Hi everyone,
A while back I'd written to the ambassadors list to collect some feedback on what marketing collateral would be most useful on a per release basis for use at events and so on. The information gathered is summarised here:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ankursinha/Marketing_Collateral_Ide as
The idea is to decide on a set of collateral that can be used at events and at the same time generated every release without burdening any team too much - so that they can continue working on other release critical tasks.
Here's what I've come up with. I'd like to collect some feedback from the marketing team first, and then the design team, after which I can present the plan to the ambassadors.
------------------
== Target audience ==
1. Level 1 - Non Fedora users: This set of users do not use Fedora yet. They are not aware of the products that Fedora offers - editions + spins + labs. They may also not be aware of the free software philosophy, the foundations and so on.
2. Level 2 - Fedora end users: Fedora users that are not developers and admins. They care about what Fedora offers, but are not very interested in the lower level details on what changes a release brings and so on. They are concerned about higher level changes, such as changes to desktops, new tools, better upgrades, quicker boots and so on.
3. Level 3 - Advanced Fedora users: Fedora users that are developers, upstreams, system admins, and so on. They care about lower level changes - what's changed in systemd, yum/dnf and so on.
== Collateral ==
1. Timeless Fedora flyer:
This flyer would have a short summary of the different products Fedora offers - the three editions + labs + spins. It would also contain a summary of the Fedora mission statement - foundations, commitment to free software and so on.
The target audience of this flyer is level 1.
The current implementation idea is to request the design team to provide a design using scribus and I can follow that up with a scribus script that can populate the flyer from text provided in simple text files. This method will also ensure that we can have translations for the text making the flyer available to a wider audience. The marketing team can maintain a repository of translations and so on too.
2. Release details flyer or one page release notes:
The target audience for this is mainly levels 2 and 3.
This flyer/print will be about the newest release. It'll contain important changes - both high and low level. This will also aid ambassadors and community members. It'll pick up stuff from here:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/23/ChangeSet
I think a two sided "one page release notes" would be better than a flyer - it'll contain more info.
3. Goodies - pens, bracelets, shirts, stickers, badges, case badges and so on:
This can be used by all levels of the target audience.
I think event owners can decide what they'd like at the event and produce them. This doesn't require any work from other teams unless something needs to be updated and so on.
---------------------
Work wise, it's not too much extra. We already do release notes and the flyers can come from there. The docs team also does beats and changes, so we can use stuff from there too.
So, what do you think? :)
nice one
---- Best Regards,
*Anton Toni Agung* Linux Trainer Fedora Marketing Team Fedora Free Media Contributor
On Mon, Jul 13, 2015 at 12:05 AM, Ankur Sinha sanjay.ankur@gmail.com wrote:
Hi everyone,
A while back I'd written to the ambassadors list to collect some feedback on what marketing collateral would be most useful on a per release basis for use at events and so on. The information gathered is summarised here:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ankursinha/Marketing_Collateral_Ide as
The idea is to decide on a set of collateral that can be used at events and at the same time generated every release without burdening any team too much - so that they can continue working on other release critical tasks.
Here's what I've come up with. I'd like to collect some feedback from the marketing team first, and then the design team, after which I can present the plan to the ambassadors.
== Target audience ==
- Level 1 - Non Fedora users:
This set of users do not use Fedora yet. They are not aware of the products that Fedora offers - editions + spins + labs. They may also not be aware of the free software philosophy, the foundations and so on.
- Level 2 - Fedora end users:
Fedora users that are not developers and admins. They care about what Fedora offers, but are not very interested in the lower level details on what changes a release brings and so on. They are concerned about higher level changes, such as changes to desktops, new tools, better upgrades, quicker boots and so on.
- Level 3 - Advanced Fedora users:
Fedora users that are developers, upstreams, system admins, and so on. They care about lower level changes - what's changed in systemd, yum/dnf and so on.
== Collateral ==
- Timeless Fedora flyer:
This flyer would have a short summary of the different products Fedora offers - the three editions + labs + spins. It would also contain a summary of the Fedora mission statement - foundations, commitment to free software and so on.
The target audience of this flyer is level 1.
The current implementation idea is to request the design team to provide a design using scribus and I can follow that up with a scribus script that can populate the flyer from text provided in simple text files. This method will also ensure that we can have translations for the text making the flyer available to a wider audience. The marketing team can maintain a repository of translations and so on too.
- Release details flyer or one page release notes:
The target audience for this is mainly levels 2 and 3.
This flyer/print will be about the newest release. It'll contain important changes - both high and low level. This will also aid ambassadors and community members. It'll pick up stuff from here:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/23/ChangeSet
I think a two sided "one page release notes" would be better than a flyer - it'll contain more info.
- Goodies - pens, bracelets, shirts, stickers, badges, case badges and
so on:
This can be used by all levels of the target audience.
I think event owners can decide what they'd like at the event and produce them. This doesn't require any work from other teams unless something needs to be updated and so on.
Work wise, it's not too much extra. We already do release notes and the flyers can come from there. The docs team also does beats and changes, so we can use stuff from there too.
So, what do you think? :)
Thanks, Regards, Ankur Sinha "FranciscoD"
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ankursinha
-- marketing mailing list marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org List info or to change your subscription: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
On Sun, Jul 12, 2015 at 06:05:00PM +0100, Ankur Sinha wrote:
- Level 1 - Non Fedora users:
This set of users do not use Fedora yet. They are not aware of the products that Fedora offers - editions + spins + labs. They may also not be aware of the free software philosophy, the foundations and so on.
- Level 2 - Fedora end users:
Fedora users that are not developers and admins. They care about what Fedora offers, but are not very interested in the lower level details on what changes a release brings and so on. They are concerned about higher level changes, such as changes to desktops, new tools, better upgrades, quicker boots and so on.
I like this approach. There's another axis I'd like to cover, though — within these levels, connect to the primary target audiences for the three editions, as defined in the PRDs:
* https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Workstation/Workstation_PRD#Target_Audience
* https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Server/Product_Requirements_Document#User_Pro...
* https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Cloud/Cloud_PRD#Target_Market_.2F_Audience
I'm on vacation, so I'm just throwing this out there. :) I can help fill out what this might mean when I get back.
Heya!
On Sun, 2015-07-12 at 16:01 -0400, Matthew Miller wrote:
I like this approach. There's another axis I'd like to cover, though — within these levels, connect to the primary target audiences for the three editions, as defined in the PRDs:
t_Audience
ent#User_Profiles.2C_Primary_Use_Cases_and_Goals
_Audience
+1
This is why I've been working on different flyers for each edition.
Now, if we do have edition specific flyers, I'd think they'd combine general information on each flyer and also quickly showcase what's new in the new release? The flyers could be user facing collateral, while the one page release notes could be community facing - with more text, no shiny images so that the ambassadors could make use of them and optionally, people interested in the details of the changes could go through of them. How does that sound?
I'm on vacation, so I'm just throwing this out there. :) I can help fill out what this might mean when I get back.
Alrighty! I just returned from a vacation yesterday which is why I hadn't replied yet. Enjoy yours :)
I'm documenting everything here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ankursinha/Marketing_Collateral_Ide as#Plan.3F
Please feel free to edit the page directly, everyone!
Hi,
On 07/12/2015 01:05 PM, Ankur Sinha wrote:
== Target audience ==
- Level 1 - Non Fedora users:
This set of users do not use Fedora yet. They are not aware of the products that Fedora offers - editions + spins + labs. They may also not be aware of the free software philosophy, the foundations and so on.
- Level 2 - Fedora end users:
Fedora users that are not developers and admins. They care about what Fedora offers, but are not very interested in the lower level details on what changes a release brings and so on. They are concerned about higher level changes, such as changes to desktops, new tools, better upgrades, quicker boots and so on.
- Level 3 - Advanced Fedora users:
Fedora users that are developers, upstreams, system admins, and so on. They care about lower level changes - what's changed in systemd, yum/dnf and so on.
Why would you market Fedora to folks who are already users and who are advanced users? What is the goal there? (Obviously not to get them to try it?)
Folks who are already users / advanced users aren't going to use a flyer or any printed / PDF document as a primary source for information. There are much better ways to reach these folks.
Work wise, it's not too much extra. We already do release notes and the flyers can come from there. The docs team also does beats and changes, so we can use stuff from there too.
We did release notes flyers for a couple releases or so [1] and gave up because the design team didn't have the capacity and the return on investment for the effort wasn't there. The release notes can't be dropped into a document layout as-is: they need significant editing work to be suitable for a quality flyer, and screenshots / images have to be sourced for the flyer.
~m
[1] eg https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F13_one_page_release_notes
On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 10:34:35AM -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
- Level 3 - Advanced Fedora users:
Fedora users that are developers, upstreams, system admins, and so on. They care about lower level changes - what's changed in systemd, yum/dnf and so on.
