I had a small chat with a close friend of mine that is Marketing Director in an Italian group represented in Portugal.
We had some weird talk about Adword, and it actually I've seen some very weird stats. I've never worked with Adwords before, I am not even aware if Fedora does it, but this was interesting to analyse.
They bought some words on adwords and placed a small budget. They bought their usual words, and the most fun part, their competitors words. Strangely, they got roughly 40% of the hits incoming from searches from their competitors. For their case, that strategy seems to work fine (Ceramic Industry).
Not sure if the same could apply to us, or even if we use adwords, in case we do and are not exploring it that way, I would suggest a test on it for some "relevant" statistical data.
Just a thought...
nelson
Hy,
Am 16.04.2010 23:36, schrieb Nelson Marques:
Not sure if the same could apply to us, or even if we use adwords, in case we do and are not exploring it that way, I would suggest a test on it for some "relevant" statistical data.
In my opinion we must differentiate between Marketing and Advertisement. Ad words, SEO, Affiliate programs, etc. are clearly Advertisement. Make it work with our voice (one of our "old" foundations I sometimes miss!) is more Marketing. I know that these areas sometimes mixes up, but we have here IMHO clearly draw a line. Also to have in mind that there is much difference between a profit driven company and a community driven OpenSource project.
If or if not have budget for such adwords advertisement is another question which we can put on the agenda between the F13 and F14 I think.
I think we haven't had utilized all the possibility's we have to make it known better. Lets see what we do right now: * We have events where Ambassadors, proud Users, Contributers of all kind come together, talk about it, etc. like FUDCON, FAD, Installpartys, LUG events, etc. * We have articles in Internet gazettes, magazines, Blog entries, etc. * We could (in my opinion) do much more in social networks * we could do a little bit more in spreading the word
I also give to think of the way those adwords, adsense, etc. things work. You always have competitors where you comparing with, so you have some kind of enemy or opponent to compare to. So, I see the "friends" Foundation in danger. Also to use a very much criticized tool like google (privacy issues, security of data, etc.) is a very risky and "aggresive" thing. In some parts of the world these "Guerilla Marketing" methods are not so reputable.
Btw.: in the German version of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdWords is one more paragraph about "missusage" which is missing in the english one. funny...
The thing behind the adwords is "only" to place advertisements on partner sites. That we could do easily on our own: just make some nice Fedora-Banners and put them on the blogs (not only the Countdown Banners, also some Fan-stuff), maybe we could have some more representative pages at Redhat (and also a small banner here and there), on other pages like Distrowatch, rpmfusion, XFCE, LXDE, all the "partner" sites, etc. Thats in my opinion the way we can use the idea in the more open way. Also we can use our own Systems to monitor the progress - Fedora Insight (Zikula). Pingbacks and all kind of statistics should be doable.
Also if we have soon a more RSS friendly news System like FI we can put in the pages there, send them to the sites. If there will be changes the sites itself have nothing to do (simply feeded by FI).
If I only take a look at Distrowatch for example we are on the second base with "the old" F12. So we have a good reputation. I think we could go from that very good base to a level more of asking "what do we want to promote besides the next Release?"
Some idea: make some kind of feature from e.g. one spin like graphics spin or security spin. Make some articles, videos, banners, etc. for it and promote them (blog, social networks, magazines, etc.). Make that a Longterm project (one article every 1-2 month, talks at events, etc.).
mit freundlichen Grüßen / best regards Henrik Heigl - wonderer@fedoraproject.org
PGP/GnuPG: 8237 D432 0616 D567 DBC6 3FE3 0D52 B374 F468 A5F0
Good post. I understand your concerns, but let me just express my opinion about a couple of things:
* Considering Adword as Guerilla Marketing is kinda naive. Guerilla Marketing is more about going to a Model Agency and hiring 20 attractive models and send them to disco's with Fedora t-shirts and have them mix up with the people and promote your product without a direct approach. That would probably translate better Guerilla Marketing.
* As for partner sites. Whenever you search on Google, you have sponsored links, not only for partner sites.
* I was not trying to cutback or give lesser relevance to the work currently being developed in other fields. And I do agree with you, exploring social networks is a must. Like you, I would love to see more work done in that field as well.
* About corporate and FOSS models, sure, the main difference is that in marketing driven corporation (Unilever? P&G? et all) usually the Marketing Department is the connection between the Administration and every other single department, though it most times has priviledge relations with Commercial Departments. Marketing isn't just sales. That is a very naive approach of Marketing. Just for example, GNOME uses adword, and it's the marketing team which handles it. There's loads of info on their public marketing mailing lists. Maybe I should've dropped this email there :(. And if I am not wrong, I believe they have a small budget allocated for it, not sure though. This is even more strange because Fedora is a channel of distribution for GNOME (from the GNOME point of view of course), which at some point would lead me to believe that we should be investing in that field, not them, but this is just a personal thought.
* About Marketing itself:
"Marketing is the social process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and value with others" - Philip Kotler
The process of exchanging products and value has nothing to do with "monetary units". I'm not quite sure why everyone tries to place $stash there.
Applying that to Fedora, Marketing should realize on what Fedora users want and provide them a product (Fedora Linux) that meets their needs. This will conduct to a recognition of Value on Fedora Linux (product) by our users.
There is no monetary units involved here... neither sales... it's mainly strategical. Thats how a corporation (any multinational) usually sees marketing. Probably smaller companies with different management models (not marketing driven) see it as a sales force (then BANG!... they are not competitive in most cases and blame India and China)... But that's another story.
