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

Fri Nov 20 09:35:01 EST 2009

I'd be happy enough already if all the Sugar Labs contributors read
our press releases :D :D

Sean


On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 1:00 PM, Tomeu Vizoso <tomeu at sugarlabs.org> wrote:
> 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
>