Why would you market Fedora to folks who are already users and who are advanced users? What is the goal there? (Obviously not to get them to try it?)
I can think of several:
* Convince them to move from advanced user to contributor
* Help enable them to be ambassadors (either in our official sense or more informally as advocates to other potential users)
* Simply to reinforce / retain loyalty
Folks who are already users / advanced users aren't going to use a flyer or any printed / PDF document as a primary source for information. There are much better ways to reach these folks.
Yeah, maybe paper isn't the best approach for this category.
On 07/28/2015 11:05 AM, Matthew Miller wrote:
On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 10:34:35AM -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
- Level 3 - Advanced Fedora users:
Fedora users that are developers, upstreams, system admins, and so on. They care about lower level changes - what's changed in systemd, yum/dnf and so on.
Why would you market Fedora to folks who are already users and who are advanced users? What is the goal there? (Obviously not to get them to try it?)
I can think of several:
- Convince them to move from advanced user to contributor
I'm not sure how release-specific materials would help achieve this end (once the release is out, it's a bit late to help out with feature x?) We have a lot of pre-existing non-release-specific materials on this on the wiki that could stand to use improvement and updating (although Fedora Hubs is, from my POV, the primary effort towards this goal right now; part of the idea of that is that our team joining/bootstrap processes vary so wildly across the project that a system that's a bit more flexible in capturing them for newbies is going to be better than having mostly out-of-date / non functional static content.)
- Help enable them to be ambassadors (either in our official sense or more informally as advocates to other potential users)
Again, this probably isn't release specific? Unless you're saying the already-users could use the materials to promote Fedora in their own context (which is fine, but then the actual reader of the material doesn't use it - again - so the focus is non-users, not already-existing users. The existing user's part in this equation is finding a link to the PDF to print it out.)
- Simply to reinforce / retain loyalty
That's where the swag comes in. :) Maria Leonova, who recently started as an intern on my team, is going to be working within the Fedora Design team on a long-term effort to clean up our print-ready swag designs and expand where deemed necessary. (Part of the process is going to involve interviewing ambassadors to figure out what kinds of swag are most effective / needed.)
Folks who are already users / advanced users aren't going to use a flyer or any printed / PDF document as a primary source for information. There are much better ways to reach these folks.
Yeah, maybe paper isn't the best approach for this category.
I'm really leery of printed materials in that they usually get dumped at or before the end of a conference / not super eco friendly, they take a *lot* of effort (reformatting for different geo regions is not always cake either), they cost money, and go out of date really quickly. The return on investment is usually pretty low IMHO, and it seems the wrong approach in many cases.
~m
On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 11:24:36AM -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
- Convince them to move from advanced user to contributor
I'm not sure how release-specific materials would help achieve this end (once the release is out, it's a bit late to help out with feature x?)
I guess I agree on that.
We have a lot of pre-existing non-release-specific materials on this on the wiki that could stand to use improvement and updating (although Fedora Hubs is, from my POV, the primary effort towards this goal right now; part of the idea of that is that our team joining/bootstrap processes vary so wildly across the project that a system that's a bit more flexible in capturing them for newbies is going to be better than having mostly out-of-date / non functional static content.)
+1 to both.
- Help enable them to be ambassadors (either in our official sense or more informally as advocates to other potential users)
Again, this probably isn't release specific? Unless you're saying the already-users could use the materials to promote Fedora in their own context (which is fine, but then the actual reader of the material doesn't use it - again - so the focus is non-users, not already-existing users. The existing user's part in this equation is finding a link to the PDF to print it out.)
Yes, promoting in their own context is exactly what I'm thinking. Helps someone become the go-to person in their organization for questions about what's new.
- Simply to reinforce / retain loyalty
That's where the swag comes in. :) Maria Leonova, who recently started as an intern on my team, is going to be working within the Fedora Design team on a long-term effort to clean up our print-ready swag designs and expand where deemed necessary. (Part of the process is going to involve interviewing ambassadors to figure out what kinds of swag are most effective / needed.)
Awesome.
I think here is only one possible option that can fit to everywhere. If we would like to have nice marketing, and easily share-able information, we should write an app for android. One side we have to provide digitally editable informations that we can easily spread it. This solution staying mobile, and not needs any paper, printing and more.
If we combine this with installer solution, I mean here - uploaded image on the mobile SD - every ambassador can bring to any event an install server in his/her pocket, or any files that is needed on presentation, or at booth.
If we update this android app every time before release, and gets enough support with as we did with talking points, and others - we cut an gordian knot, I think.
Zoltanh721
2015-07-28 17:05 GMT+02:00 Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org:
On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 10:34:35AM -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
- Level 3 - Advanced Fedora users:
Fedora users that are developers, upstreams, system admins, and so on. They care about lower level changes - what's changed in systemd, yum/dnf and so on.
Why would you market Fedora to folks who are already users and who are advanced users? What is the goal there? (Obviously not to get them to try it?)
I can think of several:
Convince them to move from advanced user to contributor
Help enable them to be ambassadors (either in our official sense or more informally as advocates to other potential users)
Simply to reinforce / retain loyalty
Folks who are already users / advanced users aren't going to use a flyer or any printed / PDF document as a primary source for information. There are much better ways to reach these folks.
Yeah, maybe paper isn't the best approach for this category.
-- Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org Fedora Project Leader -- marketing mailing list marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org List info or to change your subscription: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
On Tue, 2015-07-28 at 17:33 +0200, Zoltan Hoppar wrote:
I think here is only one possible option that can fit to everywhere. If we would like to have nice marketing, and easily share-able information, we should write an app for android. One side we have to provide digitally editable informations that we can easily spread it. This solution staying mobile, and not needs any paper, printing and more.
If we combine this with installer solution, I mean here - uploaded image on the mobile SD - every ambassador can bring to any event an install server in his/her pocket, or any files that is needed on presentation, or at booth.
If we update this android app every time before release, and gets enough support with as we did with talking points, and others - we cut an gordian knot, I think.
Hi Zoltahn,
The web alternative is a great idea as we've all noted in other e-mails on the thread. However, instead of a specific app, do you think your original idea of having something like Mozilla's press blog would be better? It'd be easier to update, accessible to everyone - not just android users, probably require less coding effort too?
On Tue, 2015-07-28 at 10:34 -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
- Level 3 - Advanced Fedora users:
Fedora users that are developers, upstreams, system admins, and so
on.
They care about lower level changes - what's changed in systemd, yum/dnf and so on.
Why would you market Fedora to folks who are already users and who are advanced users? What is the goal there? (Obviously not to get them to try it?)
Why not? Matthew already mentioned a few things. Why shouldn't advanced Fedora users that go to events be informed of what's new in a release? Even if they are advanced users, they don't necessarily keep up with the changes in each release the way we contributors do.
Folks who are already users / advanced users aren't going to use a flyer or any printed / PDF document as a primary source for information. There are much better ways to reach these folks.
This has been noted already[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ankursinha/Marketing_Collateral_Ide as
Work wise, it's not too much extra. We already do release notes and
the
flyers can come from there. The docs team also does beats and
changes,
so we can use stuff from there too.
We did release notes flyers for a couple releases or so [1] and gave up because the design team didn't have the capacity and the return on investment for the effort wasn't there. The release notes can't be dropped into a document layout as-is: they need significant editing work to be suitable for a quality flyer, and screenshots / images have to be sourced for the flyer.
The plan here is:
- to request the design team for scribus templates (you'd suggested this yourself in the meeting where my original e-mail was discussed) - to request the various WGs for text that will go into the flyer - for the marketing team to put this together and make the flyer available.
This spreads out the work load and I think it's quite manageable. I'm happy to run around and get the different WGs to provide text - I'm doing this already. The design team will not need to update the template each release either - it'll be a one off task.
On 07/28/2015 11:30 AM, Ankur Sinha wrote:
Why not? Matthew already mentioned a few things. Why shouldn't advanced Fedora users that go to events be informed of what's new in a release? Even if they are advanced users, they don't necessarily keep up with the changes in each release the way we contributors do.
See my reply to Matthew.
If they want to know at the booth what the latest features are, why not bring up the release notes on the booth laptop and show them, walk them through? You could even offer to email them the link if they don't have time to go through it there.
Folks who are already users / advanced users aren't going to use a flyer or any printed / PDF document as a primary source for information. There are much better ways to reach these folks.
This has been noted already[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ankursinha/Marketing_Collateral_Ide as
I see it noted in the chart. However, *print* materials are still suggested rather prominently in the actual proposal for these users. I disagree that this is necessary. The information (which I agree is of value to those audiences) can be shared with them without the need for printed materials.
There should probably be a 'general return on investment (effort/cost)' column added there too to help with evaluation. That's the reason we did release notes flyers before and don't do it anymore!
