[Ambassadors] A few observations on the Fedora 13 CD covers

[Mathieu Bridon]

On Fri, 2010-08-06 at 09:58 -0500, inode0 wrote:
> 2010/8/6 Máirín Duffy <duffy at fedoraproject.org>:
> > Hi Ville-Pekka!
> >
> > On Fri, 2010-08-06 at 16:23 +0300, Ville-Pekka Vainio wrote:
> >> I'm currently at the Linux booth at the Assembly demo party at Helsinki,
> >> Finland. I've noticed a few things about the CD covers we have.
> >>
> >> - I might be revisiting a really old discussion here, but because we
> >> have both KDE and "Desktop" (i.e. GNOME) live CDs here, some people seem
> >> to be confused about the GNOME CD being called "Desktop Live Media"
> >> while the KDE CD is called "KDE Desktop Live Media". I think it would be
> >> clearer if the GNOME/Desktop disk clearly said on the cover that it's
> >> GNOME.
> >
> > The problem is that we want there to be one default Fedora so folks who
> > don't know what a desktop environment is or what GNOME or KDE means can
> > download Fedora without answering difficult questions they don't know
> > the answers to (e.g., 'do you want gnome or KDE?' 'do you want live or
> > dvd?' 'do you want x86 or x86_64 or ...?' Many people who would
> > otherwise be interested in trying Fedora would have no clue how to
> > answer any of those questions.

Not only for simplifying the choices of people who download Fedora, but
I think that from a marketing point of view, it is better to have one
product as the default, and focus on advertising this one.

> > That being said, the audience at a Linux conference (as opposed to other
> > conferences that we might be going to; eg I may be giving out Fedora
> > media at a design conference next year) is very likely to understand
> > what GNOME and KDE mean. So maybe the design team could produce a
> > sticker kit of small round stickers that say "KDE" and "GNOME" that
> > could be placed on the sleeves, specifically for Linux-oriented
> > conferences?
> >
> > Just an idea....

So that would make us print both the media sleeve AND a sticker to stick
on the sleeve right away?

Maybe producing different media sleeves, with what would have been on
the stickers already printed on it would make more sense? :)

> I think folks at those sorts of events also just come out and ask what
> it is if they care which gives people at the booth an opening to chat
> with them. I don't view this as any sort of "problem" at events I
> attend.

Exactly.

To take an extreme example, if they can figure everything out by
themselves, they won't ask us anything, and we could as well just leave
some media on a table and go doing something else.

People at a booth add some value, and everything that makes visitors ask
questions should be viewed as a chance to open the conversation and
transform them into users, or even contributors.

> >> - Some people also seem to be confused about what "Live Media" means and
> >> they think they won't be able to install from a live CD. We also have
> >> Ubuntu CDs here and those don't say anything about being live media, so
> >> it might be better to either drop the live media thing completely or add
> >> "installable" or something like that on the cover.
> >
> > Ah, I can see how the term would be confusing to folks who aren't
> > familiar with it. I really like your suggestion to use the term
> > 'installable', and I think it makes a lot of sense, but I worry that
> > 'Installable' vs 'Install DVD' is going to be confusing :(
> >
> > I kind of think we should just provide live media and not DVDs, but I
> > don't know how other folks feel about that. It would make our basic
> > installation instructions a lot easier to follow, I think.
> 
> I think live media will likely end up being DVDs anyway, but I agree
> 100% that we should move to only producing live media for shows. Not
> so much to simplify things (although it would remove some confusion we
> see) but to streamline production and give people at shows something
> they can use at the show.

That's what we've been doing for years in France.

The amount of people asking for the install DVD is so small that we
simply burn it on demand when someone really wants it and can't download
it.


-- 
Mathieu