Spins on Talking Points

Wed Mar 3 16:40:08 UTC 2010

On Wed, 2010-03-03 at 13:43 +0100, Chitlesh GOORAH wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 12:55 AM, Paul W. Frields wrote:
> > Hi Marketing team,
> >
> > Chitlesh continues to feel very bereft of the ability to market the
> > FEL spin through our Talking Points page.  Originally the Talking
> > Points were conceived as a way of marketing features, innovations, and
> > changes in the Fedora Project to a general audience.  Although new
> > Spins arguably fit into that definition, changes to existing Spins
> > might not.
> >
> 
> What you failed to understand that neither the following fall into the
> _general audience_.
> 
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_12_Talking_Points#For_administrators
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_12_Talking_Points#For_developers
> 
> Therefore, you have not given me proper reason why FEL's ONE paragraph
> should be deleted. Something, I spent time to write in order to fit
> the general audience target.

Hi,

 My name is Nelson and the "fresh" here. I'm not an engineer, I wasn't
aware of FEL, neither I am aware of the essence of this thread. Still, I
feel that I can say something about this.

> 
> > However, I'd rather *expand* that coverage than make contributors feel
> > we're trying to keep their work from reaching Ambassadors, which was
> > never our intent.  The expanded marketing potential of the spins.fp.o
> > site may not be enough to suit everyone.
> >
> > In our next meeting, could we add an item to agree that we'll include
> > a single 2-3 sentence bullet point in our Spins section in the talking
> > points, for any Spin that wants to add one?  I would like to add these
> > to the information we're already planning to include in the talking
> > points about new Spins.
> 
> Dear Marketing Team,
> 
> I would like to know why should this item be even brought into a
> discussion since it should be done by default (and for any spin).
> Fedora Spins are Fedora, and Work done behind those spins are to
> improve Fedora software portfolio and deserves to tell the world, this
> and that has been done, and this and that can be expected by the
> Fedora user.

 I can understand that, and I do recon it's importance. As I am still
and will for some time engaged in a process of processing raw
information, this aims to a specific market niche (as such it's
important to know this people, so we can segment our communication to
meet the developers needs).

 There is a process in marketing known as "endomarketing", I'm not sure
on how it translates in English, but it's core essence can be translated
according to the following:

 The goal of endomarketing is to present a plan that will give the
members of an organization formation about the very same organization
that they represent. Reinforce the concepts of Vision and Mission, core
values, brand personality, etc etc etc.

 This could be the solution for the problem you present. A small
endomarketing campaign to Fedora Project itself. With this, make the
Fedora Community be aware of your FEL Spin, promote it within the
establish community, with the Fedora Project and everyone related to it
(no mainstream end users).

 Do you think such a thing would help people to be aware of FEL Spin?

> 
> Take for example this possible question you might get at the Booth:
> 
> "Why should one promote OLPC if its hardware is not opensourced?
> (forget the software for one moment)"

 If we going that way, most computers do run proprietary microcode. I'm
sure if the OpenFirmware project is reliable for instance. That might be
a bit complicated to approach.

> 
> Most fedora ambassadors don't know how to address that question and
> can't even say that FEL is working to make this happen. Another
> example would be our work done to fit openmoko's development cycle.
> 
> The thing what I want to point out, is Fedora is growing and many
> fedora sub-projects are popuping up and Fedora Marketing/Ambassador is
> LOSING track of what these subprojects are doing. The email from Ryan
> is an example :

 It might be growing but the level of commitment from the general
audience towards Fedora is stalled and way under my expectations. Modern
Marketing goes a lot through communities (of course, it targets people).
Nowadays you see companies like Adidas, Nike, BMW and so on placing a
huge effort on things that not contemplated on traditional marketing,
going to name 3 of them:

 # Facebook (and other social networks alike);
 # Twitter (the most weird forum I've ever seen);
 # Second Life (the game).

 If you compare the number of fans between Canonical's Ubuntu and Fedora
in Facebook, you get 6000 vs 150000+. This to remind you that for
someone who goes read numbers to try something, they will most likely
pop on the Canonical side and not ours.

 This numbers should justify the importance of the Spins, as they can be
seen as an evangelizing tool for our ends.
 Now, taking another lead and going off-topic, is our KDE for Laptop
Spin mature enough to take the fight to Kubuntu ? Should we be promoting
it knowing it's not ready (or maybe it is) to take an even fight against
Canonical's product?

 As I said before, I'm not an engineer, most of this answers should be
clear to you.

> 
> > What would it take for
> > Chitlesh to send a message to the FEL list asking if any FEL users or
> > contributors are interested in helping us out? Get some FEL member behind the
> > marketing effort, and we could see some really awesome things happening :)
> > Having someone involved from a spin gives it that needed push to "get things
> > done" (hi!) and can go a long way. Also a good way for Marketing and Fedora as
> > a whole to possibly grab up some extra contributors :)
> 
> I would assume Ryan is new to Fedora Marketing. New ambassadors like
> him won't know that (in the case of FEL), unless he or she has done an
> intensive training on Fedora's community. I am personally writing
> promotional material for FEL. Time is being allocated in our FEL
> development cycle just for writing and updating promotional material.
> Not to say that we are the only spin (since it's existence) who are
> providing materials for Fedora Marketing. What he wrote is what we are
> doing it since more than 3 years now. I'm more worried what Fedora
> Ambassadors say about MicroElectronics during various events.
> 
> e.g: http://chitlesh.fedorapeople.org/papers/fel-flyer-f12.pdf
> http://chitlesh.fedorapeople.org/papers/FEL12ReleaseNotes.pdf
> 
> Those promotional material done is not propagating to other Fedora
> contributors. Deleting Talking points about a spin will not help to
> solve internal fedora knowledge builder, nor it will be for the
> general audience.

 Endomarketing as pointed before should be able to fix this. Thats most
likely the best tool we can provide you to fix this. I would recommend
the following: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communication_matrix

 This was made available a couple of days ago. It's it possible to use
that Matrix to make a small text to be used for a endomarketing
campaign. If you require help during the process, I can make myself
available for to help you from the marketing scope. The technical part
as product presentation, selection of audience, segmentation,  and so
on, is something that you will be more qualified that anyone of us here.

> 
> Another example is the recent Fedora Board e-mail to spin owners which
> entail some questions. These questions are already answered by the
> spin owners when they first presented their interest for a spin to the
> Fedora community. It is sad that even Fedora Board does not know what
> are at their disposal.
> 
> We are an engineering community, I would expect some common sense from everyone.

 I hope this email has helped you and I would recommend that you look
carefully about what I proposed you, as it might be an answer for your
concerns.

 Nelson

 PS: "Before all else, be armed" - Niccolo Machiavelli

> 
> Cheers,
> Chitlesh