The plan here is:
- to request the design team for scribus templates (you'd suggested
this yourself in the meeting where my original e-mail was discussed)
Where are the minutes from this?
I knew I'd been involved in a discussion about this already, and I am disappointed that it seems a lot of the concerns and recommendations I remember bringing up as representative of the Design Team don't seem to be considered (as far as my memory goes, which I know may not be accurate.) It would be helpful to see the minutes as a refresher. I can't seem to find them on meetbot.
- to request the various WGs for text that will go into the flyer
Ryan, Robyduck, and I went through this process with trying to get text / content from the WGs for the new Fedora website. It is a lot of work - the different WGs have different meeting schedules and they are pretty much all volunteer so not a lot of spare time. To do that every release is going to be quite a challenge.
- for the marketing team to put this together and make the flyer
available.
This spreads out the work load and I think it's quite manageable. I'm happy to run around and get the different WGs to provide text - I'm doing this already. The design team will not need to update the template each release either - it'll be a one off task.
It's not... illustrations and photos have to be sourced as appropriate for each release's given feature set / announcements. Did you take a look at the example I provided before? Even the non-release specific photos showing community members have to be updated once in a while.
I'd really rather us point to a much more easily-managed web resource for this kind of content, because the end product quality is much easier to guarantee. We're (the design team) trying to up the bar on the materials we produce and associate with the Fedora brand. I think achieving that involves more design team input than us spitting out a scribus template one-time and dusting off our hands.
~m
On Tue, 2015-07-28 at 11:59 -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
On 07/28/2015 11:30 AM, Ankur Sinha wrote:
Why not? Matthew already mentioned a few things. Why shouldn't advanced Fedora users that go to events be informed of what's new in a release? Even if they are advanced users, they don't necessarily keep up with the changes in each release the way we contributors do.
See my reply to Matthew.
If they want to know at the booth what the latest features are, why not bring up the release notes on the booth laptop and show them, walk them through? You could even offer to email them the link if they don't have time to go through it there.
Well, not all the conversations we have are at booths with laptops around, are they? Booths generally have one or two contributors there and they can speak to one or two people at a time. Flyers can be given out to people that can read them at leisure, and even if they do end up in the bin, as long as they read the flyer, it served its purpose.
I really have no objections to not having flyers. I'm merely passing on information gathered from the discussion on the ambassadors list here. Some do feel tat flyers are a good idea, and if we don't want to produce them, we should have a better way of showing off what the products do and what's new and so on - an alternative that doesn't sacrifice on information content, basically.
The initial version of the plan had only one flyer - the timeless one which would provide some information on all the products. When Matthew suggested we follow an approach similar to the targeted products approach, I added the product specific flyers. I, frankly, have no other ideas on how to do this at the moment:
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/marketing/2015-July/017782.ht ml
https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=User%3AAnkursinha%2FMarketi ng_Collateral_Ideas&diff=418723&oldid=415777
Folks who are already users / advanced users aren't going to use a flyer or any printed / PDF document as a primary source for information. There are much better ways to reach these folks.
This has been noted already[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ankursinha/Marketing_Collateral _Ide as
I see it noted in the chart. However, *print* materials are still suggested rather prominently in the actual proposal for these users. I disagree that this is necessary. The information (which I agree is of value to those audiences) can be shared with them without the need for printed materials.
Great! Please add these other methods to the wiki page - gathering this information is the entire point of this RFC :)
There should probably be a 'general return on investment (effort/cost)' column added there too to help with evaluation. That's the reason we did release notes flyers before and don't do it anymore!
I thought that was because no one had the time - that they weren't high enough priority in the task list, not because they weren't required at all.
The plan here is:
- to request the design team for scribus templates (you'd suggested
this yourself in the meeting where my original e-mail was discussed)
Where are the minutes from this?
https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-design/2015-06-02/fedora-desig n.2015-06-02-16.02.log.html/
is where you'd suggested coming up a visual design and then in your feedback on the ML, you'd said LaTeX wasn't the best choice and Scribus would be much nicer.
Since this meeting log is being brought up, I'd like to say that this statement is incorrect:
16:59:14 <gnokii> well I told the guy last time that it is not his job to create them, he ignored it and the flyer got printed behind our back
At an EMEA meeting in December, Jiri had asked if any progress had been made on flyers since he'd like some for an upcoming event and I had said I could work on one, which is what they used:
http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2014-12-10/emea_ambassadors....
21:58:56 <sesivany> FranciscoD: do you have an idea if there has been any progress in flyers? That's what we identified as the most missing thing. To have flyers at least about the official products. 21:59:17 <FranciscoD> sesivany: there haven't been any - they haven't even been discussed recently 21:59:26 <sesivany> because we want to give away materials that hold some informaton. 21:59:32 <FranciscoD> I plan to work on the workstation flyer, but I havent been able to do much yet 21:59:35 <FranciscoD> hopefully this weekend 21:59:52 <FranciscoD> sesivany: can you assign that as an action item to me please? 22:00:17 <sesivany> FranciscoD: that's what I thought :-( They had all kinds of ideas about flyers and I was like: give me any, ANY flyer and I'll be happy :)
gnokii had curtly mentioned a ticket already being around and that it was being worked on - it wasn't, and the ticket was already 4 months old and still unaccepted at the time of the meeting (noted later in the meeting) . It was filed in August last year and Paul closed the ticket in January. I had, therefore, gone ahead and made a workstation flyer.
I knew I'd been involved in a discussion about this already, and I am disappointed that it seems a lot of the concerns and recommendations I remember bringing up as representative of the Design Team don't seem to be considered (as far as my memory goes, which I know may not be accurate.) It would be helpful to see the minutes as a refresher. I can't seem to find them on meetbot.
I'm sorry if it seems like the design teams input was not considered. It was because of the feedback that I'd received from the design folks that I took a step back and went to the ambassadors for their input. I put all the info and feedback I had out to the ambassadors and marketing teams. There have been various views on the marketing collateral and I've done my best to put them on the wiki page there, which I've regularly encouraged people to view and edit.
- to request the various WGs for text that will go into the flyer
Ryan, Robyduck, and I went through this process with trying to get text / content from the WGs for the new Fedora website. It is a lot of work - the different WGs have different meeting schedules and they are pretty much all volunteer so not a lot of spare time. To do that every release is going to be quite a challenge.
I understand. I've done it again recently - the council briefly discussed this in an open floor meeting too - and we received responses from the WGs already. They need to be reminded of the task and I'm happy take up the task of reminding them. On the other hand, if it does become a task that needs to be done each release, it can be added to the per release task lists that the Fedora program manager publishes, and that will hopefully imply that we'll have to do less work to get the information.
- for the marketing team to put this together and make the flyer
available.
This spreads out the work load and I think it's quite manageable. I'm happy to run around and get the different WGs to provide text - I'm doing this already. The design team will not need to update the template each release either - it'll be a one off task.
It's not... illustrations and photos have to be sourced as appropriate for each release's given feature set / announcements. Did you take a look at the example I provided before? Even the non-release specific photos showing community members have to be updated once in a while.
Oh? Well, I'd done this, and it was sort of easy - probably because I didn't do any design work at all - and I left alignment and everything else to LaTeX:
https://ankursinha.fedorapeople.org/fedora-flyer-workstation/fedora-fly er-workstation.pdf
I'd used LaTeX because it resulted in something very similar to the older odt flyer: https://github.com/sanjayankur31/fedora-release-flyer-generic/blob/mast er/flyers/2010-06/fedora-flyer-2010-06-ind-en.odt?raw=true
I'd really rather us point to a much more easily-managed web resource for this kind of content, because the end product quality is much easier to guarantee.
This is a great idea, and zoltahn has made this suggestion already - something on the lines of Mozilla's press blog. We could just come up with QR codes and things that take people to the relevant web locations.
Unfortunately neither zoltahn's initial suggestion nor my reiteration received any feedback and the idea didn't get anywhere:
https://fedorahosted.org/marketing-team/ticket/177#comment:6
and point 3 here: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/marketing/2015-June/017546.ht ml
We're (the design team) trying to up the bar on the materials we produce and associate with the Fedora brand. I think achieving that involves more design team input than us spitting out a scribus template one-time and dusting off our hands.
That's good to know. The goal of this thread is to improve the collateral plan until we have stuff that meets everyone's standards at least: - design wise - content and information wise - work load wise - ??
So, all input is welcome. Please edit the wiki page directly when you need to.
On 07/28/2015 01:57 PM, Ankur Sinha wrote:
Well, not all the conversations we have are at booths with laptops around, are they? Booths generally have one or two contributors there and they can speak to one or two people at a time. Flyers can be given out to people that can read them at leisure, and even if they do end up in the bin, as long as they read the flyer, it served its purpose.
