On Mon, 2008-09-29 at 16:13 +0200, Andreas Demmer wrote:

Martin Lasarsch schrieb am Montag 29 September 2008:

...

we also need a name for it! :-) It would be similar to the fedora ambassador or Ubuntu LoCo but most of us think that a unique name for it would help a lot.

How about (best proposals first): - Evangelists - Spreaders - Agents _ Representatives - Delegates - Emissaries

Greets, Andreas

Of all those suggestions, an emissary has the most dignified title. However, it still gives out a negative connotation in that an emissary is generally viewed as an outsider offering an olive branch of sorts. Like it or not, people still have a knee-jerk reaction when they see Novell (or SUSE by proxy). Example, with my IRC name, suserocks, I walked into an irc LUG channel yesterday and immediately someone said "Hide! It's the Novell lynch mob." Silly reaction, but 'emissary' does boost that silly perception. Other possible words? (taken from a thesaurus) Envoy Attache Consul Minister (Minister ADemmer has a nice ring to it) -- Bryen Yunashko Proud 2008 Candidate for openSUSE Board -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help@opensuse.org

On Mon, 29 Sep 2008 09:50:03 -0500 Bryen wrote:

On Mon, 2008-09-29 at 16:13 +0200, Andreas Demmer wrote:

...

Martin Lasarsch schrieb am Montag 29 September 2008:

...

we also need a name for it! :-) It would be similar to the fedora ambassador or Ubuntu LoCo but most of us think that a unique name for it would help a lot.

How about (best proposals first): - Evangelists - Spreaders - Agents _ Representatives - Delegates - Emissaries

Greets, Andreas

Of all those suggestions, an emissary has the most dignified title. However, it still gives out a negative connotation in that an emissary is generally viewed as an outsider offering an olive branch of sorts. Like it or not, people still have a knee-jerk reaction when they see Novell (or SUSE by proxy). Example, with my IRC name, suserocks, I walked into an irc LUG channel yesterday and immediately someone said "Hide! It's the Novell lynch mob." Silly reaction, but 'emissary' does boost that silly perception.

Other possible words? (taken from a thesaurus) Envoy Attache Consul Minister (Minister ADemmer has a nice ring to it)

I think we should try and stay close to our beloved mascot, which most people believe is probably one of the best mascots of any distro - even some FreeBSD folk like the Geeko. To that end I propose: Squamata: The family that lizards (including chameleons) belong to Lacertilia: The order of the lizards (including chameleons) Reptidon: The joining of Reptiles and the old Italian head of the family Don (yes like Don Corleone) Geekonida: A twist on the gecko's Family classification Yes they sound very bizarre etc, but they have meaning and are different, non-political/religious. For something a bit more on the dull side: Officer Agent Procurator Regards, Andy -- Andrew Wafaa, openSUSE Member: GNOME / Marketing / Board Election. openSUSE: Get It, Discover It, Create It at http://www.opensuse.org awafaa@opensuse.org | http://www.wafaa.eu -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help@opensuse.org

Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier schrieb am Montag 29 September 2008:

"openSUSE: a distro you can't refuse" ... :-)

openSUSE: because you should use an OS which abbreviates with "OS". :-) Greets, Andreas -- Skype: andreas.demmer ICQ: 103 924 771 http://www.andreas-demmer.de

On Monday 29 September 2008 16:13:19 Andreas Demmer wrote:

_ Representatives

I like it: openSUSE Representative - someone hearing this knows what it is. Bye, Steve -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help@opensuse.org

Stephen Shaw wrote:

This is a great idea. I'm glad to see this happening. I don't really have any good suggestions right now, but as soon as I can think of sum I'll post them. My only vote is that as far as naming goes lets keep it different from ubuntu and fedora. Maybe something like Lizard... Think about it, 'who is your local lizard?' :)

Hmmm... Lizard leader? Lizard wrangler? I sort of like "Lizard wrangler" but I may be the only one. "Stephen Shaw, openSUSE Lizard Wrangler, Utah." Maybe we need something away from "ambassador" and regional concept altogether: openSUSE Green Team (*Could include mentors who work online)

This does seem like a good thing for the new board to address in my mind. The point of this is to grew the community. Maybe the top candidates are ones that are members and are already involved in their local area as a first round of local community managers?

Yes. We have a number of local members who are already doing a fine job, and I hope they will step up to work on this and mentor others. Best, Zonker -- Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier openSUSE Community Manager http://zonker.opensuse.org/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help@opensuse.org

----- Original Message ----- From: "Stephen Shaw" To: Cc: Sent: Monday, September 29, 2008 10:16 AM Subject: Re: [opensuse-marketing] spokesperson - first draft

...