Anyway, I like your idea of pushing this forward somewhere after F13. I will be one of the supports in several things you mention, starting with social networks.
I am not aware if you saw the news almost 2 weeks ago, a company in London (clothes shop I think) made a small facebook campaign. 30.000 people subscrived it, not all went to the opening, but it was chaos and havoc, nearly riots and lots of policial agressivity on the store surroundings, they even closed the road.
For sure social networks do provide a good evangelization tool.
I look forward to see a serious plan involving social networks.
nelson.
On Sat, 2010-04-17 at 00:17 +0200, wonderer wrote:
Hy,
Am 16.04.2010 23:36, schrieb Nelson Marques:
Not sure if the same could apply to us, or even if we use adwords, in case we do and are not exploring it that way, I would suggest a test on it for some "relevant" statistical data.
In my opinion we must differentiate between Marketing and Advertisement. Ad words, SEO, Affiliate programs, etc. are clearly Advertisement. Make it work with our voice (one of our "old" foundations I sometimes miss!) is more Marketing. I know that these areas sometimes mixes up, but we have here IMHO clearly draw a line. Also to have in mind that there is much difference between a profit driven company and a community driven OpenSource project.
If or if not have budget for such adwords advertisement is another question which we can put on the agenda between the F13 and F14 I think.
I think we haven't had utilized all the possibility's we have to make it known better. Lets see what we do right now:
- We have events where Ambassadors, proud Users, Contributers of all
kind come together, talk about it, etc. like FUDCON, FAD, Installpartys, LUG events, etc.
- We have articles in Internet gazettes, magazines, Blog entries, etc.
- We could (in my opinion) do much more in social networks
- we could do a little bit more in spreading the word
I also give to think of the way those adwords, adsense, etc. things work. You always have competitors where you comparing with, so you have some kind of enemy or opponent to compare to. So, I see the "friends" Foundation in danger. Also to use a very much criticized tool like google (privacy issues, security of data, etc.) is a very risky and "aggresive" thing. In some parts of the world these "Guerilla Marketing" methods are not so reputable.
Btw.: in the German version of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdWords is one more paragraph about "missusage" which is missing in the english one. funny...
The thing behind the adwords is "only" to place advertisements on partner sites. That we could do easily on our own: just make some nice Fedora-Banners and put them on the blogs (not only the Countdown Banners, also some Fan-stuff), maybe we could have some more representative pages at Redhat (and also a small banner here and there), on other pages like Distrowatch, rpmfusion, XFCE, LXDE, all the "partner" sites, etc. Thats in my opinion the way we can use the idea in the more open way. Also we can use our own Systems to monitor the progress - Fedora Insight (Zikula). Pingbacks and all kind of statistics should be doable.
Also if we have soon a more RSS friendly news System like FI we can put in the pages there, send them to the sites. If there will be changes the sites itself have nothing to do (simply feeded by FI).
If I only take a look at Distrowatch for example we are on the second base with "the old" F12. So we have a good reputation. I think we could go from that very good base to a level more of asking "what do we want to promote besides the next Release?"
Some idea: make some kind of feature from e.g. one spin like graphics spin or security spin. Make some articles, videos, banners, etc. for it and promote them (blog, social networks, magazines, etc.). Make that a Longterm project (one article every 1-2 month, talks at events, etc.).
mit freundlichen Grüßen / best regards Henrik Heigl - wonderer@fedoraproject.org
PGP/GnuPG: 8237 D432 0616 D567 DBC6 3FE3 0D52 B374 F468 A5F0
On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 5:46 PM, Nelson Marques 07721@ipam.pt wrote:
... snip lots of interesting stuff ...
- About Marketing itself:
"Marketing is the social process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and value with others" - Philip Kotler
The process of exchanging products and value has nothing to do with "monetary units". I'm not quite sure why everyone tries to place $stash there.
Applying that to Fedora, Marketing should realize on what Fedora users want and provide them a product (Fedora Linux) that meets their needs. This will conduct to a recognition of Value on Fedora Linux (product) by our users.
I'm really not sure that is how I would do the translation to Fedora in this case. For most Fedora users the "product" is largely a gift where nothing is exchanged. To see a real exchange we need to look at Fedora contributors, not Fedora users. When we give the contributors what they want they give back to the project.
John
On Fri, 2010-04-16 at 18:05 -0500, inode0 wrote:
On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 5:46 PM, Nelson Marques 07721@ipam.pt wrote:
... snip lots of interesting stuff ...
- About Marketing itself:
"Marketing is the social process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and value with others" - Philip Kotler
The process of exchanging products and value has nothing to do with "monetary units". I'm not quite sure why everyone tries to place $stash there.
Applying that to Fedora, Marketing should realize on what Fedora users want and provide them a product (Fedora Linux) that meets their needs. This will conduct to a recognition of Value on Fedora Linux (product) by our users.
I'm really not sure that is how I would do the translation to Fedora in this case. For most Fedora users the "product" is largely a gift where nothing is exchanged..
Nothing is exchanged? Robyn's contribution to Fedora 13 slogan: "Rock it":
* We provide a zero cost (lets assume it that way) free operating system; * Rock it; We provide a experience; * We provide an alternative;
- We get revenue? No. We get something back? Off course we do; users recognition for prime engineering software. A contact between the user and our philosophy. He might not get enrolled with the Fedora Community, but he is already enrolled with FOSS (and eventually at the very low level with FEdora) by moment he downloads the software.