People don't go to conferences to pick up flyers they can download at home / read at their leisure on the web. They cost too much for that. They go to meet people. I have manned many, many, many tech conference booths over the past decade. Folks are interested in talking to you and ask questions, to pick up swag / free items, or both. Rarely are they interested in the flyers unless you really press them to pick up one (eg "get a chance to win our raffle") or if they are really good reusable reference material they can refer to again and again (eg the cheat cube.)
I really have no objections to not having flyers. I'm merely passing on information gathered from the discussion on the ambassadors list here.
I read the full ambassadors-list thread. For ref https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2015-June/023543.html
Some do feel tat flyers are a good idea, and if we don't want to produce them, we should have a better way of showing off what the products do and what's new and so on - an alternative that doesn't sacrifice on information content, basically.
I also saw a lot of feedback on the thread saying that the flyers were wasteful and usually ended up in the conference trash bin. I also saw a lot of suggestions for alternative ways of achieving the same goal, such as a scripted demo or slideshow.
The initial version of the plan had only one flyer - the timeless one which would provide some information on all the products. When Matthew suggested we follow an approach similar to the targeted products approach, I added the product specific flyers. I, frankly, have no other ideas on how to do this at the moment:
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/marketing/2015-July/017782.ht ml
https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=User%3AAnkursinha%2FMarketi ng_Collateral_Ideas&diff=418723&oldid=415777
I don't follow how product-specific flyers leads into needing release-specific flyers, though?
I see it noted in the chart. However, *print* materials are still suggested rather prominently in the actual proposal for these users. I disagree that this is necessary. The information (which I agree is of value to those audiences) can be shared with them without the need for printed materials.
Great! Please add these other methods to the wiki page - gathering this information is the entire point of this RFC :)
I am happy to provide suggestions and help with feedback but I don't have the cycles to commit to edit the proposal.
There should probably be a 'general return on investment (effort/cost)' column added there too to help with evaluation. That's the reason we did release notes flyers before and don't do it anymore!
I thought that was because no one had the time - that they weren't high enough priority in the task list, not because they weren't required at all.
They would never hit high enough priority because the return was never good enough compared to everything else in the queue. Assume time is always constrained with volunteer-based teams!
The plan here is:
- to request the design team for scribus templates (you'd suggested
this yourself in the meeting where my original e-mail was discussed)
Where are the minutes from this?
https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-design/2015-06-02/fedora-desig n.2015-06-02-16.02.log.html/
is where you'd suggested coming up a visual design and then in your feedback on the ML, you'd said LaTeX wasn't the best choice and Scribus would be much nicer.
That log is regular design-team meeting minutes. This isn't what I was referencing (it turns out it was the design-team thread I was thinking of, see below.)
When I said we should come up with a visual design and a scribus template, that was for the 'timeless' flyer, not for release-specific flyers.
For example:
"one thing that came up is that the content is very release-specific and thus not very 'timeless' in that if a large print run was done, the extras wouldn't be able to be used for very long. [...] "
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2015-June/007185.html
No answers to these questions:
"So what is the motivation to give them out at events? What is the goal of making them available? How are ambassadors using them at event tables? Do we have any specific feedback from ambassadors about how useful they were, specific feedback about how booth visitors use them / how the ambassadors might use them to direct a conversation / etc? Are there specific ambassadors we can talk to in order to get this information? Are these only meant to be given out at events or are there other anticipated applications?"
also
"This is definitely not a recurring item on the design team's task list because the design team does not (well we try very hard not to) come up with content and we honestly don't have the manpower to update something like that every single release - the cost / benefit analysis doesn't really show a good payoff there for the effort expended vs other projects we typically have on our plate. Providing outdated material IMHO is worse than providing no material at all. I also strongly believe any material we do produce needs to have a well-defined goal and purpose so we can assess whether or not it is successful over time and tweak it to keep it useful (or drop it if it no longer is.)"
No answer to this q:
"How would these four pieces of material (1 generic + 1 per Fedora edition) interact though? Remember that folks at conferences are picking up an awful lot of stuff, and there needs to be a clear story about the relationship between the materials we offer. (I'm not saying there isn't, just that I don't know what it is.)"
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2015-June/007187.html
Since this meeting log is being brought up, I'd like to say that this statement is incorrect:
16:59:14 <gnokii> well I told the guy last time that it is not his job to create them, he ignored it and the flyer got printed behind our back
Understand that the design team is the team primarily responsible for Fedora's visual brand identity, and when materials are produced without some level of collaboration or at a minimum communication with us, it's a challenging situation for us. We like to have a reasonable level of input / control over the quality and design of official visual materials handed out in Fedora's name seeing as its our responsibility. It's from this context that I believe the quote above is coming from.
I'm sorry if it seems like the design teams input was not considered. It was because of the feedback that I'd received from the design folks that I took a step back and went to the ambassadors for their input. I put all the info and feedback I had out to the ambassadors and marketing teams. There have been various views on the marketing collateral and I've done my best to put them on the wiki page there, which I've regularly encouraged people to view and edit.
Your efforts are appreciated on gathering the info and documenting it in the wiki.
I think what might work a little better than telling folks (who've already indicated they are time-strapped) to view and edit the wiki would be to organize a project team around this (since it's a significant project), have regular meetings, assign tasks to folks, set milestones, etc. Because in the absence of direction, it's not likely a Fedora-like collaborative effort that brings about the best output is going to happen.
On the other hand, if it does become a task that needs to be done each release, it can be added to the per release task lists that the Fedora program manager publishes, and that will hopefully imply that we'll have to do less work to get the information.
"hopefully" is a key word there :)
Oh? Well, I'd done this, and it was sort of easy - probably because I didn't do any design work at all - and I left alignment and everything else to LaTeX:
https://ankursinha.fedorapeople.org/fedora-flyer-workstation/fedora-fly er-workstation.pdf
This, unfortunately but honestly, isn't a design that would pass muster were it filed as a design-team ticket. There's a number of issues that would need to be addressed before I would feel comfortable having something like this printed up. Which is perfectly understandable - you're not a designer, this isn't based on a designed template.
I'd really rather us point to a much more easily-managed web resource for this kind of content, because the end product quality is much easier to guarantee.
This is a great idea, and zoltahn has made this suggestion already - something on the lines of Mozilla's press blog. We could just come up with QR codes and things that take people to the relevant web locations.
Unfortunately neither zoltahn's initial suggestion nor my reiteration received any feedback and the idea didn't get anywhere:
https://fedorahosted.org/marketing-team/ticket/177#comment:6
This is a comment on a ticket. I think it is a very good idea that could help solve some of the problems I've mentioned, but ideas take a bit more work to realize than a comment on a ticket, no? Nor is this idea listed on your wiki matrix.
and point 3 here: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/marketing/2015-June/017546.ht ml
So how do you envision this (very good) idea to get anywhere? When people bring up ideas in Fedora, they unfortunately don't just happen. (I proposed the idea for Fedora Hubs at least a year before any actual development work or real mockups were created.) Just because an idea was posted somewhere - as fabulous as it may be - the fact that it doesn't automagically come into being A Thing doesn't mean people think it's a bad idea or not worth working on, it means it needs some direction and management.
We're (the design team) trying to up the bar on the materials we produce and associate with the Fedora brand. I think achieving that involves more design team input than us spitting out a scribus template one-time and dusting off our hands.
That's good to know. The goal of this thread is to improve the collateral plan until we have stuff that meets everyone's standards at least:
- design wise
- content and information wise
- work load wise
- ??
So, all input is welcome. Please edit the wiki page directly when you need to.
See above on telling time-strapped folks to edit wikis.
I hope this makes sense and is fair,
~m
On Tue, 2015-07-28 at 14:56 -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
On 07/28/2015 01:57 PM, Ankur Sinha wrote:
<snip>
People don't go to conferences to pick up flyers they can download at home / read at their leisure on the web. They cost too much for that. They go to meet people. I have manned many, many, many tech conference booths over the past decade. Folks are interested in talking to you and ask questions, to pick up swag / free items, or both. Rarely are they interested in the flyers unless you really press them to pick up one (eg "get a chance to win our raffle") or if they are really good reusable reference material they can refer to again and again (eg the cheat cube.)
Fair enough. You are the design team representative here, and if you are convinced that flyers are unnecessary I'm more than happy to remove them from the plan.
I really have no objections to not having flyers. I'm merely passing on information gathered from the discussion on the ambassadors list here.
I read the full ambassadors-list thread. For ref https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2015-June/02354 3.html
Some do feel tat flyers are a good idea, and if we don't want to produce them, we should have a better way of showing off what the products do and what's new and so on - an alternative that doesn't sacrifice on information content, basically.