...

As mentioned before we are thinking about how to gain more marketshare, a bigger community, more local support ... whatever you want to call it. Thats a good point, we also need a name for it! :-) It would be similar to the fedora ambassador or Ubuntu LoCo but most of us think that a unique name for it would help a lot. So please put some fuel into your brains and tell us what your favorite is! In this draft we are using the term spokesperson to have at least one ... (and yes, this not describes all the tasks ...).

The openSUSE Project is largely managed by Novell employees, but that's not the long-term vision for the project. As the openSUSE Project matures, we want to be more inclusive and find ways for openSUSE community members to take up equal responsibility for the growth and promotion of openSUSE.

We already have openSUSE supporters who are doing an awesome job of building a community locally. We want to find ways to assist those members, and make the most of their experience to expand to new local communities.

The spokesperson concept will improve the situation and create an environment in which the creation of local openSUSE spokespersons and teams is easier, to support openSUSE and Linux in local areas and channel feedback to the openSUSE project.

Here is a list, this is a rough draft and feedback is highly appreciated/wanted.

*Who can be a spokesperson - everybody who signed the guiding principles and is an openSUSE member Q: is this necessary? - everybody who is willing to put time and effort to support the project and Linux/FOSS in general - everbody who likes to communicate with other people

*What are the tasks of a spokesperson? - in general these community members should spread the word about openSUSE in their area, like: - promote openSUSE - dispatch openSUSE DVDs/CDs - contact to local LUGs - attend events (tradeshows, university, community etc.), give presentations - help updating the event calendar on news.o.o - contact for local community (in person, chat, mailinglists etc.) and get feedback to the project - mentor other interested people - create/maintain local wiki page for their region on en.opensuse.org - write reports from events, meetings etc on news or lizards.o.o - create/maintain a localized wiki, minimum set of basic pages (approx. 15) - maintain a localized mailinglist/forum on opensuse.org - create - if necessary or requested - a local group of spokespersons/assistants (this should address the case if more people per region want to help) - attract contributors to the project

This sounds like a lot of work. Sure, it's work but it's managable in a reasonable time, especially if you doing it for some time, and you don't have to do it alone. We support the idea of having more than one spokesperson for a territory. See the list rather as a "would be nice" instead of "have to" list. Q: How to organize this? Is it "everbody can join", do we need a "master" spokesperson for the territory, how will it be decided? Of course we support: "do and you are it", but we probably can't support 50 people for Germany for example. Q: is there something "below" or "above" a spokespersons? Do we need a (quite flat) hierarchy like country spokesperson - local spokesperson - assistant - helper? If yes there should be a definition of these terms. Q: do we need a spokesperson council which makes decision if problems can't be resolved otherwise? Is the board responsible for that?

*What does Novell provide? (since there is no decision on the budget so far, please don't nail us on that ... use them as ideas ...) - welcome box (t-shirts, caps, Promo DVDs), to be resend with each new release - special business cards (template or real) - special t-shirt - a special guide/howto to make it easier and better organized - event box (portable booth, signage, banner, flyer, poster etc.) - give-aways, spiffs - certain budget for travel - create a spokesperson day parallel or a day prior to the openSUSE conference - single point of contact to drive the program and manage travel, DVD shipment, events etc. - exclusive mailinglist for spokespersons to allign our efforts (albeit it's public anyway to get feedback)

*Benefits for spokesperson - becomes opensuse member after certain period of time and proven support and receives a @opensuse.org email address Q: or do they have to be members in the first place? - reputation, fame, pride - gets once a year a present or - invitation to the openSUSE conference

(draft by michl, Zonker & /me) -- with kind regards,

Martin Lasarsch, Core Services SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5 90409 Nürnberg GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) martin.lasarsch@suse.de - http://www.opensuse.org

So I've been out of the loop for the past couple of days because of technical troubles, but I think this is an excellent idea! Depending on the budget, I'd like to see there be one "openSUSE Spokesman" per local group... if that's technically & financially feasable. On a semi-sidenote related to this idea, I've been working with a program by a major political party in this country doing a similar project... local people leading the way to organize events and rally people around their "product". I'm one of these local coordinators and it's a sometimes rough but fun job, and I can see improvements in the message we're trying to spread being gained. So I think it is a great idea, and I'd love to get involved, perticularly involving the Local User Groups. -- Kevin "Yeaux" Dupuy - openSUSE Member Public Mail - kevin.dupuy@opensuse.org Meet Bob Barr - Libertarian for President http://www.BobBarr2008.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help@opensuse.org

