new code into future releases as a contribution back to
the FOSS development communities.
As already mentioned, Koch also referred to the individual software
developer or developer groups that they would be paid for coding as well as
servicing and supporting their work thus if their clients decide to make
such code available for incorporation into a FOSS package for
redistribution, they will be able to sell services to other companies that
adopt that distribution. FOSS will develop into an immediate preference for
startups, small and medium enterprises as well as Venture Capitalists and
Brokers.
So what does it take to get out there and cash from the FOSS
ecosystem? According to Jeremy Allison, developer of Samba software, "All
you need is one good set of code out there" to act as a foundation for
building the complex software systems. FOSS avoids the biggest barrier to
entering the software industry: marketing and sales. FOSS needs no sales and
marketing budget, only a good development leader, quality software and word
of mouth for adoption. The FOSS enterprise software is not free, but it is
cheaper, and services vendors that install and run it for customers are
happy to contribute paid developers to the cause.
He further adds that innovation will flower because it will be much
easier to get new projects going and to sell add-ons for existing open
source. To separate the promising software from the bad, good CIOs will be
more in demand—and more valued—than ever!
Disclaimer:
The above information has been analyzed on a non-commercial basis
for information purposes only from an article written by the author
Christopher Koch published in CIO Magazine online dated Dec. 15, 2003 titled
"The Future of Software, A Land Where Giants Rule" at the website address
http://www.cio.com/archive/121503/softfuture.html thus proper copyright
attributions as informed by CIO Magazine should be made where necessary. The
author takes no responsibility whatsoever of the views and material
presented within the references provided and readers are encouraged to
research the facts on their own where deemed necessary.
Online references for further reading:
Koch, C. "The Future of Software, A Land Where Giants Rule", CIO Magazine.
(Dec. 15, 2003) http://www.cio.com/archive/121503/softfuture.html
Ohloh: Explore Open Source. Mapping the open source world by collecting
objective information on open source projects. http://ohloh.net/
Source Forge Free and Open Source Software Foundry
http://www.sourceforge.net
FOSS in South Asia http://www.bytesforall.net/aggregator/sources/11
European Working Group on Libre Software http://eu.conecta.it/
E.U.-Funded Project to Test Open-Source Viability
http://www.cio.com/blog_view.html?CID=25904
IDABC Website, dedicated to Free/Libre/Open Source Software to encourage the
spread and use of Best Practices in Europe
http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/chapter/452
Oracle Unbreakable Enterprise Linux
http://www.oracle.com/technologies/linux/index.html
Canonical and Ubuntu Linux http://www.canonical.com
RedHat Enterprise Linux http://www.redhat.com
Suse Enterprise Linux SLE http://www.novell.com
The Economic Majority against Software Patents
http://www.economic-majority.com/testimony/silicide/index.en.php
Starting with Linux ZDNet
http://whitepapers.zdnet.com/whitepaper.aspx?docid=166160&promo=590&tag=nl.e
590
Microsoft Vista gets criticism before its launching in Europe
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.18/vista
EU threatens Microsoft with Vista ban - vnunet.com
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2152965/eu-threatens-microsoft-vista
Free Software Foundation http://www.fsf.org
Could the EU ban the Windows desktop from Europe?
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=12684
Adobe and Symantec seek EU ban on Vista bundling - ZDNet UK News
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/windows/0,39020396,39283555,00.htm
Open Source Initiative http://www.opensource.org
UNDP-APDIP-IOSN International Open Source Network http://www.iosn.net
International Free and Open Source Software Foundation iFOSSF
http://www.ifossf.org
BytesForAll Network South Asia http://www.byetsforall.net
FOSSFP: Free and Open Source Software Foundation of Pakistan
http://www.fossfp.org
13 years, 9 months
Fwd: Re: Google Summer of Code press blog
by Mel Chua
FYI - see below. Short version is that the Marketing team will soon get
to practice its collaborative press release writing skillz with Kara for
the Summer of Code announcement.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Google Summer of Code press blog
Date: Fri, 26 Feb 2010 13:54:38 -0500
From: Kara Schiltz <kschiltz(a)redhat.com>
Reply-To: kschiltz(a)redhat.com
Organization: Red Hat
To: Mel Chua <mel(a)redhat.com>
CC: Karsten Wade <kwade(a)redhat.com>, "Paul W. Frields" <pfrields(a)redhat.com>
This all sounds good to me. I can start working up some questions.