I've said this more than once: profit doesn't need to be based on monetary units (€'s, $US, etc etc). It can be also translated in social profit (easy to associate with our Foundations).
This is mainly how I see it. There was once a workshop with Nicklodeon's Marketing Director. He was explaining how he got kidnapped by alliens and how he learned their numbers. He was making the symbols and telling us what those numbers where. No one made a damn clue about it and everyone was thinking that he was a looney. Eventually he pops out with "out of the box" and soon enough everyone was enlightened. This was a very amusing experience. This to say, that sometimes we need to think "out of the box". But most of us are just twisted by our day to day life. For example, a kid you know around 10 years or a bit older. Give him a Fedora DVD, explain him what it is (in words he can understand) and try to get him to say what if he got something that you can consider as a trade (at 10 he will never become a fedora contributor). But it is a trade.
To see a real exchange we need to look at Fedora contributors, not Fedora users. When we give the contributors what they want they give back to the project.
Those keep the project alive, for sure. Totally agree, but that doesn't mean that all the others who don't and only use fedora don't recognize value in a trade (by downloading our software for instance). Today's user might be tomorrow's potential contributor. It's up to us Marketing twisted monkeys to make it happen. My interview with Dan tried to explore that gap and make an approach to why possible contributors sometimes don't enroll.
From my personal experience and going into another level, this is what
happened (I am not going into much detail because somewhere there are the NDA's I signed). When I was Portugal Telecom (PT), we used Red Hat 6.0 to deploy a large number of platforms running services to support our GSM GPRS infra-structure. This was a part of a larger program to get PT free from very nasty royalties that we were paying mainly to HP, as most of the crap was actually HP/UX+Hardware powered.
The hardest part was to convince our customer TMN (National Mobile Telecommunications), the mobile operator from the PT Group to deploy this platforms and their reliability. We were also changing into IA32. Their concerns were to ensure a 4 hour service. Everything that could happen could not take more than 4 hours to solve, hardware or software wise. We (PT Inovation, the R&D Technology Division from PT Group) would ensure and make the contract for service support and IBM kicked in for the hardware (this was also a large contract for them). It was IBM who convinced them through a small presentation about Linux deployment. Oracle also had it's role there (and it mainly due to Oracle's involvement that we went Red Hat, as Oracle 8i back then was important).
You have no idea on how much HP would be loosing in contracts in the following years (they still have HP stuff, but as technology is upgrade, it grows thiner).
Did we ever contributed to RedHat or FOSS? No. Some patches we tried to submit were often turned down by maintainers, mainly because they served our own purposes and most times were cutting security holes by eliminating what some called "features".
This all to say that though we never contributed to FOSS, the ammount of money involved in those contracts favored IBM and Oracle. Don't they deploy a huge ammount of money into FOSS? Not for sure because they want to help us, but because when Linux is considered as an option by some big fat wallet customers they want to grab those contracts. HP loss many contracts for the PT Group, other companies like IBM got them (hardware mainly), and they promoted Linux with us against other proprietary vendors for the very same contracts. Thats probably why all those companies want to support FOSS, not only because they like it... they like because it generates millions of revenue in support contracts.
This to say... we might not see things as they work in many cases. I would also take 1 line to say that Red Hat most likely stood up from the very early against companies that were way more powerful, and they managed to cut a large part on their proprietary UNIX markets. I do take my hat for their work in the last 12 years. It's for sure an example to us all. Benefit is always there even if we don't see it clearly.
If companies like the PT Group wouldn't see a reliable alternative in FOSS, they were still injecting thousands of millions in proprietary UNIX's, and maybe proprietary UNIX's vendors weren't injecting so much in FOSS development like they do nowadays... not because they care about our users, but because in the huge fat contracts Linux and YOUR engineering is owning them all.
My personal view and once more, sorry for the wall of text.
Mostly I agree with you, but I see a value recognition in those "trades" even if the users don't directly contribute to us.
John
On Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 10:55 AM, Nelson Marques 07721@ipam.pt wrote: <snip>
This is mainly how I see it. There was once a workshop with Nicklodeon's Marketing Director. He was explaining how he got kidnapped by alliens and how he learned their numbers. He was making the symbols and telling us what those numbers where. No one made a damn clue about it and everyone was thinking that he was a looney. Eventually he pops out with "out of the box" and soon enough everyone was enlightened. This was a very amusing experience. This to say, that sometimes we need to think "out of the box". But most of us are just twisted by our day to day life. For example, a kid you know around 10 years or a bit older. Give him a Fedora DVD, explain him what it is (in words he can understand) and try to get him to say what if he got something that you can consider as a trade (at 10 he will never become a fedora contributor). But it is a trade.
<snip>
I use AdWords for my company. I will never buy others peoples brand names as a mean to spread my reach. Basically because I hate when others do that.
I will love to see sponsoring links from Fedora.
I think is something really different from what we have done. But I also think that to get other peoples "buying" this idea we need less words. As most of us have lives beyond Fedora, when I reach an email two screen long, I don't read it properly. Sorry, I just can't. Those emails make me feel depress, takes out the fifth F of Fedora = FUN. I automatically switch to skim-reading-mode, scroll down fast to the end and move the message out of my inbox. I am not "alien" to market ideas, I felt more like a "10 yeard old kid" with a short span attention ... less words, less "old-man-battle-tales"... as a kid, I need something short and fun to keep reading.
On Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 11:55 AM, Nelson Marques 07721@ipam.pt wrote:
On Fri, 2010-04-16 at 18:05 -0500, inode0 wrote:
On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 5:46 PM, Nelson Marques 07721@ipam.pt wrote:
... snip lots of interesting stuff ...
- About Marketing itself:
"Marketing is the social process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and value with others" - Philip Kotler
The process of exchanging products and value has nothing to do with "monetary units". I'm not quite sure why everyone tries to place $stash there.
Applying that to Fedora, Marketing should realize on what Fedora users want and provide them a product (Fedora Linux) that meets their needs. This will conduct to a recognition of Value on Fedora Linux (product) by our users.
I'm really not sure that is how I would do the translation to Fedora in this case. For most Fedora users the "product" is largely a gift where nothing is exchanged..
Nothing is exchanged? Robyn's contribution to Fedora 13 slogan: "Rock it":
My comment was modified and was not absolute. I said it is *largely* a gift where nothing is exchanged.
- We provide a zero cost (lets assume it that way) free operating
system;
- Rock it; We provide a experience;
- We provide an alternative;
Yes, *we* provide something of value.
- We get revenue? No. We get something back? Off course we do; users
recognition for prime engineering software. A contact between the user and our philosophy. He might not get enrolled with the Fedora Community, but he is already enrolled with FOSS (and eventually at the very low level with FEdora) by moment he downloads the software.
Sometimes the recognition is lovely. Sometimes we are told we are producing a pile of steaming something or other and we either grow thick skin or we have hurt feelings. Not all recognition is motivating in a positive way.
I agree and did not dispute the obvious that spreading a message is a part of what we do. When that message is received and acted on I think the world is a better place whether that action directly affects the Fedora Project or not.
Let's think about the quote again. "Marketing is the social process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and value with others." I'll just say that we get far more of what we need (value that sustains the project and allows it to grow) from exchanges with contributors than we ever can from exchanges with users and I think marketing should focus a lot more energy in that direction.
One of the things that somewhat distresses me about the work of ambassadors is that I have a feeling that a lot of resources might be going in directions that aren't the most fruitful. I'm sure we have contributors who come to the project in just about every way that one can imagine. But I see very few who enter from the places we seem to focus our energies most (handing out media at events and having random people download media). That is not to suggest that doing those things isn't of value, it is just to suggest that I'm not sure it is the best way to draw contributors into the project. I see a very large number of contributors join the project from working in related communities where Fedora contributors are also present. Fedora contributors "rub off" on others in common communities and with encouragement of the right people we increase the contributor base.
I've said this more than once: profit doesn't need to be based on monetary units (€'s, $US, etc etc). It can be also translated in social profit (easy to associate with our Foundations).
You don't need to keep saying it because no one else has been talking about money.
This is mainly how I see it. There was once a workshop with Nicklodeon's Marketing Director. He was explaining how he got kidnapped by alliens and how he learned their numbers. He was making the symbols and telling us what those numbers where. No one made a damn clue about it and everyone was thinking that he was a looney. Eventually he pops out with "out of the box" and soon enough everyone was enlightened. This was a very amusing experience. This to say, that sometimes we need to think "out of the box". But most of us are just twisted by our day to day life. For example, a kid you know around 10 years or a bit older. Give him a Fedora DVD, explain him what it is (in words he can understand) and try to get him to say what if he got something that you can consider as a trade (at 10 he will never become a fedora contributor). But it is a trade.
Don't underestimate a 10 year old. There is an 11 year old Red Hat Certified Engineer.
To see a real exchange we need to look at Fedora contributors, not Fedora users. When we give the contributors what they want they give back to the project.
Those keep the project alive, for sure. Totally agree, but that doesn't mean that all the others who don't and only use fedora don't recognize value in a trade (by downloading our software for instance). Today's user might be tomorrow's potential contributor. It's up to us Marketing twisted monkeys to make it happen. My interview with Dan tried to explore that gap and make an approach to why possible contributors sometimes don't enroll.
... snipped wall of text ...
My personal view and once more, sorry for the wall of text.
Mostly I agree with you, but I see a value recognition in those "trades" even if the users don't directly contribute to us.
I see value in them too, I just see a lot more value in other "trades."
John
On Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 11:12 AM, inode0 inode0@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 11:55 AM, Nelson Marques 07721@ipam.pt wrote:
On Fri, 2010-04-16 at 18:05 -0500, inode0 wrote:
On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 5:46 PM, Nelson Marques 07721@ipam.pt wrote:
<snipped a lot of things here....>
One of the things that somewhat distresses me about the work of ambassadors is that I have a feeling that a lot of resources might be going in directions that aren't the most fruitful. I'm sure we have contributors who come to the project in just about every way that one can imagine. But I see very few who enter from the places we seem to focus our energies most (handing out media at events and having random people download media). That is not to suggest that doing those things isn't of value, it is just to suggest that I'm not sure it is the best way to draw contributors into the project. I see a very large number of contributors join the project from working in related communities where Fedora contributors are also present. Fedora contributors "rub off" on others in common communities and with encouragement of the right people we increase the contributor base.
One of the things we talked about as part of the Marketing Plan for F14 and beyond was "Building on-ramps" - i.e. creating ways for contributors to get involved, and one of those ways was "EasyFix" - things that can be easily done by a newcomer, without having a huge barrier to contribution.