Bryen wrote:

All excellent questions. I'd be interested in seeing how we formulate the hierarchy (for lack of a better word) of "spokesperson" per region. For example, I could see 6 representatives for the United States (because of its size) with one main representative coordinating the efforts of all others. Similarly, perhaps that main representative becomes assistant to a main continental or hemispheric representative/coordinator. United Nations of openSUSE! :-)

Suggestions? For the U.S. it's somewhat easy -- we can divide by regions (mid-west, northwest, mountain states, east coast, west coast, etc.) or by states, if we ever need to. Ultimately, this may be a problem that it's best to solve when it actually comes up -- our first priority will be attracting and supporting the local organizers.

One question, whom do you see being responsible for designating such titles on people? Novell/SUSE or the upcoming new Community Board? It is a community position, but obviously budgeting, if any, is handled by Novell.

Yes, budgeting will be handled by Novell. I have no objection to involving the board in some way, though -- I think this is a natural extension of the board's duties? Martin will be the key contact for our $name_to_be_determined, by the way, and will be helping ensure coordination of resources, etc. Best, Zonker -- Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier openSUSE Community Manager http://zonker.opensuse.org/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help@opensuse.org

----- Original Message ----- From: "Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier" To: Cc: Sent: Monday, September 29, 2008 11:27 AM Subject: Re: [opensuse-marketing] spokesperson - first draft

For the U.S. it's somewhat easy -- we can divide by regions (mid-west, northwest, mountain states, east coast, west coast, etc.) or by states, if we ever need to.

Huh. New England, Pacific Northwest, West Coast, Southwest, Gulf Coast, Midwest, East Coast... I thought one "spokesman" per local group... right now the United States seems to be dividing up into states for the local groups... which could pose a problem of having too many spokeman if we begin to have many individual groups in a particular country. -- Kevin "Yeaux" Dupuy - openSUSE Member Public Mail - kevin.dupuy@opensuse.org Meet Bob Barr - Libertarian for President http://www.BobBarr2008.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Jan Weber wrote:

Martin Lasarsch wrote:

...

good point, we also need a name for it! :-)

lizard +1 from my side, although i also like andreas's evangelist

"Evangelist" is misleading IMHO, because they're more of a "contact person". Another issue with that term is that we have an official "openSUSE evangelist" positions atm, which is Martin Lasarsch. Could be misleading. "Ambassador" would be pretty good, but even more confusing as it's already used by Fedora, with a somewhat different role. An important point is that the term _must_ be translatable (and still make sense), so I'm afraid we should drop the fancy word gymnastics. BTW, "envoy" is almost getting the agreement on IRC atm ;) "Envoyé" in French, "Inviato" in Italian, "Gesandter" in German. [...]

There should be something like that imho.

...

Q: do we need a spokesperson council which makes decision if problems can't be resolved otherwise? Is the board responsible for that?

I think the board could take care of that, certainly in the beginning. Let's not create too many apparels unless needed :) [...] cheers - -- -o) Pascal Bleser /\\ http://opensuse.org -- I took the green pill _\_v FOSDEM::23+24 Feb 2008, Brussels, http://fosdem.org -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFI4U86r3NMWliFcXcRApRuAJ0dBalFy5a4C5yBWwUBeafj+8R3JACdEg5S Cl7+q/ZLUVE5OW1lnz2Bi84= =YCvZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help@opensuse.org

Pascal Bleser schrieb am Montag 29 September 2008:

BTW, "envoy" is almost getting the agreement on IRC atm

Sounds neutral, so I guess it's an acceptable compromise. Greets, Andreas -- Skype: andreas.demmer ICQ: 103 924 771 http://www.andreas-demmer.de

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Bryen wrote:

On Wed, 2008-10-01 at 11:09 +1300, Graham Lauder wrote:

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Most of the above stuff I do on a regular basis and have become the sort of defacto local OpenSuSE guy, however I would not be eligible to become an OpenSuSE member because I don't contribute code and I'm not greatly active on the website or wiki. However I'm bloody good at standing up and addressing people, doing presentations, running seminars and training courses and doing Demos. For instance I had a 4 station, OpenSuSE LTSP rig setup at the last Software Freedom Day and had an OS 11 Boxed set (demoed an install next to an Ubuntu install and showed it up in terms of ease! Looked cooler too :D)

Don't let that stop you. If you're out there evangelizing openSUSE in your presentations often enough, with the obvious intention of promoting openSUSE, then you should definitely apply for membership.

