Board efforts: scope, concept, and permission?

[inode0]

On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 11:28 AM, Robyn Bergeron
<robyn.bergeron at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 9:54 AM, inode0 <inode0 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 10:45 AM, Mike McGrath <mmcgrath at redhat.com> wrote:
>>> And to answer your question about what "isnt' broken".  I suggest you look
>>> at our http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Statistics page.  We've only seen
>>> growth in 2 of our last 6 releases.  Think about that.
>>
>> While I don't see that as directly relating to the mission of the
>> Fedora Project I understand it is important to many people and I
>> understand there is an indirect link with the mission. But what
>> indicates that is a problem with the distribution as opposed to a
>> marketing problem?
>>
>
> The marketing "problem" is this: Who are we marketing to? Defining the
> target audience - as broad as it may be - helps here.

To be clear I wasn't suggesting there actually was a marketing
problem, although there is probably always a marketing problem in the
absence of a monopoly.

I can imagine other approaches though. What are the characteristics of
good contributors? Market to that segment of the population. What the
desktop spin is or isn't probably doesn't matter in that case to the
marketing effort.

Why hasn't marketing defined *its* target audience(s)? Why can't
marketing identify the characteristics of groups they wish to market
Fedora to and do it?

> I'd also speculate that part of the reason that Fedora is not seeing
> as much grown in terms of downloads is that a lot of people don't like
> to fix what isn't broken. When things -just work-, the average
> end-user doesn't necessarily want to rock the boat.  It could be a
> good thing.  :)  Especially when you consider that - although growth
> in downloads may not be consistent - contributor account growth seems
> to be very healthy.
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/File:Accounts_2009-10.png

I agree the one metric cited tells only a small part of the story.

John