Another thing I'd like to note is that - and I may be wrong here - but I think a lot of people hear "contribute to open source" and they think, "I can't code." We really need to emphasize the distinction to prospective contributors that coding is NOT a requirement.
Something I would love to see at events is to always have a FAD going on simultaneously - a room where prospective contributors can see Fedora people at work, having fun. A place where they can go and get involved. To expound:
* People coming up to the booth don't just get a CD - they get a slip of paper (1/4 or 1/2 sheet) saying, "Hey, we're having a Fedora Activity Day. Want to come contribute?" and pull some of the content from http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Join onto that flyer. Something advertising loudly that there are many roles to fulfill in our project - NOT just coding.
* A "New Contributor Wrangler" present at the FAD - someone (dedicated to this purpose) who can sit with someone and guide them through the following: ** Talk to the potential contributor about their interests / capabilities ** Signing up for an account in FAS ** Signing them up for a mailing list account and getting them into a FAS group - let them know when meetings are for that particular group. If they're getting mail, they may show up to meetings, or check things out. Maybe have a sheet highlighting what each individual group does, with how to sign up, when meetings are, and what they do.
* Have a list of EasyFix items available for someone to work on. These could include things like: ** editing something off a list of wiki pages for content / grammar ** making wiki redirects for things like "Fedora_13_Artwork" point to "F13_Artwork" ** for more advanced users / coder types - a list of fonts to package ** for artist types - help us make a new banner for X ** for those who aren't shy - Want to interview some other Fedora contributors on video (or help film, etc) about why they are involved in Fedora and what they do? ** Bug zapping - specific items ** Help us install Fedora on this batch of donated machines for $localschool. ** Help us test this list of things that need to get tested on $newwebpage. ** etc.
* Alternately, if FAD activities are appropriate for Potential Contributor's capabilities - get them involved in the FAD!
* We have cookies! or dinner! or whatever!
I don't know if this would work - maybe we'd pick up a bunch of new, ongoing contributors, or maybe 2 or 3, or possibly none. It would definitely be an experiment. I think it's worth trying - it wouldn't take much effort to pass out a piece of paper with the CD or random swag and say, oh hey, if you're interested in contributing....
Thoughts?
On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 3:05 PM, Robyn Bergeron robyn.bergeron@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 11:12 AM, inode0 inode0@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 11:55 AM, Nelson Marques 07721@ipam.pt wrote:
On Fri, 2010-04-16 at 18:05 -0500, inode0 wrote:
On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 5:46 PM, Nelson Marques 07721@ipam.pt wrote:
<snipped a lot of things here....>
One of the things that somewhat distresses me about the work of ambassadors is that I have a feeling that a lot of resources might be going in directions that aren't the most fruitful. I'm sure we have contributors who come to the project in just about every way that one can imagine. But I see very few who enter from the places we seem to focus our energies most (handing out media at events and having random people download media). That is not to suggest that doing those things isn't of value, it is just to suggest that I'm not sure it is the best way to draw contributors into the project. I see a very large number of contributors join the project from working in related communities where Fedora contributors are also present. Fedora contributors "rub off" on others in common communities and with encouragement of the right people we increase the contributor base.
One of the things we talked about as part of the Marketing Plan for F14 and beyond was "Building on-ramps" - i.e. creating ways for contributors to get involved, and one of those ways was "EasyFix" - things that can be easily done by a newcomer, without having a huge barrier to contribution.
Building on-ramps is great. Newcomers to Fedora come with all sorts of pre-existing skill sets and for some things that seem to us to bring with them high barriers to contribution don't phase them. So what you are describing is helpful to the less skilled but good intentioned newcomer. That is also though a long term investment with initial low return to the project when compared to many potential contributors who come full of skills in their area of expertise. They need help finding their way around the project to get their bearings but they don't really need small tasks to undertake.
Another thing I'd like to note is that - and I may be wrong here - but I think a lot of people hear "contribute to open source" and they think, "I can't code." We really need to emphasize the distinction to prospective contributors that coding is NOT a requirement.
That is probably true and it is probably one of the reasons that artists for example don't really search out places like the Fedora Project to participate in. I bet it is true of marketing people too.
Let me give you a small example from real life. #rhel on freenode is a place where about 200 Red Hat Enterprise Linux people hang out providing and receiving community support. This is an example of one community of interest where the Fedora contributor community intersects with another related community. While the Fedora contributors there I would not characterise as salesmen, they often do land in places of respect (communities like this one are meritocracies too and it shouldn't surprise us that Fedora contributors work their way up the ladder quickly). Friendships develop, conversations about other things that interest us happen, one thing leads to another and the result is new packagers for EPEL, new packagers for Fedora, new ambassadors, new FreeMedia contributors, and more. While no one "infiltrated" #rhel with the intention of recruiting new contributors from there, it happens naturally when Fedora contributors intersect with another community.
While #rhel is a community where sysadmins and coders hang out there must be communities where artists hang out with each other and where marketing people hang out with each other. There may well not be "Fedora Ambassadors" in those communities but there could well be Fedora contributors in them and if there aren't there could be. Ambassadors largely don't meet these people at the booth at a linux conference. These people are not going to walk into a Marketing FAD at the Ohio LinuxFest. To meet these people we need to go where they are, they won't come to us.