... or not. The problem is that we need *verifiable* contributions. While what Graham is doing is definitely valuable to the community, and I'd like to thank Graham for doing so, it is not verifiable in any way. You'd be surprised how many membership requests turned out to be lies and damned lies. We're aware of the fact that it is potentially unfair, but... "patches are welcome". I'm (or rather, the upcoming board members will be) all open for suggestions on how to handle such cases. But unless it can be fixed, we should stick to activities that can be verified. You may of course file a membership request anyway :) [...] cheers - -- -o) Pascal Bleser /\\ http://opensuse.org -- I took the green pill _\_v FOSDEM::23+24 Feb 2008, Brussels, http://fosdem.org -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFI4rhPr3NMWliFcXcRAvx0AJ9/dWrEmxhzHAwHqiGkowCgioXAzgCfXJ+a pk064nAKrT8PdNpQ8dIfHts= =u/GQ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help@opensuse.org

On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 8:05 PM, Bryen wrote:

On Wed, 2008-10-01 at 01:37 +0200, Pascal Bleser wrote:

...

...

Don't let that stop you. If you're out there evangelizing openSUSE in your presentations often enough, with the obvious intention of promoting openSUSE, then you should definitely apply for membership.

... or not. The problem is that we need *verifiable* contributions.

While what Graham is doing is definitely valuable to the community, and I'd like to thank Graham for doing so, it is not verifiable in any way.

It isn't? A presentation can be recorded, people can blog about seeing a presentation, most presentations to LUGs are mentioned on the LUG mailing list and on the LUG home page. If you present at a conference, you should be in the program, and probably will be recorded or at least photographed doing the presentation. With a little effort, I would hope that an openSUSE contributor who spends time giving presentations and promoting openSUSE would easily be able to show a track record of having done so. Best, Zonker -- Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier openSUSE Community Manager jzb@zonker.net http://zonker.opensuse.org/ http://blogs.zdnet.com/community/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help@opensuse.org

On Wed, 2008-10-01 at 01:37 +0200, Pascal Bleser wrote:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1

Bryen wrote:

...

On Wed, 2008-10-01 at 11:09 +1300, Graham Lauder wrote:

...

Most of the above stuff I do on a regular basis and have become the sort of defacto local OpenSuSE guy, however I would not be eligible to become an OpenSuSE member because I don't contribute code and I'm not greatly active on the website or wiki. However I'm bloody good at standing up and addressing people, doing presentations, running seminars and training courses and doing Demos. For instance I had a 4 station, OpenSuSE LTSP rig setup at the last Software Freedom Day and had an OS 11 Boxed set (demoed an install next to an Ubuntu install and showed it up in terms of ease! Looked cooler too :D)

Don't let that stop you. If you're out there evangelizing openSUSE in your presentations often enough, with the obvious intention of promoting openSUSE, then you should definitely apply for membership.

... or not. The problem is that we need *verifiable* contributions.

While what Graham is doing is definitely valuable to the community, and I'd like to thank Graham for doing so, it is not verifiable in any way.

You'd be surprised how many membership requests turned out to be lies and damned lies.

We're aware of the fact that it is potentially unfair, but... "patches are welcome". I'm (or rather, the upcoming board members will be) all open for suggestions on how to handle such cases. But unless it can be fixed, we should stick to activities that can be verified.

You may of course file a membership request anyway :)

[...]

cheers

Heh, Sorry to disappoint but I wasn't saying that I wanted to be a member, only that regional Marketing Spokespersons shouldn't need to be. For obvious reasons my priority is OpenOffice.org. (I have an OpenOffice.org email in any case which I think is cooler! ;) ) It just happens that my chosen preference for platform is OpenSuSE and as a consequence I end up advocating for both. I've had a many dealings with the local Novell people over the years and count Andreas Girardet as a good friend. So I have a connection to the community but outside the maillists. Frankly my OpenSuSE advocacy is purely selfish, my company (http://www.openopportunities.co.nz) specialises in training in Open Technologies on the Desktop. In other words I deal with grassroots front office people. My training facility runs OpenSuSE exclusively and even Windows users get their OOo training on a SuSE desktop plus I train linux desktop users on the same. That's how I make my living, so the more people that use it the better for me. More support for advocacy would, for the same reason, be good for my business. One of the things that is frustrating at present is my inability to source boxed sets of OpenSuSE in bulk at a wholesale price. At the Software Freedom Day for instance I could have sold at least a dozen boxes. It comes down to a disconnect between the organisation and Average enduser client. Novell is only interested in clients it can invoice well into 5 figures per month. The next level is partners and almost all of these locally are in the business of partnering as many companies as they can and hunting for the BICs (Big Invoice Clients), ergo Netware is big and SLED/OpenSuSE way down the list. There is however no level that connects directly with the Home/Small Office User (By contrast, for all it's faults, MS has a good connect to this market.) This level has been left to the "Community". The problem is that most of the Community (if not all, if we say "member" according to the criteria above) are developers so the community doesn't relate well to this group (Not a criticism, just a fact of life). Now make no mistake, uptake is driven from the home desktop. The upside is that the OpenSuSE product is excellent and second to none IMNSHO and I'm constantly blown away by how much better it gets with each release. So the support system for these grassroots advocacy people needs a number of things many which are covered in Martin's original post,

