Hello Izabel, I agree with you that the Marketing team should be more active (all year round & not just during releases). I'm ready to help where I can. Regarding marketing materials, yes, it's a little discouraging, I pinged openSUSE on two occasions in the past for DVDs. I was asked to produce materials locally & will be reimbursed. Well, I do not mind doing that but sometimes to get those things done here (Mauritius) you don't have logistics or it may cost a lot. Recently, I got the chance to be part of Infotech 2013. It's the yearly technology conference & show in Mauritius. Stands are extremely expensive. However thanks to the sponsorship of National Computer Board I was given a stand to showcase open source applications. I grabbed the opportunity to showcase openSUSE to local fellows & some business people. See here : http://hacklog.in/infotech-2013-day-4/ We also had Linuxfest 2013 at the University of Mauritius, during which I made a presentation on openSUSE Project & the Advocate Program : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_iIO_OcLk8 During both events I had no openSUSE goodies/gears. I just went with my laptop running openSUSE 13.1 & carried the ISO images. Those wishing to have a copy brought their pendrives. Infotech 2013 was visited by thousands of Mauritians & I can't really count how many attended our stand. While for the Linuxfest we received nearly 200 people for the presentations. Now, you can imagine how having goodies would have helped showcasing the project differently. On my end I have been promoting not just the project but the advocate program as well. Like that you'll notice now several local Linux enthusiasts stood up to evangelize the project (http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Advocates_list). We meet regularly & discuss about things we can do locally; like helping with bug reports, write in the blogs etc. We're limited in terms of logistics but we're a bunch of geekos who believe in the spirit of knowledge sharing. It's always fun showing the openSUSE box & the myriad things you can do with, to people. Cheers! Ish Sookun openSUSE Advocate www.openSUSE.org - Geek by birth ... Linux by choice. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ |H|A|C|K|L|O|G|.|i|n| +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 3:49 AM, Izabel Valverde wrote:

Hello all,

I believe most of us are following the -project mailing list so I believe we should move on in Marketing too. Project decision is our concern too!

I've been deeply involved with openSUSE in the last 3 years and FOSS in general at least 15. That is the reason I believe I can present my thoughts.

From my perspective... Any contribution is seasonal and some can at least stay longer than 1-2 years. Using me, Izabel, as example, I started in the Marketing Team and I contributed until the 12.3 Release. I did not contributed to 13.1 cause my help wasn't necessary besides, quoting "Please ping the Artwork Team". On those 3 years I saw some initiatives about Ambassadors Team, Welcome Team, blablabla Team and in all of them most of the same people were discussing what should be the "rules" to start or who would take care of it... The standards were so high that neither the most valuable contributor would achive the points to be considerer a mentor or a Ambassador or... I hope you can understand my points.

Now there is a new "program", hopefuly successful one but has something writen in the wiki that I don't agree: "Are there rules? Hey, we at openSUSE don't do rules ;-) "

It looks so careless! We don't do rules but anytime possible we "start" a program or a group to talk about how to do it. Any new contributor is totally lost on how to start. #Imlosingsomething

We are marketing, we need to care with the message send.

As Marketing Team we are losing A LOT since we don't have materials to send around. Just the free will of our Advocates/Ambassadors/members isn't enough. Yes the DVD's shipment costs were really high but turned into ZERO didn't help. We became first with the $100 support idea, nobody used, poor advertise, so we erase the subsidy, later the Marketing Box, months planning and didn't happen yet. What is next?

We had a great time backing 2-3 years ago, we succeed, lots of new people joining and lots of people leaving. We need to have credibility. It is vital.

Lately I personaly, due to TSP, lost the credibility from some great openSUSEans cause we weren't able to follow our own rules to reimburse the travel costs within 40 days as discussed with SUSE and promised, so, rules? Ok, as TSP we need rules to assure the Program is able to help people to join oSC/Summit or present openSUSE worldwide, but again, with no marketing materials, with no marketing plans, with no marketing strategies, besides oSC and Summit, won't be more than a paid trip.

I've seen many people contributing and I'm thankful for have them around but there is something that I can't understand. We have people around that happened to make us proud more than once but why they are not able to at least be an openSUSE user! Did they love our community that is why they stay? Do they really believe in openSUSE? Just openSUSE opened the doors? Since we are a bunch of nice people is that why they join us? Are we failing having them around since not using openSUSE? #wearedoingsomethingwrong

My points are to show that we have many aspects to care and work on... I really hope that you can see something for us to contribute together.

So, please, stand up who is or wants to be part of openSUSE Marketing Team. If you do already just mention that you are around, if you are a simple follower please consider to join and tell us. If you just want to keep following tell us too cause your view will be necessary to keep us on track. Any contribution is seasonal. If you can be here now tell us.

I hope our Artwork Team/Partners are inside Marketing mailing list, if not please someone call them. Marketing and Artwork need to work together. We rock better together!