I also saw a lot of feedback on the thread saying that the flyers were wasteful and usually ended up in the conference trash bin. I also saw a lot of suggestions for alternative ways of achieving the same goal, such as a scripted demo or slideshow.
This is the first point of the plan on the wiki page:
1. Release video/presentation - to be run at booths
The initial version of the plan had only one flyer - the timeless one which would provide some information on all the products. When Matthew suggested we follow an approach similar to the targeted products approach, I added the product specific flyers. I, frankly, have no other ideas on how to do this at the moment:
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/marketing/2015-July/01778 2.ht ml
https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=User%3AAnkursinha%2FMar keti ng_Collateral_Ideas&diff=418723&oldid=415777
I don't follow how product-specific flyers leads into needing release-specific flyers, though?
They don't, which is why the wiki page also mentions a "timeless" flyer. This is point 2 on the plan:
2. Timeless flyer giving information on the three products. This will contain an introduction to the three products, and links (QR coded?) on where to download them and look for help and so on - for new folks.
Similarly, the new point I added today goes:
3. Product specific flyers - combining more info on the products and a bit about what's new in the release
I envisioned this as largely timeless material with minute changes to mention what a new release brings.
Given that flyers are being moved off the plan, all of this is not very applicable.
I see it noted in the chart. However, *print* materials are still suggested rather prominently in the actual proposal for these users. I disagree that this is necessary. The information (which I agree is of value to those audiences) can be shared with them without the need for printed materials.
Great! Please add these other methods to the wiki page - gathering this information is the entire point of this RFC :)
I am happy to provide suggestions and help with feedback but I don't have the cycles to commit to edit the proposal.
Suggestions will do well.
There should probably be a 'general return on investment (effort/cost)' column added there too to help with evaluation. That's the reason we did release notes flyers before and don't do it anymore!
I thought that was because no one had the time - that they weren't high enough priority in the task list, not because they weren't required at all.
They would never hit high enough priority because the return was never good enough compared to everything else in the queue.
Assume time is always constrained with volunteer-based teams!
It's because I am aware of time constraints that I'm working on the marketing collateral plan pretty much by myself - I know how busy the rest of the marketing team is with the magazine and other tasks.
The plan here is:
- to request the design team for scribus templates (you'd
suggested this yourself in the meeting where my original e-mail was discussed)
Where are the minutes from this?
https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-design/2015-06-02/fedora-d esig n.2015-06-02-16.02.log.html/
is where you'd suggested coming up a visual design and then in your feedback on the ML, you'd said LaTeX wasn't the best choice and Scribus would be much nicer.
That log is regular design-team meeting minutes. This isn't what I was referencing (it turns out it was the design-team thread I was thinking of, see below.)
When I said we should come up with a visual design and a scribus template, that was for the 'timeless' flyer, not for release-specific flyers.
OK. Now, given how you don't think flyers are helpful at all, should we have a timeless flyer at all, or do we just skip flyers altogether?
For example:
"one thing that came up is that the content is very release-specific and thus not very 'timeless' in that if a large print run was done, the extras wouldn't be able to be used for very long. [...] "
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2015-June/00718 5.html
No answers to these questions:
Ah, my mistake. Here goes:
"So what is the motivation to give them out at events?
To make sure information about Fedora is available at events for the different target audiences. Information about Fedora can either be timeless - generic information about products and so on OR release specific which will cover things like the new features that a release brings.
What is the goal of making them available?
To ensure that community members that go to events with a Fedora presence have enough resources to be able to spread information about Fedora as explained above.
How are ambassadors using them at event tables?
Er, in different ways: - swag is given out to reinforce user loyalty, as Matthew said - flyers and other printed material are useful when someone with limited knowledge of Fedora turns up. Ambassadors can use flyers to explain the different products, for example, the workstation flyer contained information on gnome-software, dev assistant and so on. It helps showcase this information, which otherwise is only available on the Changes wiki or the release notes, neither of which are very user friendly nor "shiny".
Do we have any specific feedback from ambassadors about how useful they were, specific feedback about how booth visitors use them / how the ambassadors might use them to direct a conversation / etc?
Lots of feedback on the ambassadors thread.
Ambassadors have never specifically discussed how anything can be used to direct a conversation - neither has the marketing team, nor has the design team. It's all very informal - chat with people, see how it goes - such detailed marketing strategies and things have not been discussed, or if they have been, I am not aware of it.
Are there specific ambassadors we can talk to in order to get this information?
The ambassadors list is full of them, which is why I began the thread there.
Are these only meant to be given out at events or are there other anticipated applications?"
Mainly events. No other applications came up as far as I remember.
also
"This is definitely not a recurring item on the design team's task list because the design team does not (well we try very hard not to) come up with content and we honestly don't have the manpower to update something like that every single release - the cost / benefit analysis doesn't really show a good payoff there for the effort expended vs other projects we typically have on our plate. Providing outdated material IMHO is worse than providing no material at all. I also strongly believe any material we do produce needs to have a well-defined goal and purpose so we can assess whether or not it is successful over time and tweak it to keep it useful (or drop it if it no longer is.)"
Which is why this and other threads have happened - to come up with a plan before different teams are requested to carry out different tasks.
No answer to this q:
"How would these four pieces of material (1 generic + 1 per Fedora edition) interact though? Remember that folks at conferences are picking up an awful lot of stuff, and there needs to be a clear story about the relationship between the materials we offer. (I'm not saying there isn't, just that I don't know what it is.)"
Again, this is why the discussion is happening - to decide on what collateral will be given out.
*One* way, if we do have flyers, is to have a generic flyer which covers pretty much all of Fedora - products + spins + labs; and then product specific flyers for folks that are more interested in them and so on.
I'm a bit curious: how are all these questions coming up now? We've had marketing collateral for a while - were these questions not addressed in the past already? The plan isn't introducing anything new really, is it? Is the idea to revisit the entire set?
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2015-June/00718 7.html
Since this meeting log is being brought up, I'd like to say that this statement is incorrect:
16:59:14 <gnokii> well I told the guy last time that it is not his job to create them, he ignored it and the flyer got printed behind our back
Understand that the design team is the team primarily responsible for Fedora's visual brand identity, and when materials are produced without some level of collaboration or at a minimum communication with us, it's a challenging situation for us. We like to have a reasonable level of input / control over the quality and design of official visual materials handed out in Fedora's name seeing as its our responsibility. It's from this context that I believe the quote above is coming from.
I understand what you're saying, but in this case: this member of the design team was aware of the requirement - he attended the meeting where the flyer was discussed, he pointed out to a trac ticket filed on the design trac - the trac ticket had not seen activity in months. So, there was an attempt at collaboration, and input, and at least one member of the team was aware that Jiri really wanted a flyer for an event. Nothing happened, so I made a simple one that is *very very* similar to a past flyer. So, no, I don't see how that quote fits, and I do not think I did anything behind anyone's back.
Had said contributor clearly asked me not to work on the task *because* the design team or said contributor himself would do it (instead of making snide remarks), I'd have stopped - I'm not looking to take up tasks that I needn't. I have quite enough work to do already.
I'm sorry if it seems like the design teams input was not considered. It was because of the feedback that I'd received from the design folks that I took a step back and went to the ambassadors for their input. I put all the info and feedback I had out to the ambassadors and marketing teams. There have been various views on the marketing collateral and I've done my best to put them on the wiki page there, which I've regularly encouraged people to view and edit.
Your efforts are appreciated on gathering the info and documenting it in the wiki.
I think what might work a little better than telling folks (who've already indicated they are time-strapped) to view and edit the wiki would be to organize a project team around this (since it's a significant project), have regular meetings, assign tasks to folks, set milestones, etc. Because in the absence of direction, it's not likely a Fedora-like collaborative effort that brings about the best output is going to happen.
This may or may not work. Being a time-strapped person myself - I'm doing my PhD now, so I certainly find it difficult to keep up with Fedora tasks myself - I'd rather not ask other task-strapped people to join another mailing list, attend more meetings and I'd rather not assign tasks to anyone. The entire point of me using the different mailing lists is that interested people on these lists help out where they want to, and if this hasn't happened after all this discussion, I hardly think we'd have anyone voluntarily join a special new project team for this task.
Maybe CommOps will help with this. I don't know.
On the other hand, if it does become a task that needs to be done each release, it can be added to the per release task lists that the Fedora program manager publishes, and that will hopefully imply that we'll have to do less work to get the information.
"hopefully" is a key word there :)
Oh? Well, I'd done this, and it was sort of easy - probably because I didn't do any design work at all - and I left alignment and everything else to LaTeX:
https://ankursinha.fedorapeople.org/fedora-flyer-workstation/fedora -fly er-workstation.pdf
This, unfortunately but honestly, isn't a design that would pass muster were it filed as a design-team ticket. There's a number of issues that would need to be addressed before I would feel comfortable having something like this printed up.