Thanks,
Kara
Mel Chua wrote:
> This all sounds totally awesome to me - would it be ok to forward this
> thread to
> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/summer-coding to keep
> other GSoC organizers/mentors in the loop of what's going on with PR
> for this, and to
> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing so folks
> interested in press release writing can lend a hand?
>
> Re: collaborative writing - breaking it into a list of questions
> sounds great, and then maybe we can have a gobby (collaborative text
> editor) sprint to weave everything together? This does sound like a
> great opportunity for us to try out more collaborative-PR stuff.
>
> --Mel
>
> On 02/25/2010 05:31 PM, Kara Schiltz wrote:
>> Thanks, Karsten. This is great. I'll put a placeholder on our PR
>> pipeline for a GSoC press blog. I'm thinking we should be ready to go
>> with a shell for the blog and then we can just plug in Fedora as a
>> mentoring organization once Google makes the announcement on March 14.
>> That would allow us to maximize our time during the student application
>> window 3/14-3/29.
>> I'm up for suggestions on how to make this a collaborative project.
>> Maybe we pose a list of questions (who, what, when, where, why, etc) and
>> have folks break it up and each take a question to respond to? We can
>> then take those responses and weave them together into a press blog. I'm
>> open to any suggestions!
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Kara
>>
>> Karsten Wade wrote:
>>> On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 01:53:05PM -0500, Kara Schiltz wrote:
>>>> Hi Karsten,
>>>>
>>>> Wanted to follow up on the GSoC Activity Day at SCALE last week. What
>>>> are your thoughts on doing a press blog sometime in March that's
>>>> focused on Google Summer of Code and what our plans are for 2010? We
>>>> could also tie in more about success and participation in prior
>>>> years. Let me know if enough details were fleshed out at SCALE to
>>>> create a compelling press blog on GSoC.
>>>
>>> Kara,
>>>
>>> This sounds like a good idea. We need to wait until at least 14
>>> March, after Google announces mentoring organizations. We presume
>>> we're natural to be on it, once we've applied, but there is never a
>>> guarantee.
>>>
>>> I'm including Mel on this because she is working on the GSoC project
>>> for the next week or so, and can help make sure we get this on the
>>> GSoC part of the Fedora Calendar. We could work it up as a next
>>> iteration on collaborative press release writing. :)
>>>
>>> Once we are sure we're in as a mentoring organization, there is a
>>> window until 29 March when student applications open. This is a prime
>>> time for generating publicity to target audiences:
>>>
>>> * Educators who can inform their students;
>>> * Students to work up quality proposals;
>>> * Existing community members to consider being a student in the
>>> program;
>>> * Existing community sub-projects who work with mentors;
>>> * Industry and other mentoring organizatiokns to notice what and how
>>> we're doing things while they are still happening.
>>>
>>> Having the 5-year report I did end of last year[1] is also good
>>> material to point at.
>>>
>>> By focusing on the essential audiences, I can see this being useful to
>>> the Fedora and JBoss efforts, all while demonstrating trusted open
>>> source leadership in action.
>>>
>>> - Karsten
>>>
>>> [1] My post and the report, which was derived from an internal report:
>>>
>>> http://iquaid.org/2009/11/04/summer-coding-benefits-to-fedora-project-and...
>>>
>>>
>>> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/GSoC_report_2009
>>>
>>
>
13 years, 9 months
Mad Libs style forms
by Mel Chua
From #fedora-mktg: Robyn found a cool link!
