Last month, Robyn sent out a brilliant email about how to frame our tasks into goals centered around the Four Foundations: https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2009-December/msg00070...
This happened to be the day after FUDCon when a lot of us were totally exhausted, so I think it got lost in the shuffle... but now is a good time to revisit it.
Greetings marketing friends,
As some of you have probably read, I've been doing some thinking on not just our specific, measurable goals for F13, but also the marketing team's wider objectives and mission. In other words, we may have this list of fabulous tasks we've brainstormed for F13, but what are our end goals?
I've come up with an idea I'd like to propose and/or get feedback on. It may not be the perfect solution, but I think that it might get us on the path to being more mission-oriented in future releases, if we (a) decide to go down this route, and (b) decide at the end of F13 that it was a worthwhile effort.
The concept is to organize the tasks we work on around the four foundations of Fedora - Freedom, Friends, Features, First (please see https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Foundations if you want the big explanation on all of these things - I know they are each intentionally easy-to-grasp concepts, but the bigger picture behind each one is worth reading). For our team, what this would mean is that each of our tasks should be focused on furthering one (or more) of each of these foundations. Not to pin us in, necessarily - ideas of all types will fall into one of these categories, generally - but to make sure we aren't forgetting to focus on anything.
Personally, I think this is a great idea - it immediately makes it clear how the things we're working on tie directly into the larger mission and goals of the entire project, points out a whole bunch of areas we could potentially expand into, and is (hopefully) an easier way for new folks with marketing backgrounds to engage with the project (easier than "look, a pile of potentially connected tasks - want to take one?" in any case).
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.
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. - 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. - 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.
- 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.
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.
Like I said - this is a brainstorm, of sorts, so I'd love to hear feedback.
Cheers!
-Robyn
+infinity is my main comment here, honestly - this is great stuff.