[Marketing] Fwd: Proposal: "What's new"

Fri Nov 20 07:00:05 EST 2009

On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 12:19, Sean DALY <sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:
> You may have seen I had GNOME in the draft of the next PR, but as I've
> said previously, I don't believe weak GNU/Linux brands will help us
> build the Sugar Labs brand (which of course is just as weak for now).

I guess you are right on that, though where I see value is in Sugar
getting more known inside the GNOME community.

Regards,

Tomeu

> I'm curious to learn what their next steps will be following last
> week's marketing hackfest in Chicago though.
>
> I'll take it up with Federico.
>
> thanks
>
> Sean
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 2:03 PM, Tomeu Vizoso <tomeu at sugarlabs.org> wrote:
>> On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 11:10, Sean DALY <sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Yes, it's very clear there's lots of work to do. Misperceptions about
>>> OLPC and by extension Sugar Labs are deeply rooted, we're paying the
>>> price for OLPC's past unwillingness to combat misperceptions about the
>>> project.
>>>
>>> Sugar unfortunately does not even rate a mention on the GNOME-related
>>> project listing ( http://projects.gnome.org ).
>>
>> Just added Sugar to the file in git, guess it will take some time to
>> be up in the site.
>>
>> http://git.gnome.org/cgit/gnomeweb-wml/commit/?id=4045050c0fe6094124c064aad53f8b90224e012b
>>
>>> I've been on their press list for awhile, but they seem to just be
>>> getting started.
>>>
>>> I have seen some work on marketing and PR strategy, in particular
>>> related to the 3.0 launch next year, but like us, their marketing team
>>> is small.
>>
>> Crazy idea: could we trade mentions of GNOME in our marketing stuff
>> for mentions of Sugar in their community stuff?
>>
>>> Historically speaking, weak branding by KDE and GNOME have
>>> unfortunately contributed to the very marginal GNU/Linux desktop
>>> market share these past ten years. I'll elaborate on that in a post
>>> soon. Marketing remains an afterthought in most FLOSS projects, with
>>> unsurprising results. Their brand weakness means press release
>>> mentions may not have any effect on developers (and none if any on
>>> users), that said release note mentions (which are regularly read by
>>> developers) would probably work better.
>>
>> Maybe we could make it an article in a publication such as LWN?
>>
>>> Sugar doesn't get mentioned on their marketing list, but I have just
>>> joined that one too rather than just look at it from time to time. I
>>> have found that speaking up occasionally in the Fedora and openSUSE
>>> marketing lists is productive. The Ubuntu marketing team has
>>> unfortunately been disorganized for awhile, although there is a recent
>>> effort over there to work on that.
>>
>> Yes, this sounds like something worth doing.
>>
>>> A thread like below is absent from both the GNOME marketing and press
>>> lists... as so often happens, developers aren't talking to marketers
>>> :-(
>>>
>>> Recruiting developers is a very specific problem. I've recently come
>>> to believe that probably the best way to reach free software
>>> developers, aside from meeting with them in person, is to get
>>> technical articles into GNU/Linux-oriented publications. All the
>>> developed countries have at least one and sometimes 2 or 3 titles,
>>> monthly or bi-monthly. Articles about the development environment,
>>> with code... which means written by developers, with all their free
>>> time available (I know, I know).
>>
>> I'm not sure many actual contributors read paper publications, AFAICS
>> those are targeted towards enthusiasts and beginner developers, but
>> people already in this world go directly to the sources (developers'
>> blogs, mailing lists and publications such as LWN).
>>
>>> Perhaps the very best way to shift this quickly would be for a
>>> respected GNOME hacker to blog about Sugar? I don't know any :-(
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federico_Mena has supported us from the
>> beginning and is one of the most respected GNOME hackers. He has shown
>> us in the GNOME hackfest in Bolzano that he keeps an interest in Sugar
>> so I would say he's the best one to approach at first. Other people
>> who have been involved in Sugar development and are active in the
>> GNOME blogosphere:
>>
>> John Palmieri: http://www.j5live.com/
>> Dan William: http://blogs.gnome.org/dcbw/
>> Dan Winship: http://danw.mysterion.org/
>> Chris Blizzard: http://www.0xdeadbeef.com/weblog/
>> Behdad Esfahbod: http://mces.blogspot.com/
>>
>> And I'm sure I have forgotten someone.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Tomeu
>>
>>> Sean
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 9:56 AM, Tomeu Vizoso <tomeu at sugarlabs.org> wrote:
>>>> Looks like GNOME is currently trying to organize their marketing efforts.
>>>>
>>>> Wonder if this is a good opportunity to exchange references in our
>>>> press releases and also to increase interest in Sugar from GNOME
>>>> developers, who are the people in this world best prepared to
>>>> contribute to Sugar's software development.
>>>>
>>>> I think it has been clear after Bolzano that GNOME developers: don't
>>>> know what Sugar is, don't know what Sugar Labs is, don't know that SLs
>>>> is volunteer based, don't know that Sugar is being used by >1 million
>>>> children, don't know to which point Sugar is based in GNOME, don't
>>>> know that OLPC is _not_ shipping Windows, etc. and also that a notable
>>>> portion of them are very interested in helping out once they know
>>>> about us. Has this been the impression as well of other Bolzano
>>>> attendees?
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>>
>>>> Tomeu
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>>> From: Paul Cutler <pcutler at gnome.org>
>>>> Date: 2009/11/18
>>>> Subject: Re: Proposal: "What's new"
>>>> To: Patryk Zawadzki <patrys at pld-linux.org>
>>>> Cc: desktop-devel-list <desktop-devel-list at gnome.org>, Murray Cumming
>>>> <murrayc at murrayc.com>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I really like this idea, especially as we think about GNOME branding.
>>>>
>>>> One of the topics at the Marketing Hackfest last week was around our
>>>> branding and how we partner better with the downstream distributions.
>>>> I think this gives us a unique opportunity for users to think of
>>>> "GNOME" and seeing the work we're doing upstream.  This may also tie
>>>> to another idea around how we can incorporate Friends of GNOME
>>>> opportunities as well.
>>>>
>>>> I don't know if this would actually make it easier to write release
>>>> notes - it may make it harder as the release notes would probably have
>>>> more detail than something like this, so in some ways we're adding
>>>> work.  I really like how Fedora did their one sheet release notes via
>>>> PDF for Fedora 12 [1] - something high level like that is what I would
>>>> see here.
>>>>
>>>> Paul
>>>>
>>>> [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_12_one_page_release_notes
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 4:23 AM, Patryk Zawadzki <patrys at pld-linux.org> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 10:47 AM, Murray Cumming <murrayc at murrayc.com> wrote:
>>>>> > On Wed, 2009-11-18 at 10:12 +0100, Patryk Zawadzki wrote:
>>>>> >> Goals? Two really. One - to make it easier for users to discover newly
>>>>> >> introduced features.
>>>>> > I don't believe that most people care much, partly because they don't
>>>>> > upgrade that often. This would be clearer if we had real personas to
>>>>> > talk about.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > People who do care generally find the release notes online already.
>>>>>
>>>>> Not really. A lot of people have no idea what GNOME is. They just
>>>>> launch the application (or rather click on a document and the app
>>>>> "launches itself"), see that it looks slightly different and sometimes
>>>>> get curious as to why it looks different.
>>>>>
>>>>> Several times in the past I've read through NEWS and ChangeLog files
>>>>> just to tell someone what the exact changes were.
>>>>>
>>>>> >>  Two - to make it easier to write GNOME release
>>>>> >> notes.
>>>>> > The UI clutter seems like a high price to pay for the slight possibility
>>>>> > that this would help with writing release notes.
>>>>>
>>>>> I wouldn't call adding a _third_ option to the menu that usually
>>>>> contains "Contents" and "About..." clutter.
>>>>>
>>>>> Even if it is clutter, we can still add it as a section in the manual.
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Patryk Zawadzki
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> desktop-devel-list mailing list
>>>>> desktop-devel-list at gnome.org
>>>>> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> desktop-devel-list mailing list
>>>> desktop-devel-list at gnome.org
>>>> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> «Sugar Labs is anyone who participates in improving and using Sugar.
>>>> What Sugar Labs does is determined by the participants.» - David
>>>> Farning
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Marketing mailing list
>>>> Marketing at lists.sugarlabs.org
>>>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/marketing
>>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> «Sugar Labs is anyone who participates in improving and using Sugar.
>> What Sugar Labs does is determined by the participants.» - David
>> Farning
>>
>

-- 
«Sugar Labs is anyone who participates in improving and using Sugar.
What Sugar Labs does is determined by the participants.» - David
Farning