Oh? Given how similar it is to the older flyer, I thought it'd be fine. Anyway, you're the design person - you know best. (I did take your advice and changed the font to OpenSans, for example.)
Which is perfectly understandable - you're not a designer, this isn't based on a designed template.
No denying this :D
I'd really rather us point to a much more easily-managed web resource for this kind of content, because the end product quality is much easier to guarantee.
This is a great idea, and zoltahn has made this suggestion already
something on the lines of Mozilla's press blog. We could just come up with QR codes and things that take people to the relevant web locations.
Unfortunately neither zoltahn's initial suggestion nor my reiteration received any feedback and the idea didn't get anywhere:
https://fedorahosted.org/marketing-team/ticket/177#comment:6
This is a comment on a ticket. I think it is a very good idea that could help solve some of the problems I've mentioned, but ideas take a bit more work to realize than a comment on a ticket, no? Nor is this idea listed on your wiki matrix.
Well, since you've mentioned teams being time strapped, there's only so much an individual volunteer can do by himself.
It isn't on the matrix because: a. it isn't exactly marketing collateral - it's a system that may replace some of the collateral and requires more than design+mktg+ambassadors - probably infra + coding and so on. b. it didn't get any feedback when I mentioned it on the mktg list, so I simply dropped it.
and point 3 here: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/marketing/2015-June/01754 6.ht ml
So how do you envision this (very good) idea to get anywhere?
It'll get somewhere if/when someone with more time can work on it. That person isn't me.
When people bring up ideas in Fedora, they unfortunately don't just happen.
(I proposed the idea for Fedora Hubs at least a year before any actual development work or real mockups were created.) Just because an idea was posted somewhere - as fabulous as it may be - the fact that it doesn't automagically come into being A Thing doesn't mean people think it's a bad idea or not worth working on, it means it needs some direction and management.
I know all this. Like I said, I simply haven't the time to do it myself.
We're (the design team) trying to up the bar on the materials we produce and associate with the Fedora brand. I think achieving that involves more design team input than us spitting out a scribus template one-time and dusting off our hands.
That's good to know. The goal of this thread is to improve the collateral plan until we have stuff that meets everyone's standards at least:
- design wise
- content and information wise
- work load wise
- ??
So, all input is welcome. Please edit the wiki page directly when you need to.
See above on telling time-strapped folks to edit wikis.
Well, the wiki is what we have for the time being, so it'll have to do. They can reply to the mailing list thread if they have the time, but I'm afraid there isn't anything more that can be done to encourage busy volunteers to volunteer their time.
I hope this makes sense and is fair,
I hope the same about my reply.
Hi, I have to support Ankur here. I've been to countless events of various kinds and with different audiences, often as a Fedora event owner. I've also been running swag&marketing material production and distribution in EMEA for the last couple of years, so I think I quite know what works and what doesn't.
First we need to admit that we have a problem. Our booth materials are not good, at least not good for all our target audiences.
I'm frankly a bit tired of producing swag with just Fedora logos everywhere. This works for people who have some attachment to Fedora (contributors, users,...), but it doesn't do any marketing outreach. Yes, there is a small group of geeks who put whatever sticker they get at conferences on their laptops, but doesn't help anyway since people without any prior awareness of Fedora just think it's some variant of Facebook logo.
Unfortunately our current swag offering doesn't work for potential users who come to our booth out of curiosity and might be willing to try Fedora. Giving them a sticker or button with Fedora logo is useless because they don't have any attachment to the brand (yet). I want to give them something that will help them look for more info and ideally give them some incentive to try and install Fedora. And that's not a Fedora sticker which carries zero information.
DVDs have worked that way a bit. They don't carry a lot of information, but it's an incentive to try Fedora: take the disk, put it in the drive, here is some info how to spin off the live session,... But DVDs are going away and we don't have anything else for this audience.
Flyers might not be the best idea, but they are still the best thing I have had at a Fedora booth for the audience I described above. I remember when we had Fedora Cloud flyers at LinuxCon Europe for the first time. They were running out much faster than Fedora stickers or badges. And they were not very nicely done because we made them very last minute.
In the Czech community of Fedora, we're currently working on "Getting Started with Fedora" guide which should be tailored for the audience described above. It should get them from "I visited a Fedora booth" to "I've installed Fedora and am getting familiar with it" (where to get it, how to get it on a usb stick, how to install it, how to get oriented in it). If it proves to be working in CZ, we'll translate it to English and offer it here as a global effort. So hopefully we will have some replacement for DVDs and something better than flyers.
BTW when you think of a typical consumer of our marketing materials, please don't only think of audiences of conferences such as OSCON or FOSDEM. We're well-known there, we go there mostly to maintain a relationship with our user base and image in the open source community, not to get new users. But if you go outside the open source community shell you'll find out that awareness of Fedora is pretty non-existent. And that's where we should focus to get new users and that's where our current swag, which only carry our brand and no information, won't work.
Jiri
P.S. I would argue about the low return on investment. The equation is not only about return, it's also about investment and at least from the production point of view, flyers are one of the cheapest marketing materials to make.
On 07/29/2015 12:05 PM, Jiri Eischmann wrote:
Flyers might not be the best idea, but they are still the best thing I have had at a Fedora booth for the audience I described above. I remember when we had Fedora Cloud flyers at LinuxCon Europe for the first time. They were running out much faster than Fedora stickers or badges. And they were not very nicely done because we made them very last minute.
To be clear, I don't have much issue with a general Fedora flyer (we should have a general Fedora preso too) - it's the release specific ones, per product, where I don't think it's worth it because the audience that would care about the changes from release to release is clearly not the same audience you're looking to reach with a general Fedora flyer.
I think the booklet you are planning is also a brilliant idea and will go a long way.
I would really like to see us get away from 'last minute' 'thrown together' materials and rather have them designed properly and reflect our brand appropriately. I am more than happy to help getting us there with a general Fedora flyer design that could be updated from time to time.
What I am not interested in is an additional 3 release-specific deliverables put on my team's schedule every release without our consent, especially when we've had that deliverable in the past and usually end up being the ones responsible for the content when it's not provided to us in time to do the design on schedule. And the alternative to it being a recurring item on our schedule of a template to be filled in by a non-designer is not okay from my perspective because the results that produces are not where we want our branding and marketing materials to be. I would rather nothing than something representing Fedora that looks unprofessional and causes derision of our ability to design things leading potential users to think our OS is as badly designed as poorly-done print materials handed out in our name.
BTW when you think of a typical consumer of our marketing materials, please don't only think of audiences of conferences such as OSCON or FOSDEM. We're well-known there, we go there mostly to maintain a relationship with our user base and image in the open source community, not to get new users. But if you go outside the open source community shell you'll find out that awareness of Fedora is pretty non-existent. And that's where we should focus to get new users and that's where our current swag, which only carry our brand and no information, won't work.
That is completely fair, and why I think a general, non release-specific flyer is a reasonable idea for the non-user audience (as I have already said multiple times.)
P.S. I would argue about the low return on investment. The equation is not only about return, it's also about investment and at least from the production point of view, flyers are one of the cheapest marketing materials to make.
Investment isn't just about money, it's about the time and effort expended by the design team on putting 3 flyers together every release when they could be working on projects like Fedora Hubs or installer improvements or the release artwork. It's primarily that part of the investment I'm talking about when I'm talking about low return. Especially when a clear outline of recurring responsibilities regarding the required work items my team would need that would need to be provided to us appears to be non-existent.
~m
Máirín Duffy píše v St 29. 07. 2015 v 12:20 -0400:
On 07/29/2015 12:05 PM, Jiri Eischmann wrote:
Flyers might not be the best idea, but they are still the best thing I have had at a Fedora booth for the audience I described above. I remember when we had Fedora Cloud flyers at LinuxCon Europe for the first time. They were running out much faster than Fedora stickers or badges. And they were not very nicely done because we made them very last minute.
To be clear, I don't have much issue with a general Fedora flyer (we should have a general Fedora preso too) - it's the release specific ones, per product, where I don't think it's worth it because the audience that would care about the changes from release to release is clearly not the same audience you're looking to reach with a general Fedora flyer.
I think the booklet you are planning is also a brilliant idea and will go a long way.
I would really like to see us get away from 'last minute' 'thrown together' materials and rather have them designed properly and reflect our brand appropriately. I am more than happy to help getting us there with a general Fedora flyer design that could be updated from time to time.
What I am not interested in is an additional 3 release-specific deliverables put on my team's schedule every release without our consent, especially when we've had that deliverable in the past and usually end up being the ones responsible for the content when it's not provided to us in time to do the design on schedule. And the alternative to it being a recurring item on our schedule of a template to be filled in by a non-designer is not okay from my perspective because the results that produces are not where we want our branding and marketing materials to be. I would rather nothing than something representing Fedora that looks unprofessional and causes derision of our ability to design things leading potential users to think our OS is as badly designed as poorly-done print materials handed out in our name.