Something I would love to see at events is to always have a FAD going on simultaneously - a room where prospective contributors can see Fedora people at work, having fun. A place where they can go and get involved. To expound:
- People coming up to the booth don't just get a CD - they get a slip
of paper (1/4 or 1/2 sheet) saying, "Hey, we're having a Fedora Activity Day. Want to come contribute?" and pull some of the content from http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Join onto that flyer. Something advertising loudly that there are many roles to fulfill in our project
- NOT just coding.
The NOT just coding angle will be effective at events that aren't coder heavy but I'm not sure which events we are thinking about where we are going to meet new artists in any number. I'd love to see us expand our event horizon to include design conferences and others where we can expose those communities to what Fedora is doing and to what they could be doing with us. We just barely scratch the surface of what is possible now.
- A "New Contributor Wrangler" present at the FAD - someone (dedicated
to this purpose) who can sit with someone and guide them through the following: ** Talk to the potential contributor about their interests / capabilities ** Signing up for an account in FAS ** Signing them up for a mailing list account and getting them into a FAS group - let them know when meetings are for that particular group. If they're getting mail, they may show up to meetings, or check things out. Maybe have a sheet highlighting what each individual group does, with how to sign up, when meetings are, and what they do.
I think this point is really a booth responsibility already.
- Have a list of EasyFix items available for someone to work on. These
could include things like: ** editing something off a list of wiki pages for content / grammar ** making wiki redirects for things like "Fedora_13_Artwork" point to "F13_Artwork" ** for more advanced users / coder types - a list of fonts to package ** for artist types - help us make a new banner for X ** for those who aren't shy - Want to interview some other Fedora contributors on video (or help film, etc) about why they are involved in Fedora and what they do? ** Bug zapping - specific items ** Help us install Fedora on this batch of donated machines for $localschool. ** Help us test this list of things that need to get tested on $newwebpage. ** etc.
- Alternately, if FAD activities are appropriate for Potential
Contributor's capabilities - get them involved in the FAD!
- We have cookies! or dinner! or whatever!
I don't know if this would work - maybe we'd pick up a bunch of new, ongoing contributors, or maybe 2 or 3, or possibly none. It would definitely be an experiment. I think it's worth trying - it wouldn't take much effort to pass out a piece of paper with the CD or random swag and say, oh hey, if you're interested in contributing....
Thoughts?
The idea of a FAD at every event is one others share with you although I am one of the people with the opposite view who thinks that FADs should almost always stand as their own event. There are exceptions, I can see some FAD topics that are amenable to their being colocated with another event.
I think the purpose of a FAD is to identify work that needs to be done that can only get done or can get done faster by meeting face to face. Identify who needs to be there to get the work done (this really normally means current contributors with special skills) and get them in the same place to focus on getting that work done.
Constant interruptions by curious conference attendees walking in and asking questions I think is a distraction from the purpose of most FADs. Yeah, you can man the door with someone to work with the walk-ins but unless they actually join the FAD I don't see why that couldn't be done at the booth or in the hall. And once they join the FAD they need to be brought up to speed in whatever it is they are barging into the middle of which is a distraction from the purpose of the FAD.
FADs that run concurrently with another event also distract ambassadors and other contributors from the other event which is often not desirable too.
The west coast guys do run FADs with just about every event and have learned a lot along the way. So I think they are getting good at arranging them and handling the distractions. I guess we have an ongoing experiment that we can draw from in this area. There is probably room for both but my instincts are to focus on the event when we are at an event and focus on a FAD when we are at a FAD.
John
On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 16:05, Robyn Bergeron robyn.bergeron@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 11:12 AM, inode0 inode0@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 11:55 AM, Nelson Marques 07721@ipam.pt wrote:
On Fri, 2010-04-16 at 18:05 -0500, inode0 wrote:
On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 5:46 PM, Nelson Marques 07721@ipam.pt wrote:
One of the things we talked about as part of the Marketing Plan for F14 and beyond was "Building on-ramps" - i.e. creating ways for contributors to get involved, and one of those ways was "EasyFix" - things that can be easily done by a newcomer, without having a huge barrier to contribution.
Hi Robyn,
I'm not in a position to start talking about this now, but I'd like to continue this conversation over the summer. Specifically, I'm interested in using 20 of my students next term to help with the "on boarding" procedures for one or more projects. Over the course of the summer, it would be nice to identify one or more teams that are interested in this kind of collaboration, and after F14 have the students start diving in and providing ideas and reflection regarding barriers to entry and ways to make things easier for the beginner.
- Have a list of EasyFix items available for someone to work on. These
could include things like: ** editing something off a list of wiki pages for content / grammar ** making wiki redirects for things like "Fedora_13_Artwork" point to "F13_Artwork" ** for more advanced users / coder types - a list of fonts to package ** for artist types - help us make a new banner for X ** for those who aren't shy - Want to interview some other Fedora contributors on video (or help film, etc) about why they are involved in Fedora and what they do? ** Bug zapping - specific items ** Help us install Fedora on this batch of donated machines for $localschool. ** Help us test this list of things that need to get tested on $newwebpage. ** etc.
These are a pretty good list. That said, one of the things we've discovered this term is that getting Fedora running is actually very difficult for most people. We found lots of machines that wouldn't boot Live CDs, and more that wouldn't run the Live CD under VirtualBox. As a result, many students found it difficult to "just dive in."
