Hi Paul,
Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2010 11:28:22 -0400 From: Paul Frields stickster@gmail.com Subject: Re: Chinese marketing Message-ID: l2sef93afcf1004250828m73202e71v6c243f347c6422b0@mail.gmail.com
Sorry for breaking the thread; issue with the tools, digest-mode and Gmail's IMAP.
I recently got involved in the Chinese Fedora Community... and try to assist them anyway possible by being the bridge between language and culture.
With several ambassadors I set out a long term vision for the Chinese community: "Growing the Chinese community into a self-organizing and healthy community. The main goal is to enlarge the Chinese Fedora Community and seeking new talents to contribute to the mainstream development. We pursue a very good involvement with and from the Western Fedora Community and having a yearly FAD"... and show China can be a host for a FUDcon in the APAC area ;-).
In a document I set out several points to focus on: Mirroring possibilities, Packaging and Development, Translation work, MIPS port of Fedora, Organizing a Fedora event, Ambassadors and Mentoring, Creating a better platform for the community and Marketing.
For a start, Gerard, maybe you can identify some of the primary gaps we have. What questions to Chinese Fedora users and potential contributors have? In what areas can we improve information we offer to Chinese speaking people?
A solution to the gap and have the Chinese community more involved, was to have the Chinese mailinglist hosted by Fedora. This is now done... but still more can be done. As you pointed out in another email, having the planet hosted in the same way would be great!
The biggest issue is that the Fedora brand is not very well known. That is the reason why I want to focus on the marketing side of Fedora. Distributions like Ubuntu and Gentoo have a large group of followers and enthusiasts; IMO Fedora would be a perfect solution between these. But for this there needs to be means to convey the message; who we focus on, what we provide, the four foundations, etc. At the moment, this kind of material is non-existent.
I would seldom talk about them, but the other issue is of course the 'cultural difference'. For example, most Chinese I spoke did not have the sense of Summer Coding... as they saw this as Western-only 'competition'. After explaining them what it means and could provide them, it opens them up more and they see it as a competitive advantage... but until now, I have not seen any of them enter the FSC.
But we also have simple problems which can easily be addressed: the Fedora Ambassadors have no shirts. I am planning to have these made in China, according to the logo guidelines, so we can issue these. Goal: the Ambassadors should be able to promote the brand during for instance a local Software Freedom Day 2010 event! (and of course as a general means to show their involvement).
Another question in which I'm keenly interested is, where do Chinese users get Fedora? If they're using mirrors in China, are there enough of them? Can we find more administrators willing to distribute Fedora on mirrors?
This was the first thing I started to work when I approached Mel an Kaio. By that time four active mirrors were available for all of China. Mike McGrath told me that Chinese seldom approach them about mirroring options; this is also not something in the nature of the Chinese. My goal was to gain two new mirrors before the release of Fedora 13. After a long haul we finally gained an extra mirror in Beijing. For the moment I think we have a good foundation to cope with community and userbase growth (a good start to focus on the brand and getting people involved) ;-).
As you can see, a lot has been started... but it is far from done.
kind regards,
Gerard - 吉拉德
Fedora Ambassador Project-lead Fedora-MIPS Member of Fedora 中文用户组
On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 09:17:57PM +0200, Gerard Braad wrote:
Hi Paul,
Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2010 11:28:22 -0400 From: Paul Frields stickster@gmail.com Subject: Re: Chinese marketing Message-ID: l2sef93afcf1004250828m73202e71v6c243f347c6422b0@mail.gmail.com
Sorry for breaking the thread; issue with the tools, digest-mode and Gmail's IMAP.
I recently got involved in the Chinese Fedora Community... and try to assist them anyway possible by being the bridge between language and culture.
With several ambassadors I set out a long term vision for the Chinese community: "Growing the Chinese community into a self-organizing and healthy community. The main goal is to enlarge the Chinese Fedora Community and seeking new talents to contribute to the mainstream development. We pursue a very good involvement with and from the Western Fedora Community and having a yearly FAD"... and show China can be a host for a FUDcon in the APAC area ;-).
In a document I set out several points to focus on: Mirroring possibilities, Packaging and Development, Translation work, MIPS port of Fedora, Organizing a Fedora event, Ambassadors and Mentoring, Creating a better platform for the community and Marketing.
Your goal statement is perfect, Gerard. The goal of building the community should definitely be to give them the tools, and help them become self-sustainable.
For a start, Gerard, maybe you can identify some of the primary gaps we have. What questions to Chinese Fedora users and potential contributors have? In what areas can we improve information we offer to Chinese speaking people?
A solution to the gap and have the Chinese community more involved, was to have the Chinese mailinglist hosted by Fedora. This is now done... but still more can be done. As you pointed out in another email, having the planet hosted in the same way would be great!
Excellent, glad to hear it.
The biggest issue is that the Fedora brand is not very well known. That is the reason why I want to focus on the marketing side of Fedora. Distributions like Ubuntu and Gentoo have a large group of followers and enthusiasts; IMO Fedora would be a perfect solution between these. But for this there needs to be means to convey the message; who we focus on, what we provide, the four foundations, etc. At the moment, this kind of material is non-existent.