BTW when you think of a typical consumer of our marketing materials, please don't only think of audiences of conferences such as OSCON or FOSDEM. We're well-known there, we go there mostly to maintain a relationship with our user base and image in the open source community, not to get new users. But if you go outside the open source community shell you'll find out that awareness of Fedora is pretty non -existent. And that's where we should focus to get new users and that's where our current swag, which only carry our brand and no information, won't work.
That is completely fair, and why I think a general, non release -specific flyer is a reasonable idea for the non-user audience (as I have already said multiple times.)
P.S. I would argue about the low return on investment. The equation is not only about return, it's also about investment and at least from the production point of view, flyers are one of the cheapest marketing materials to make.
Investment isn't just about money, it's about the time and effort expended by the design team on putting 3 flyers together every release when they could be working on projects like Fedora Hubs or installer improvements or the release artwork. It's primarily that part of the investment I'm talking about when I'm talking about low return. Especially when a clear outline of recurring responsibilities regarding the required work items my team would need that would need to be provided to us appears to be non-existent.
OK, that was a bit of misunderstanding, I thought you were arguing against all fliers.
It'd be nice to have at least three nicely done release non-specific fliers: Workstation, Server, Cloud.
As a bonus, something tailored for specific user bases would be nice (developers - python/ruby/C/..., designers,...). I remember the fliers for graphics designers and video makers were quite popular.
Those can last at least several releases. Release-specific fliers are not a must IMHO.
BTW this is a sample of the booklet we're working on: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B30peRG8NZqGTm8yVV9JUUNDRjQ/view It's in Czech and the last chapter and some pictures are yet to be added, but you can get an idea of what we're working on. Maria is doing a cover for the booklet.
Jiri
On Thu, 2015-07-30 at 14:09 +0200, Jiri Eischmann wrote:
It'd be nice to have at least three nicely done release non-specific fliers: Workstation, Server, Cloud.
I'm not sure what we've settled on. Is it:
- 1 general timeless fedora flyer?
Or is it:
- 1 general timeless fedora flyers - 3 product specific timeless fedora flyers?
I'll update the plan accordingly.
I'm happy to run circles around the different product WGs to get the required text from them and deliver it to the design team.
On Tue, Aug 04, 2015 at 05:18:30PM +0100, Ankur Sinha wrote:
- 1 general timeless fedora flyers
- 3 product specific timeless fedora flyers?
I'm in favor of this one.
I'll update the plan accordingly. I'm happy to run circles around the different product WGs to get the required text from them and deliver it to the design team.
Awesome.
On 08/04/2015 12:18 PM, Ankur Sinha wrote:
- 3 product specific timeless fedora flyers?
I think it's just this. Any one general one you had would really be the workstation one anyway. So just do one on workstation, one on server, one on cloud, all 'timeless' with updates time to time with major feature additions / updates / improvements. It should really mirror the content on the site for each of the editions on getfedora.org, and if anything on getfedora.org needs updating it should be updated so they match.
~m
On Tue, 2015-08-04 at 12:29 -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
On 08/04/2015 12:18 PM, Ankur Sinha wrote:
- 3 product specific timeless fedora flyers?
I think it's just this. Any one general one you had would really be the workstation one anyway. So just do one on workstation, one on server, one on cloud, all 'timeless' with updates time to time with major feature additions / updates / improvements.
I had added the general one so that the spins, labs and arm could get some visibility too. They get skipped if we only do product specific ones. What do you think?
It should really mirror the content on the site for each of the editions on getfedora.org, and if anything on getfedora.org needs updating it should be updated so they match.
That makes sense. I'll go find out if there are any updates planned to getfedora.org for F23. If it isn't, should I still ask the WGs for text or will the text be taken from the site?
On 08/04/2015 12:35 PM, Ankur Sinha wrote:
I had added the general one so that the spins, labs and arm could get some visibility too. They get skipped if we only do product specific ones. What do you think?
I think those are too specialized for the audience best served by flyers.
That makes sense. I'll go find out if there are any updates planned to getfedora.org for F23. If it isn't, should I still ask the WGs for text or will the text be taken from the site?
It would be really awesome if you could ask the WGs about the text on their respective getfedora.org pages and if they'd like to make updates. We haven't gotten around to that on websites yet. I can make any needed text changes to the website to match the brochure text that falls out of that. Seem fair?
~m
On Tue, 2015-08-04 at 12:43 -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
It would be really awesome if you could ask the WGs about the text on their respective getfedora.org pages and if they'd like to make updates. We haven't gotten around to that on websites yet. I can make any needed text changes to the website to match the brochure text that falls out of that. Seem fair?
++
I'll get on this right away.
On Tue, 2015-08-04 at 17:48 +0100, Ankur Sinha wrote:
I'll get on this right away.
Just a heads up. I thought it'd be better if I sent out the mail to the WGs once everyone is back from Flock.
On Fri, 2015-08-14 at 16:55 +0100, Ankur Sinha wrote:
Just a heads up. I thought it'd be better if I sent out the mail to the WGs once everyone is back from Flock.
I've mailed the workstation and server mailing lists and updated the ticket on the cloud trac. I'll follow it up with them in the next few days.
On Fri, 2015-08-21 at 14:55 +0100, Ankur Sinha wrote:
I've mailed the workstation and server mailing lists and updated the ticket on the cloud trac. I'll follow it up with them in the next few days.
So, this is now complete. I was waiting for the Cloud WG to make their changes which were done recently. The cloud folks will make major changes before F24, though - mizmo is already working on this.
I think the next bit now are the timeless product flyers. Mizmo, should I file a design ticket to get this task started up (if the design team has the time)?
On 09/29/2015 10:53 AM, Ankur Sinha wrote:
I think the next bit now are the timeless product flyers. Mizmo, should I file a design ticket to get this task started up (if the design team has the time)?
I wouldn't file a design ticket for the design of it before the content exists.
~m
On Tue, 2015-09-29 at 14:48 -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
I wouldn't file a design ticket for the design of it before the content exists.
Wasn't the plan to use the content from the websites?
On Tue, Aug 04, 2015 at 12:29:31PM -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
- 3 product specific timeless fedora flyers?
I think it's just this. Any one general one you had would really be the workstation one anyway. So just do one on workstation, one on
Just thinking out loud here, but maybe a general one would be about Fedora Project in general, covering the community and aspects _other_ than the distro release? Focus on the Friends foundation, and ways to get involved as a non-programmer (it is my impression that many users think that one must be a programmer to join the Fedora contributor community, which is of course very far from the truth).
On 08/04/2015 12:36 PM, Matthew Miller wrote:
On Tue, Aug 04, 2015 at 12:29:31PM -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
- 3 product specific timeless fedora flyers?
I think it's just this. Any one general one you had would really be the workstation one anyway. So just do one on workstation, one on
Just thinking out loud here, but maybe a general one would be about Fedora Project in general, covering the community and aspects _other_ than the distro release? Focus on the Friends foundation, and ways to get involved as a non-programmer (it is my impression that many users think that one must be a programmer to join the Fedora contributor community, which is of course very far from the truth).
If we're aiming the flyers at newbies, I think it's a bit weird to press them to join in helping make something they don't use or even fully understand yet, no?
~m
On Tue, Aug 04, 2015 at 12:42:49PM -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
Just thinking out loud here, but maybe a general one would be about Fedora Project in general, covering the community and aspects _other_ than the distro release? Focus on the Friends foundation, and ways to get involved as a non-programmer (it is my impression that many users think that one must be a programmer to join the Fedora contributor community, which is of course very far from the truth).
If we're aiming the flyers at newbies, I think it's a bit weird to press them to join in helping make something they don't use or even fully understand yet, no?
I wasn't thinking of it as "pressing", but showcasing all the different interesting and fun parts of the community.
On 08/04/2015 02:04 PM, Matthew Miller wrote:
On Tue, Aug 04, 2015 at 12:42:49PM -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
Just thinking out loud here, but maybe a general one would be about Fedora Project in general, covering the community and aspects _other_ than the distro release? Focus on the Friends foundation, and ways to get involved as a non-programmer (it is my impression that many users think that one must be a programmer to join the Fedora contributor community, which is of course very far from the truth).
If we're aiming the flyers at newbies, I think it's a bit weird to press them to join in helping make something they don't use or even fully understand yet, no?
I wasn't thinking of it as "pressing", but showcasing all the different interesting and fun parts of the community.
Whatever verbiage is used, wouldn't such a flyer and accompanying pitch is and would be perceived as an upsell? (to convert them from a (not even yet?) user to a contributor?)