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1007 - "Mad Libs" Style Form Increases
Conversion 25-40%
Basically, if sign-up dialogs looked less like this:
name: _________
email: _________
username: _________
password: _________
And more like this:
Hi, my name is ________ and my email is ________. I would like my
username to be ________ and my password to be ______.
...people use 'em more.
I wonder what opportunities we might have to quickly try this out with
Fedora. fedora-tour immediately comes to mind, but that's not going to
be ready for prime-time for a bit - so how about FAS?
(https://admin.fedoraproject.org/accounts/user/new)
This might be a neat thing to bring up around Beta release when we're
done with our deliverables (*knocks on wood*) and focusing on helping
other teams get new contributors started during their crunch times.
(Refer to the end of
http://blog.melchua.com/2009/12/24/whats-marketing-doing-for-f13-anyway-a...
- actually, I should probably turn that into a wiki page sometime.)
--Mel
13 years, 9 months
Self-Introduction: Mel Chua
by Mel Chua
Note: This is a test of the new template at
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Introduce_yourself_to_the_marketing_group, which
is part of the Join process,
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Joining_the_Fedora_marketing_project.
It's a rewrite of my own self-introduction
(http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/marketing/2009-May/010230.html) using
the new format, so this is the email as I would have written it in May 2009.
Join me in testing the template! ;)
--------
Hi, my name is Mel Chua and I live in Boston, MA, USA (but I travel a
lot). My Fedora Account System (FAS) username is mchua, and my IRC nick
is also mchua.
I learned about the Fedora Marketing team through Jack Aboutboul, Max
Spevack, and Greg DeKoenigsberg, and am interested in joining because it
seemed like an interesting place to really start contributing to Fedora
(though I've been a user for years, and have worked in downstream and
upstream projects before).
I've worked in open source and/or Free Software in the past. Some of the
projects I've worked on, or communities I've been involved with, include
OLPC (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Mchua) where I did QA, support, and
community-organizing work, and Sugar Labs
(http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mchua) where I do more of the same.
This is the first Marketing project I have worked on!
My skills, which I hope to utilize in Fedora Marketing, include:
Marketing skills:
* None to speak of, really. I had to look "Marketing" up on Wikipedia,
actually... my background is in engineering, so I wasn't quite sure.
That's what I'm here to learn. ;)
Other skills:
* mediawiki ninja. I keep/make pages good-lookin', spam-free,
well-linked, content-o-riffic, and push stuff that should be on the
wiki, to the wiki.
* documentation nerd. teach me something and I'll write it up so well
you'll never have to teach it to anyone else again.
* hackathon/event wrangling. I've run unconferences, hackathons,
workshops, and most kinds of grassroots events you can think of, and can
do it well enough to teach others.
* breaking things. I used to be in QA, and my specialty is breaking
things (technology and content) like a very creative newbie might. Point
me towards something and I will get confused and tell you exactly why.
I'd also like to learn: How to spark up the open-source mentality in
academia through working on stuff like
http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/POSSE. Fedora is a great example
of a learning ecosystem that's done way better than academic
institutions at creating folks who can Make Real Stuff For Real people,
so figuring out how that happens and how to spread the word of it is the
first thing I'll be hurtling towards. Not sure exactly what that means
yet, but I'll listen for a while and let you know.
When I'm not working on Fedora, I work with the Community Architecture
team at Red Hat. (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Community_Architecture)
A couple of goals I have for the Fedora Project are to have the
Marketing team have more people with marketing backgrounds participating
in it (I know my presence doesn't help that statistic much ;) and to be
able to do something with all the data we gather
(https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Statistics) but don't seem to use to
shape our future actions very much. I would also like to see a Marketing
FAD and a Join-Process FAD happen in Fedora.
I am wondering about what has been done in Marketing in the past.
Please help me get started!
--Mel
13 years, 9 months