This is only a problem in that using Fedora and open tools is a pre-req for most everything you list above, as is proficiency with the tools of the community. For people from the marketing or art world, the native tools of this community are not native tools by any stretch.
ongoing contributors, or maybe 2 or 3, or possibly none. It would definitely be an experiment. I think it's worth trying - it wouldn't take much effort to pass out a piece of paper with the CD or random swag and say, oh hey, if you're interested in contributing....
I think there's a lot of merit to the idea. Certainly, I'd like to get a local LUG or two to join my students next term if we do something like that, so that the two "communities" (the 1st-year students and the LUG members) could spend time learning what it means to work with experts/novices who want to be involved/help (and visa versa).
I will say, drawing from inode0's next message:
"I think the purpose of a FAD is to identify work that needs to be done that can only get done or can get done faster by meeting face to face. Identify who needs to be there to get the work done (this really normally means current contributors with special skills) and get them in the same place to focus on getting that work done."
Really, the best way to get new contributors is to provide them with a real-world, face-to-face contact who will ground them/anchor them in the community. If you can't use F2F meetings like FADs to do this, it isn't clear to me where you do it. As a result, you will only ever get more sysadmins joining the project, and not artists.
Now, if you invite the local art school to send over 30 of its designers, send them all home with T-shirts, get them doing some collaborative design with members of the core community, and then provide them all with contacts they can reach out to if they decide they want to get more involved... well, that starts to sound like a way to build community. If a FAD can't support that kind of outreach, what can/does? If the answer is nothing, then you have your answer why non-techies aren't coming in to join the party... the world of open source is largely invisible (taking place only on email and IRC), and once there, it is a overwhelming and, too often, hostile place for the newcomer.
Cheers, Matt
On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 5:34 PM, Matthew Jadud mjadud@allegheny.edu wrote:
I will say, drawing from inode0's next message:
"I think the purpose of a FAD is to identify work that needs to be done that can only get done or can get done faster by meeting face to face. Identify who needs to be there to get the work done (this really normally means current contributors with special skills) and get them in the same place to focus on getting that work done."
Really, the best way to get new contributors is to provide them with a real-world, face-to-face contact who will ground them/anchor them in the community. If you can't use F2F meetings like FADs to do this, it isn't clear to me where you do it. As a result, you will only ever get more sysadmins joining the project, and not artists.
I really could not agree with you more. I think we should be sending Fedora artists to the places where artists gather in the same way we send people with appropriate skills to the traditional conferences we attend. They speak the language, they understand the hurdles, they can show how cool the art community within Fedora is to other artists and inspire them.
Now, if you invite the local art school to send over 30 of its designers, send them all home with T-shirts, get them doing some collaborative design with members of the core community, and then provide them all with contacts they can reach out to if they decide they want to get more involved... well, that starts to sound like a way to build community. If a FAD can't support that kind of outreach, what can/does? If the answer is nothing, then you have your answer why non-techies aren't coming in to join the party... the world of open source is largely invisible (taking place only on email and IRC), and once there, it is a overwhelming and, too often, hostile place for the newcomer.
If you happen to be having an art related FAD in that community sure. But sending 30 local designers to the ambassador FAD, or the F14 planning FAD, or the fill-in-the-blank FAD isn't going to work well. There is no reason we can't have well thought out recruitment events, whether we call them FADs or not. I would totally support sending artists and swag to any place they could engage other artists for both Fedora promotion/awareness as well as recruiting.
John
On Sun, 2010-04-18 at 13:05 -0700, Robyn Bergeron wrote:
On Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 11:12 AM, inode0 inode0@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 11:55 AM, Nelson Marques 07721@ipam.pt wrote:
On Fri, 2010-04-16 at 18:05 -0500, inode0 wrote:
On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 5:46 PM, Nelson Marques 07721@ipam.pt wrote:
<snipped a lot of things here....>
One of the things that somewhat distresses me about the work of ambassadors is that I have a feeling that a lot of resources might be going in directions that aren't the most fruitful. I'm sure we have contributors who come to the project in just about every way that one can imagine. But I see very few who enter from the places we seem to focus our energies most (handing out media at events and having random people download media). That is not to suggest that doing those things isn't of value, it is just to suggest that I'm not sure it is the best way to draw contributors into the project. I see a very large number of contributors join the project from working in related communities where Fedora contributors are also present. Fedora contributors "rub off" on others in common communities and with encouragement of the right people we increase the contributor base.
One of the things we talked about as part of the Marketing Plan for F14 and beyond was "Building on-ramps" - i.e. creating ways for contributors to get involved, and one of those ways was "EasyFix" - things that can be easily done by a newcomer, without having a huge barrier to contribution.
+1. Great news.
Another thing I'd like to note is that - and I may be wrong here - but I think a lot of people hear "contribute to open source" and they think, "I can't code." We really need to emphasize the distinction to prospective contributors that coding is NOT a requirement.
+1. We can we most cases try to elaborate on this and work it out. I'll be willing to help in what I can in campaigns to gather people around us.
Something I would love to see at events is to always have a FAD going on simultaneously - a room where prospective contributors can see Fedora people at work, having fun. A place where they can go and get involved. To expound:
- People coming up to the booth don't just get a CD - they get a slip
of paper (1/4 or 1/2 sheet) saying, "Hey, we're having a Fedora Activity Day. Want to come contribute?" and pull some of the content from http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Join onto that flyer. Something advertising loudly that there are many roles to fulfill in our project
- NOT just coding.