There's mutual benefit there, sure, but being a contributor is a much larger time investment than trying out the software, and I think it's a bit much on top of trying to relay the fundamentals about the software itself. Let them try the software and like it first (or not, then don't bother) before recruiting them.... and don't distract / muddy the message. If it's a conference with booths there's a lot of information they're going to be processing at once, my thought is keep the message focused, simple, to-the-point as you can for the best impact. I think the message to try / use Fedora is more important than to contribute to it at that stage.
I also don't know that brand-new-to-Fedora-as-a-user folks are going to have a great brand-new-contributor experience unless it's through a formal mentoring program (like Outreachy or GSoC or whatever where I think we do a really good job) and we are not equipped to do that at the volume I'm imagining such flyers would be printed at this point in time, right?
~m
On Tue, Aug 04, 2015 at 04:00:41PM -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
On 08/04/2015 02:04 PM, Matthew Miller wrote:
On Tue, Aug 04, 2015 at 12:42:49PM -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
Just thinking out loud here, but maybe a general one would be about Fedora Project in general, covering the community and aspects _other_ than the distro release? Focus on the Friends foundation, and ways to get involved as a non-programmer (it is my impression that many users think that one must be a programmer to join the Fedora contributor community, which is of course very far from the truth).
If we're aiming the flyers at newbies, I think it's a bit weird to press them to join in helping make something they don't use or even fully understand yet, no?
I wasn't thinking of it as "pressing", but showcasing all the different interesting and fun parts of the community.
Whatever verbiage is used, wouldn't such a flyer and accompanying pitch is and would be perceived as an upsell? (to convert them from a (not even yet?) user to a contributor?)
There's mutual benefit there, sure, but being a contributor is a much larger time investment than trying out the software, and I think it's a bit much on top of trying to relay the fundamentals about the software itself. Let them try the software and like it first (or not, then don't bother) before recruiting them.... and don't distract / muddy the message. If it's a conference with booths there's a lot of information they're going to be processing at once, my thought is keep the message focused, simple, to-the-point as you can for the best impact. I think the message to try / use Fedora is more important than to contribute to it at that stage.
I also don't know that brand-new-to-Fedora-as-a-user folks are going to have a great brand-new-contributor experience unless it's through a formal mentoring program (like Outreachy or GSoC or whatever where I think we do a really good job) and we are not equipped to do that at the volume I'm imagining such flyers would be printed at this point in time, right?
These are both important points. Given that we are planning work on tools to make this experience, it's pretty clear we've acknowledged and agreed already this is a gap. Furthermore, one could successfully argue said muddying has contributed to a lot of the long tail of our accounts that belong to people who've never done something for Fedora, or otherwise gave up early because the on-ramping isn't up to what they need yet. So I agree, let's be more focused about these messages.
On Tue, Aug 04, 2015 at 04:00:41PM -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
I wasn't thinking of it as "pressing", but showcasing all the different interesting and fun parts of the community.
Whatever verbiage is used, wouldn't such a flyer and accompanying pitch is and would be perceived as an upsell? (to convert them from a (not even yet?) user to a contributor?)
Well, I guess at some level it *is* marketing, sure. Is that inherently wrong?
There's mutual benefit there, sure, but being a contributor is a much larger time investment than trying out the software, and I think it's a bit much on top of trying to relay the fundamentals about the software itself. Let them try the software and like it first (or not, then don't bother) before recruiting them.... and don't distract / muddy the message. If it's a conference with booths there's a lot of information they're going to be processing at once, my thought is keep the message focused, simple, to-the-point as you can for the best impact. I think the message to try / use Fedora is more important than to contribute to it at that stage.
I've been thinking about our presence at some of the big, well-established Linux/Open Source shows — SCALE, OSCON, LinuxCon, FOSDEM, etc. Most of the people in the audience have a general awareness of Fedora already. They may have tried it, or are even Fedora users. I've heard from several people that our presence at these is valuable simply to maintain visibility — that if Fedora isn't there, it looks like we're not a going concern anymore. I guess I agree that there's a little to that, but I'd like us to get more out of the time (and expense).
At SCALE in particular, the commercial booths are very much "job fair". We aren't playing at that game (although *Red Hat* is!), but over on the community projects side, I think showing the fun, interesting, cool, useful, meaingful ways to get involved *could* be valuable.
At some of these events, maybe focusing on all of (or one of) the Fedora editions might be the best thing, at least especially while the idea of cloud/server/workstation is still novel. But at a lot of them, I think the users walking by already have a pretty good idea of what Fedora is as a distribution, which is why I'd be interested in trying to sell the *project* to them, too.
(Now, again, maybe flyers aren't the best way to do that; I don't know.)
On 08/05/2015 04:03 PM, Matthew Miller wrote:
On Tue, Aug 04, 2015 at 04:00:41PM -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
I wasn't thinking of it as "pressing", but showcasing all the different interesting and fun parts of the community.
Whatever verbiage is used, wouldn't such a flyer and accompanying pitch is and would be perceived as an upsell? (to convert them from a (not even yet?) user to a contributor?)
Well, I guess at some level it *is* marketing, sure. Is that inherently wrong?
Not just 'marketing' though, an upsell. Maybe I am viewing this all too much from the POV of someone with a toddler and daily life choices of pick 2: [ sleep | shower | eat ]... but "try the software" is asking for a chunk of the person's time, and then to add on "contribute back" is asking for a much bigger chunk on top of that.... in the same way that I sign up for cable internet (they get some of my money) and they try to upsell me to also sign up for cable TV and phone (to get even more of my money.)
I think an 'upsell' is a bit more aggressive than basic marketing, and I do think 'please contribute' on top of 'please try us' -- to the flyer audience, which is mostly newcomers -- is going to be perceived as an upsell.
I've been thinking about our presence at some of the big, well-established Linux/Open Source shows — SCALE, OSCON, LinuxCon, FOSDEM, etc. Most of the people in the audience have a general awareness of Fedora already. They may have tried it, or are even Fedora users. I've heard from several people that our presence at these is valuable simply to maintain visibility — that if Fedora isn't there, it looks like we're not a going concern anymore. I guess I agree that there's a little to that, but I'd like us to get more out of the time (and expense).
At SCALE in particular, the commercial booths are very much "job fair". We aren't playing at that game (although *Red Hat* is!), but over on the community projects side, I think showing the fun, interesting, cool, useful, meaingful ways to get involved *could* be valuable.
At some of these events, maybe focusing on all of (or one of) the Fedora editions might be the best thing, at least especially while the idea of cloud/server/workstation is still novel. But at a lot of them, I think the users walking by already have a pretty good idea of what Fedora is as a distribution, which is why I'd be interested in trying to sell the *project* to them, too.
(Now, again, maybe flyers aren't the best way to do that; I don't know.)
While I agree this makes sense, I don't think flyers are the way to do that, if for any reason because of the pipeline issues we have that I mentioned earlier.
How do you get a savvy, great potential contributor with some knowledge of Fedora to get interested in contributing when you run into them at a conference? You introduce them *in person* to someone with at *least* some remote experience in the same area of contribution the person might be interested in working in, the conversation goes well, they continue the relationship 'offline' (which is actually online, of course, but... you know what I mean :) )
I think we just don't have the pipeline to get someone like that into the contributor pool and having a positive experience, at least, not the way things are today. And there are way too many opportunities for falling off the rails and giving up when you start with a flyer than with a real human connection.
I guess in the same way I would rather see us put out no materials than poorly-designed materials... I'd rather us not try to onboard a potential contributor at all than try to onboard them and they have a terrible (confusing, frustrating, dead-end, etc) experience.
The limited case where I think contributor-recruiting flyers can work well is, depending on the timing / availability, if we have 'job openings' flyers posted for Fedora-related Google Summer of Code, Outreachy, or even Red Hat internship opportunities available in the booth. Those are programs with strong, well-defined pipelines where we have built-in mentorship and a high success rate of productive and positive experiences for both sides.
Does that make sense?
~m
On Aug 4, 2015 1:04 PM, "Matthew Miller" mattdm@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Tue, Aug 04, 2015 at 12:42:49PM -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
Just thinking out loud here, but maybe a general one would be about Fedora Project in general, covering the community and aspects _other_ than the distro release? Focus on the Friends foundation, and ways to get involved as a non-programmer (it is my impression that many users think that one must be a programmer to join the Fedora contributor community, which is of course very far from the truth).
If we're aiming the flyers at newbies, I think it's a bit weird to press them to join in helping make something they don't use or even fully understand yet, no?
I wasn't thinking of it as "pressing", but showcasing all the different interesting and fun parts of the community.
-- Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org Fedora Project Leader --
I like the idea of a flyer promoting the Project (read:community) in addition to promoting the products created by that community. Even new users want to know there will be a solid support structure to validate their choice.
--Pete
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