I'm writing now cause many things are being said from few perspectives and many decisions will be taken. If we don't stand up now we will be apart from marketing decisions and we will send for the rest of the project the idea that marketing is just necessary for Release times or advertise on twitter, facebook or G+! We must to be more than this, we are more than this.

Where we can re-start. http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Marketing http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Marketing_team

Please let's move and present a group initiative. We can do better.

Thank you

Izabel Valverde -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+owner@opensuse.org

-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+owner@opensuse.org

2013/12/9 Izabel Valverde :

Hello all,

I believe most of us are following the -project mailing list so I believe we should move on in Marketing too. Project decision is our concern too!

I've been deeply involved with openSUSE in the last 3 years and FOSS in general at least 15. That is the reason I believe I can present my thoughts.

From my perspective... Any contribution is seasonal and some can at least stay longer than 1-2 years. Using me, Izabel, as example, I started in the Marketing Team and I contributed until the 12.3 Release. I did not contributed to 13.1 cause my help wasn't necessary besides, quoting "Please ping the Artwork Team". On those 3 years I saw some initiatives about Ambassadors Team, Welcome Team, blablabla Team and in all of them most of the same people were discussing what should be the "rules" to start or who would take care of it... The standards were so high that neither the most valuable contributor would achive the points to be considerer a mentor or a Ambassador or... I hope you can understand my points.

Dong Dong, I can hear the bells... :D I have excuses that are not actually excuses but there is no need to cry over spiled milk, the fact is that many people got valiable experience through that.

Now there is a new "program", hopefuly successful one but has something writen in the wiki that I don't agree: "Are there rules? Hey, we at openSUSE don't do rules ;-) "

It looks so careless! We don't do rules but anytime possible we "start" a program or a group to talk about how to do it. Any new contributor is totally lost on how to start. #Imlosingsomething

We are marketing, we need to care with the message send.

As Marketing Team we are losing A LOT since we don't have materials to send around. Just the free will of our Advocates/Ambassadors/members isn't enough. Yes the DVD's shipment costs were really high but turned into ZERO didn't help. We became first with the $100 support idea, nobody used, poor advertise, so we erase the subsidy, later the Marketing Box, months planning and didn't happen yet. What is next?

A really good question...

We had a great time backing 2-3 years ago, we succeed, lots of new people joining and lots of people leaving. We need to have credibility. It is vital.

Lately I personaly, due to TSP, lost the credibility from some great openSUSEans cause we weren't able to follow our own rules to reimburse the travel costs within 40 days as discussed with SUSE and promised, so, rules? Ok, as TSP we need rules to assure the Program is able to help people to join oSC/Summit or present openSUSE worldwide, but again, with no marketing materials, with no marketing plans, with no marketing strategies, besides oSC and Summit, won't be more than a paid trip.

I've seen many people contributing and I'm thankful for have them around but there is something that I can't understand. We have people around that happened to make us proud more than once but why they are not able to at least be an openSUSE user! Did they love our community that is why they stay? Do they really believe in openSUSE? Just openSUSE opened the doors? Since we are a bunch of nice people is that why they join us? Are we failing having them around since not using openSUSE? #wearedoingsomethingwrong

My points are to show that we have many aspects to care and work on... I really hope that you can see something for us to contribute together.

So, please, stand up who is or wants to be part of openSUSE Marketing Team. If you do already just mention that you are around, if you are a simple follower please consider to join and tell us. If you just want to keep following tell us too cause your view will be necessary to keep us on track. Any contribution is seasonal. If you can be here now tell us.

I hope our Artwork Team/Partners are inside Marketing mailing list, if not please someone call them. Marketing and Artwork need to work together. We rock better together!

I'm writing now cause many things are being said from few perspectives and many decisions will be taken. If we don't stand up now we will be apart from marketing decisions and we will send for the rest of the project the idea that marketing is just necessary for Release times or advertise on twitter, facebook or G+! We must to be more than this, we are more than this.

Where we can re-start. http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Marketing http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Marketing_team

Please let's move and present a group initiative. We can do better.

Thank you

Izabel Valverde

Now I agree in everything you are saying. My opinion is that we need something that all of us, the people of Marketing team, can work with. I have a thought since we used to have openSUSE Weekly news where most of the marketing people had something to work on every week and beyond the marketing team, also local teams were around translating and so on. Looking back things started to go off the road shortly after The weekly news stopped. Of course the every week task was exhausting but if you like the idea we can talk about the exact period that can be released. This is my opinion and I might be wrong but I just wanted to shere that with the Marketing Team. The infrastructure is there, all it is needed is people to work with it. This will make most of us active again and will bring other people that want to contribute and most of all it will be something that will make the Project more visible(again). I know by experience that translating the Weekly neews made our local community more visisble and gathered people around the Project. People must know the stuff that is going on the openSUSE Project. I think something like that will actually give back life to the Marketing Team and this is what we need. Just my 2 drachmas :P Kostas

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On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 5:19 AM, Izabel Valverde wrote:

Hello all,

I believe most of us are following the -project mailing list so I believe we should move on in Marketing too. Project decision is our concern too!

