[Marketing] Welcome to Christian Vanizette (Marketing Team Resources)

[Sean DALY]

Yes Tomeu, my thoughts exactly, a page like this can be helpful for
anyone wondering what marketers "do" (aside from "spinning" ;-)

and yes the cc is the intended Christian I wasn't sure if he was on
the marketing list (need to check) even though he makes major
contributions to our marketing efforts :-)

thanks
Sean


On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 9:30 AM, Tomeu Vizoso <tomeu at sugarlabs.org> wrote:
> Welcome Christian, hope you have lots of fun in SugarLabs.
>
> Sean, this is excellent info, maybe we should drop it somewhere in the
> wiki? Also, did you added the intended Christian to CC?
>
> Regards,
>
> Tomeu
>
> On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 18:51, Sean DALY <sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Marketers, I'd like you to welcome Christian Vanizette to the marketing list!
>>
>> Christian is a marketing student from Euromed Management, one of
>> France's top business schools located in Marseille.
>>
>> He's currently doing an internship with a tech company but I'll let
>> him tell you about that and more about himself if he wishes.
>>
>> Christian came to SugarCamp Paris on Saturday and expressed his wish
>> to help, we had the opportunity to talk marketing for a while.
>>
>> I promised him he doesn't have to read months of threads to get up to
>> date :D but here are some useful Marketing Team links:
>>
>>
>> * the Sugar Labs homepage
>> http://www.sugarlabs.org/
>>
>> * Press page
>> http://www.sugarlabs.org/press
>>
>> * Logo materials on the wiki (note: all 12 variants plus black or
>> white backgrounds are valid logos, horizontal preferred to stacked)
>> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Marketing_Team/Logo
>>
>> * Marketing Team page on the wiki
>> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Marketing_Team
>>
>> * Marketing Team Meetings page on the wiki (the agenda is out of date,
>> but the IRC meeting transcripts are not and will give you a flavor for
>> what the weekly meetings are like)
>> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Marketing_Team/Meetings
>>
>> * Marketing list archives (useful to link to a list post more than a
>> few days old, but scrubs attachments I believe)
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/marketing/
>>
>> * IRC channel for Sugar meetings, usually one hour on Tuesdays at 5pm Paris time
>> server: irc.freenode.net
>> channel: #sugar-meeting
>> (note: sugar general discussion & support is on #sugar)
>>
>> * Sugar Labs DailyMotion channel (3 days old!)
>> http://www.dailymotion.com/user/sugarlabs
>>
>>
>>
>> Right now we are working on these priorities, listed in no particular order:
>>
>> * Building up to Sugar on a Stick v1 launch in the fall.
>> We have wisely not set a date yet, since "SoaS" (as we call it) is
>> impacted by elements beyond our control in particular the underlying
>> Fedora version whose schedule could slip (cf. Fedora 11). SoaS impacts
>> everyone of course. My strategy is to issue a press release (or more
>> generally try to generate press/blogger coverage) every 4 to 6 weeks
>> up to launch. I haven't planned beyond that... yet :-)
>>
>>
>> * Branding, brand identity, brand values, positioning, star marketing.
>>
>> Establishing the logo. Christian Marc Schmidt is our main design guru,
>> he's in New York and designed the logo and the intro part of our
>> website. Although I have imagined possible changes to the logo and
>> website (whose intro went live very recently - it was the wiki
>> before), now is not the time given our resources - so I'm
>> concentrating on:
>> - "Sugar Labs", not "Sugar", in our communications so as to avoid
>> conflation with the white stuff from beets and the brown stuff from
>> canes
>> - logo on the splash page of SoaS and ideally on a splash page of the
>> OLPC XO-1 and XO-1.5 due in the fall
>> - logo on USB sticks for SoaS (will have some of the first run of 100
>> sticks tomorrow so I can get "beauty shots" done)
>> - merchandise or "swag" = t-shirts, buttons, hats, mugs, etc
>> (cafepress or ? we need to do this)
>> - a roll-up banner I want to have designed & ready in time for
>> LinuxTag Berlin end of June, ideally with Mike Lee photo from last
>> press release
>> - other booth stuff such as logo'd balloons
>> - logo on a Shuttle PC I am setting up as a School Server for roadshow
>> demonstrations
>> - etc.
>>
>> Brand Values: http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/marketing/2009-February/000323.html
>> (and the responses) is all I have for now.
>>
>> Brand Positioning: I had fruitful discussions with Caroline Meeks
>> (SoaS project manager) concerning this at SugarCamp Paris. We will be
>> working on this but the main concept is to present Sugar as
>> "best-of-breed", ideal for young children (5 to 10 years old), and for
>> kids from all backgrounds (developing nations, richer nations). The
>> price (free) will be used as a secondary argument. No slogan yet!
>>
>> Star Marketing: we have been focusing on Activities (capital "A" :-)
>> in our press materials; hopefully more interesting for teachers and
>> helpful for differentiation along with built-in collaboration etc.
>>
>>
>> * PDF handout.
>> We don't have this yet (I promised it to Caroline weeks ago), I need
>> help with that. The idea is to do a 2-page PDF which sums up Sugar. if