Fedora has always taken a hit in terms of brand recognition because our sponsor did not invest in carpet-bombing the planet with discs. On the other hand, we have worked hard to create reasonable expectations around our distribution and project and encourage contribution.
Our wiki does have a lot of this information, but the wiki itself is not well-equipped for translation in place. It's certainly *open* enough, though, so if there are a small number of translators who are willing to read and translate that content into new wiki pages for Chinese readers, they could begin essentially at any time.
Another possibility is to create a more formal document using Publican, and then use translation infrastructure to provide Chinese contributors a way to translate it -- and at the same time, any other locales as well. However, someone would need to pull together all the content, and convert it into a Publican format (DocBook XML).
I would seldom talk about them, but the other issue is of course the 'cultural difference'. For example, most Chinese I spoke did not have the sense of Summer Coding... as they saw this as Western-only 'competition'. After explaining them what it means and could provide them, it opens them up more and they see it as a competitive advantage... but until now, I have not seen any of them enter the FSC.
But we also have simple problems which can easily be addressed: the Fedora Ambassadors have no shirts. I am planning to have these made in China, according to the logo guidelines, so we can issue these. Goal: the Ambassadors should be able to promote the brand during for instance a local Software Freedom Day 2010 event! (and of course as a general means to show their involvement).
Another question in which I'm keenly interested is, where do Chinese users get Fedora? If they're using mirrors in China, are there enough of them? Can we find more administrators willing to distribute Fedora on mirrors?
This was the first thing I started to work when I approached Mel an Kaio. By that time four active mirrors were available for all of China. Mike McGrath told me that Chinese seldom approach them about mirroring options; this is also not something in the nature of the Chinese. My goal was to gain two new mirrors before the release of Fedora 13. After a long haul we finally gained an extra mirror in Beijing. For the moment I think we have a good foundation to cope with community and userbase growth (a good start to focus on the brand and getting people involved) ;-).
As you can see, a lot has been started... but it is far from done.
I think having someone present in China to bridge the divide is going to be a very important step for us, Gerard. I've had several email conversations over the last year trying to find different ways to get system administrators and other tech contacts to help us find people in China who want to contribute to free software and Fedora. It's been very difficult because the language barrier gets even higher over email.
So your email clearly indicates our outreach needs to be very proactive to make progress in the Chinese community. What people, places, or groups do you propose to visit or talk with as a start?
A little belated reaction... have been very busy recently with arranging stuff for my move to China.
On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 1:36 AM, Paul W. Frields stickster@gmail.com wrote:
Your goal statement is perfect, Gerard. The goal of building the community should definitely be to give them the tools, and help them become self-sustainable.
The statement is not perfect in my own opinion as I only geared it towards the western community as being 'leading'. Recently I got in touch with Rahul Sundaram and see how we facing similar challenges and how we can cooperate. The same goes for the other Asian communities...
Fedora has always taken a hit in terms of brand recognition because our sponsor did not invest in carpet-bombing the planet with discs.
Well, for the Asian area it is easier to do carpet-bombing of LiveDVDs. These are generally easy to produce in China and also very cheap. It might be possible to distribute them from here to other places...
Another possibility is to create a more formal document using Publican, and then use translation infrastructure to provide Chinese contributors a way to translate it -- and at the same time, any other locales as well. However, someone would need to pull together all the content, and convert it into a Publican format (DocBook XML).
It does not sound like this is easy to do. A lot of time would be wasted on preparing it, but maybe in the long-term this would allow to better manage our marketing efforts in any language.
I think having someone present in China to bridge the divide is going to be a very important step for us, Gerard. I've had several email conversations over the last year trying to find different ways to get system administrators and other tech contacts to help us find people in China who want to contribute to free software and Fedora. It's been very difficult because the language barrier gets even higher over email. So your email clearly indicates our outreach needs to be very proactive to make progress in the Chinese community.
It takes time, especially to win trust. I am luckily for having a Chinese partner and understanding the culture... since knowing Chinese language, even just a little, can win this more easily. But I also want it to be their community. The focus should remain on it being a Chinese effort, more than being Western. I would say, give them the means to develop... provide them with a platform... deliver the tools... but don't take direction away from them, just steer them.
What people, places, or groups do you propose to visit or talk with as a start?
I currently have planned to meet up with some people in Beijing. Mostly in different fields of the Open Source community and even hardware and software. As soon as I am in China again I will focus on commitment of the current ambassadors as I said before; shirts and get events planned like participation in SFD 2010. In July I will also give a presentation about Fedora at the BeijingLUG. I haven't settle for a subject yet, but probably a general talk. Introduce Fedora an the project and explain how people can involve. And related to it I wanted to start a Fedora interest group for activities.
As you notice most activities currently deal with Beijing. Depending on possible employment I can plan further activities for other cities. Currently this is unknown. I am also trying to see what the other ambassadors can do in e.g. Xi'an, Shanghai, HongKong, etc.
Let me first set foot in China as things will be a lot easier being in the same timezone again.
Gerard - 吉拉德
marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org
-
Gerard Braad -
Paul W. Frields