 *What does Novell provide? (since there is no decision on the budget so far, please don't nail us on that ... use them as ideas ...) - welcome box (t-shirts, caps, Promo DVDs), to be resend with each new release

Good idea, this keeps people current and more importantly, on the same page.

- special business cards (template or real)

+1 Keeps brand consistency

- special t-shirt

T-Shirt is great but fits only certain markets

- a special guide/howto to make it easier and better organized - event box (portable booth, signage, banner, flyer, poster etc.) - give-aways, spiffs

Rollomatic type banners are best, they can be shipped around easily and they're free standing so you don't need anything to hang them on.

- certain budget for travel

This would be excellent, travel is often a killer when it comes to doing events away from home.

- create a spokesperson day parallel or a day prior to the openSUSE conference - single point of contact to drive the program and manage travel, DVD shipment, events etc. - exclusive mailinglist for spokespersons to align our efforts (albeit it's public anyway to get feedback)

At OpenOffice.org we have a closed List for MarCons that is apart from the main marketing list. It's used for doing things like putting together Press Releases and the like that need to be kept under wraps until a predetermined date. And I would add a couple more things: 1) Easily available wholesale boxed sets that would suit a small main street retailer, say available in a minimum order of twenty. 2) Good quality Artwork for Posters and Point of sale materials available for download this partly covered by the conf materials list. These next two are not directly aimed at the "Spokesperson", but for the use of the spokesperson to hand on to High Street retailers. This would be a carrot to get those retailers to have OpenSuSE on their shelves. 3) Electronic Sales and presentation materials such as Impress Templates and ready made Impress presentations and sales training materials. 4) At present Novell runs CNS courses which are great when the sales person is aiming at the corporate market, however for this market a similar online course for individuals aimed purely at the desktop. The sort of course that a retail salesperson could do. Have a look at INGOTs courses. INGOTs is "International Grades in Open Technologies". A Gold INGOT would be an ideal prerequisite for such a Sales Certification because of it's desktop focus.

*Benefits for spokesperson - becomes opensuse member after certain period of time and proven support and receives a @opensuse.org email address Q: or do they have to be members in the first place? - reputation, fame, pride - gets once a year a present or - invitation to the openSUSE conference

What can I say, I'm only in it for the fame! ;) Cheers GL -- Graham Lauder, OpenOffice.org MarCon (Marketing Contact) NZ http://marketing.openoffice.org/contacts.html INGOTs Assessor Trainer (International Grades in Office Technologies) www.theingots.org Open Opportunities ltd. Open Technologies Training and Migration Consultants http://www.openopportunities.co.nz http://openoffice.org http://www.opensuse.org OOoGear: For the Well dressed OOo Advocate http://ooogear.co.nz -- "The Best Things in life are 3" http://why.openoffice.org ISO 26300 compliant Graham Lauder, OpenOffice.org MarCon (Marketing Contact) NZ http://marketing.openoffice.org/contacts.html INGOTs Assessor Trainer (International Grades in Office Technologies) www.theingots.org.nz -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help@opensuse.org

ricardo varas s wrote:

...

... Hi! really like the Lizard name ;), or openSUSE local coordinator, but I'll wait. Personally don't like the ones like "Evangelists, Spreaders" because here (Chile) it'd be more religion-related.

Hi, I personally believe that "Evangelist" or anything similar would be really understood as someone who wants you *to accept the only right belief* especially here in Czech Republic. Anyway, I like the "Evangelizard" which kind of makes fun of it ;) See also: Czech Republic: Most Atheist Country in Europe? http://atheism.about.com/b/2006/02/15/czech-republic-most-atheist-country-in... Bye Lukas -- Lukas Ocilka, YaST Developer (xn--luk-gla45d) ----------------------------------------------------------------- Ano, ano. Moudry rozkaz. Sam jsem nemel v tech gratulacich jasno.