I've been deeply involved with openSUSE in the last 3 years and FOSS in general at least 15. That is the reason I believe I can present my thoughts.

From my perspective... Any contribution is seasonal and some can at least stay longer than 1-2 years. Using me, Izabel, as example, I started in the Marketing Team and I contributed until the 12.3 Release. I did not contributed to 13.1 cause my help wasn't necessary besides, quoting "Please ping the Artwork Team". On those 3 years I saw some initiatives about Ambassadors Team, Welcome Team, blablabla Team and in all of them most of the same people were discussing what should be the "rules" to start or who would take care of it... The standards were so high that neither the most valuable contributor would achive the points to be considerer a mentor or a Ambassador or... I hope you can understand my points.

One of the very interesting things we can do is actually try to keep the same standards we adhere to but not show it.

Now there is a new "program", hopefuly successful one but has something writen in the wiki that I don't agree: "Are there rules? Hey, we at openSUSE don't do rules ;-) "

http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Mentors This is the URL, I wrote it. However, we also mentioned to have a look at the Guiding Principles. The idea behind it, is make openSUSE a fun place to be in, it died mostly because of lack of time and I was the only one pushing to unify the wiki pages.

It looks so careless! We don't do rules but anytime possible we "start" a program or a group to talk about how to do it. Any new contributor is totally lost on how to start. #Imlosingsomething

This was not a "Program", it was just a page so that people can refer it directly when needed, a list of contact points that is it. I want to clarify this

We are marketing, we need to care with the message send.

As Marketing Team we are losing A LOT since we don't have materials to send around. Just the free will of our Advocates/Ambassadors/members isn't enough. Yes the DVD's shipment costs were really high but turned into ZERO didn't help. We became first with the $100 support idea, nobody used, poor advertise, so we erase the subsidy, later the Marketing Box, months planning and didn't happen yet. What is next?

We had a great time backing 2-3 years ago, we succeed, lots of new people joining and lots of people leaving. We need to have credibility. It is vital.

Lately I personaly, due to TSP, lost the credibility from some great openSUSEans cause we weren't able to follow our own rules to reimburse the travel costs within 40 days as discussed with SUSE and promised, so, rules? Ok, as TSP we need rules to assure the Program is able to help people to join oSC/Summit or present openSUSE worldwide, but again, with no marketing materials, with no marketing plans, with no marketing strategies, besides oSC and Summit, won't be more than a paid trip.

I've seen many people contributing and I'm thankful for have them around but there is something that I can't understand. We have people around that happened to make us proud more than once but why they are not able to at least be an openSUSE user! Did they love our community that is why they stay? Do they really believe in openSUSE? Just openSUSE opened the doors? Since we are a bunch of nice people is that why they join us? Are we failing having them around since not using openSUSE? #wearedoingsomethingwrong

I am not sure, can you please explain further

My points are to show that we have many aspects to care and work on... I really hope that you can see something for us to contribute together.

Yes and even if 2 people take a single task depending on their time, it will be awesome. That is where the http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Marketing_jobs helped Problem now is, we all rely on lots of other infrastructure just to suit our convenience, "Keeping things on the wiki" really helps otherwise it becomes a personal repo, I am sorry to say this. We need to trust our own infrastructure before asking for more, by creating more infrastructure, we are and will be creating more trouble for us. As an outside guy, I will not care to look at the docs outside the opensuse.org infrastructure, oo is the official source of information for me

So, please, stand up who is or wants to be part of openSUSE Marketing Team. If you do already just mention that you are around, if you are a simple follower please consider to join and tell us. If you just want to keep following tell us too cause your view will be necessary to keep us on track. Any contribution is seasonal. If you can be here now tell us.

I am around and yes it is seasonal, but usually related to GSoC and stuff, if it is marketing.

I hope our Artwork Team/Partners are inside Marketing mailing list, if not please someone call them. Marketing and Artwork need to work together. We rock better together!

Yes :D

I'm writing now cause many things are being said from few perspectives and many decisions will be taken. If we don't stand up now we will be apart from marketing decisions and we will send for the rest of the project the idea that marketing is just necessary for Release times or advertise on twitter, facebook or G+! We must to be more than this, we are more than this.

+1

Where we can re-start. http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Marketing http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Marketing_team

Thanks a lot for bringing out the wiki again, really appreciate it.

Please let's move and present a group initiative. We can do better.

We need doers now, noone else :)

Thank you

Izabel Valverde -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+owner@opensuse.org

-- Regards Manu Gupta -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+owner@opensuse.org