+1. In fact, something like a FAD or hack events would actually be a good place to invite local communities to join. We could break ice probably in a nice way. Maybe by at least showing the tools we use.
Robyn, if you believe that it might be of interest, I planning to go on the lists for fudcon 2011. Anyway we could work out some marketing stuff? That way I can include it already in the plans.
- A "New Contributor Wrangler" present at the FAD - someone (dedicated
to this purpose) who can sit with someone and guide them through the following: ** Talk to the potential contributor about their interests / capabilities ** Signing up for an account in FAS ** Signing them up for a mailing list account and getting them into a FAS group - let them know when meetings are for that particular group. If they're getting mail, they may show up to meetings, or check things out. Maybe have a sheet highlighting what each individual group does, with how to sign up, when meetings are, and what they do.
- Have a list of EasyFix items available for someone to work on. These
could include things like: ** editing something off a list of wiki pages for content / grammar ** making wiki redirects for things like "Fedora_13_Artwork" point to "F13_Artwork" ** for more advanced users / coder types - a list of fonts to package ** for artist types - help us make a new banner for X ** for those who aren't shy - Want to interview some other Fedora contributors on video (or help film, etc) about why they are involved in Fedora and what they do? ** Bug zapping - specific items ** Help us install Fedora on this batch of donated machines for $localschool. ** Help us test this list of things that need to get tested on $newwebpage. ** etc.
- Alternately, if FAD activities are appropriate for Potential
Contributor's capabilities - get them involved in the FAD!
- We have cookies! or dinner! or whatever!
I don't know if this would work - maybe we'd pick up a bunch of new, ongoing contributors, or maybe 2 or 3, or possibly none. It would definitely be an experiment. I think it's worth trying - it wouldn't take much effort to pass out a piece of paper with the CD or random swag and say, oh hey, if you're interested in contributing....
Thoughts?
Very interesting stuff you bring up in the email. Personally, +1 in nearly everything, as long as I can stay from the oven. Baking cookies not my fight.
I do believe that marketing could do a lot on this field, though this is a real epic thing to consider. You have my attention and I will gladly cooperate in any way you believe I can be more useful.
Actually events like FAD's, hack sessions and such are good ways of having more people involved. I would also recon that it would from the interest of several institutions like Universities to support this kind of thing. I would believe that between Ambassadors, Marketing and everyone else we could probably see what we could actually do to help Fedora Teams to exchange experiences with a wide community, thus bringing them closer to us.
Really *very good* and juicy stuff.
On Sun 18 April 2010 1:05:44 pm Robyn Bergeron wrote: [lots of words]
- People coming up to the booth don't just get a CD - they get a slip
of paper (1/4 or 1/2 sheet) saying, "Hey, we're having a Fedora Activity Day. Want to come contribute?" and pull some of the content from http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Join onto that flyer. Something advertising loudly that there are many roles to fulfill in our project
- NOT just coding.
Something à la http://rrix.fedorapeople.org/fad-handout-halfpage.pdf ?
It's a good start, but yeah, needs some work, the source is at http://rrix.fedorapeople.org/fad-handout-halfpage.sla and open in Scribus.
Ryan
Nelson Marques wrote on 04/16/2010 05:36 PM:
I had a small chat with a close friend of mine that is Marketing Director in an Italian group represented in Portugal.
We had some weird talk about Adword, and it actually I've seen some very weird stats. I've never worked with Adwords before, I am not even aware if Fedora does it, but this was interesting to analyse.
They bought some words on adwords and placed a small budget. They bought their usual words, and the most fun part, their competitors words. Strangely, they got roughly 40% of the hits incoming from searches from their competitors. For their case, that strategy seems to work fine (Ceramic Industry).
Not sure if the same could apply to us, or even if we use adwords, in case we do and are not exploring it that way, I would suggest a test on it for some "relevant" statistical data.
Just a thought...
nelson
Voice of Red Hat Legal here. Using others' trademarks for AdWords is a challenging area legally, heavily litigated in the US and EU. I'll need to be involved in any decision-making about it.
Pam
On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 10:14:30AM -0400, Pamela Chestek wrote:
Nelson Marques wrote on 04/16/2010 05:36 PM:
I had a small chat with a close friend of mine that is Marketing Director in an Italian group represented in Portugal.
We had some weird talk about Adword, and it actually I've seen some very weird stats. I've never worked with Adwords before, I am not even aware if Fedora does it, but this was interesting to analyse.
They bought some words on adwords and placed a small budget. They bought their usual words, and the most fun part, their competitors words. Strangely, they got roughly 40% of the hits incoming from searches from their competitors. For their case, that strategy seems to work fine (Ceramic Industry).
Not sure if the same could apply to us, or even if we use adwords, in case we do and are not exploring it that way, I would suggest a test on it for some "relevant" statistical data.
Just a thought...
Voice of Red Hat Legal here. Using others' trademarks for AdWords is a challenging area legally, heavily litigated in the US and EU. I'll need to be involved in any decision-making about it.
Pam, thanks for the heads-up. However, I think there's a deeper issue with AdWords, which is the freedom of the code that produces it. Typically Fedora doesn't embrace using services that aren't based on free software. Before we got anywhere close to spending time on AdWords, we'd have to reconcile that with our freedom stance.
I also want to advise that, while new ideas are a great thing to have, that idea needs to be backed both by our core values, and by someone's specific commitment of time to make those ideas a reality. Otherwise we become mired in a pool of great ideas without being able to make measurable progress on any of them.
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