>> it's efffective, it will need to be translated :-)
>>
>>
>> * Competitive Landscape: this includes software or websites for kids,
>> for example: http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/marketing/2009-April/000717.html
>>
>>
>> * Hardware platforms targeted at schools: the OLPC XO series, the
>> Intel Classmate class (3 generations already and multiple local
>> manufacturers licensed for ex:
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/marketing/2009-April/000787.html),
>> the new Dell education netbook
>> (http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/laptop-latitude-2100?c=us&l=en&s=k12),
>> etc. Netbooks in general too. Curiously, Apple is absent from this
>> sector (Steve Jobs is anti-netbook, citing profitability), but of
>> course that could change.
>>
>>
>> * News monitoring.
>> I use Google News / Blogs / Images, Technorati, Newssift and other
>> sources and post noteworthy article links to the list. With few
>> exceptions, any journalist who writes on Sugar or OLPC is added to the
>> targeted mailing list I maintain.
>>
>>
>> * Improving our website navigation.
>> Bewildering to a first-time visitor, so I am working with Christian on
>> establishing a common two-tier navbar on all site sections:
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/marketing/2009-April/000742.html
>>
>>
>> * Online referencing.
>> This problem is largely solved but work remains; Google decribes Sugar
>> Labs as "Spin-off of the "Sugar" user interface platform to another
>> project." which is accurate, but should be updated.
>>
>>
>> * Blogging.
>> Walter does excellent reports (the "Sugar Digest") and there is a blog
>> post aggregator live at planet.sugarlabs.org, but we could probably do
>> more marketing communication in a blog format. To be developed...
>>
>>
>> * Translation of press releases, marketing materials, ultimately the website.
>> Ad hoc and therefore uneven for now, we need a process and of course
>> volunteers. There are translators for Sugar, but I don't know how we
>> can call upon them for marketing materials. I am responsible for a
>> bottleneck, I am holding several press release translations which I
>> have not made time to update & convert to PDFs for the press page...
>>
>>
>> * Response to journalists.
>> We have a contact system in place which is working well, but may have
>> difficulty scaling. When a journalists contacts us, it's best to
>> respond as soon as possible and to try to learn what the deadline is.
>>
>>
>> * Sugar use feedback.
>> Very poor right now, needs to be teacher-friendly. The Marketing Team
>> can play a role helping teachers feedback information to the
>> developers. The Design Team is working on possible interface changes
>> for the next version of Sugar (v0.86). We're in a bit of a strange
>> place: our credibility derives from the one million XO-1s distributed
>> with Sugar, but we lack consolidated reliable information as to what
>> teachers and students are doing. Of course, part of that problem is
>> related to poor connectivity in developing countries. For now, we are
>> exploring ways to contact technically adept teachers who will provide
>> very useful feedback with minimum support effort.
>>
>>
>> * Partnerships/Fundraising.
>> We have negotiations with several partners and potential donors
>> underway at this time.
>>
>>
>> * Coordinated and possibly joint marketing with OLPC.
>> There are gross misperceptions in the blogosphere concerning OLPC's
>> situation and that impacts Sugar Labs. My principle is that OLPC's
>> success, even with an older version of Sugar, is good for Sugar and
>> Sugar's success, even on hardware other than OLPC, is good for OLPC.
>> In that connection I hope to coordinate marketing efforts around the
>> XO-1.5 refresh due in the fall.
>>
>>
>> * Community outreach.
>> We need to develop more contacts with our partner distributions; I
>> hope to kick off a new effort in this direction at LinuxTag Berlin.
>>
>>
>> * Recruitment of volunteers - "Sugar Stories".
>> Every team at Sugar Labs could use more hands and the Marketing Team
>> can help everyone by publishing "Sugar Stories". I want to rapidly
>> develop this on our new Dailymotion channel (and add a Flickr account
>> too). Related: we want to develop local Sugar Labs in each country,
>> this will help us scale; those structures will need marketing support.
>>
>>
>> * Sugar version numbering simplification.
>> We have an extremely complicated numbering system for Sugar versions
>> and, moreover, OLPC assigns their own numbering to Sugar+Fedora
>> versions and to make matters worse, these unrelated numbers resemble
>> each other (Sugar 0.82 <> OLPC-OS 8.2.1). As Sugar on the OLPC does
>> not currently have a logo'd splash page with verison number, ordinary
>> (7-year-old ;-) users have no idea what version they are running; I am
>> attempting to get logo'd splash pages with version numbers into Sugar.
>> We are attempting to sidestep this problem by numbering Sugar on a
>> Stick as "beta-1" (out now), "beta-2" (end of June) and "version 1"
>> (the fall).
>>
>>
>> I'm sure I have forgotten stuff but if you have any questions, feel
>> free to mail me :-)
>>
>> thanks
>>
>> Sean
>> Sugar Labs Marketing Coordinator
>> _______________________________________________
>> Marketing mailing list
>> Marketing at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/marketing
>>
>