June 2008 - openSUSE Marketing - openSUSE Mailing Lists

[opensuse-marketing] Sneak Peeks
by Francis Giannaros 17 Jun '08

17 Jun '08

Hi guys! I kicked off the Sneak Peeks series the other day and I've got two out so far, and I'm working on one more now (Compiz). Problem is, I'm going on holiday on Sunday so I won't have any time to do any more after then, but it would be really nice to still run the series with the rest of the planned articles[0]. I would've started the series earlier knowing that I had a holiday coming up but unfortunately I had my final year exams until recently. So....if you wanna help get involved with marketing just in time before the openSUSE 11.0 release, this is a really great way to get started! The articles are quite widely read and are a great way of promoting the distribution release, hyping it up, and getting to know features and developers a little better. I'll be in Barcelona for the next week from Sunday, and I will have occasional access to the Internet so I can definitely help review articles and give advice or general help in that time, but definitely wouldn't have time to write any more. All the other news.o.o editors can help here too. Though it will be up to you what you cover, I do suggest following the general format of: (i) what's new and exciting, (ii) developer short interview to find out a little more. See the list for an example of who to interview for each one. One other thing to note here is the reasonably tight schedule -- 11.0 is released on the 19th, and all the sneak peeks should be done by then. So if you have any time and could take one up, just add a note on the wiki and drop a note here. [0] http://opensuse.org/Sneak_Peeks Kind thoughts, -- Francis Giannaros http://francis.giannaros.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse-marketing] MKTG: Helping Hands Project
by Bryen 16 Jun '08

16 Jun '08

I'm very excited to inform you of several initiatives launched by the openSUSE-GNOME Team to promote openSUSE 11.0 and grow our community. The GNOME Team feels this is an excellent project to work with the Marketing Team on and your feedback and assistance in marketing will be greatly appreciated. 1) To Inspire and Suggest: One thing we want to do is write more articles, HowTos and other efforts to float about on the Internet. We recognize that there are usually two problems that exist. a) Someone wants to write an article but has no idea what to write about and b) Someone has an idea but no time to write (or can't write) To that effect, we have created a new wiki page for the submission and exchange of ideas. http://en.opensuse.org/GNOME/Topics_To_Write. Any suggestions on expanding or tweaking this would be greatly appreciated. 2) Helping Hands Project - This idea was inspired by Captain_Magnus and myself. Oftentimes, when visiting an IRC Channel or attending a meeting, the chatter is too technical. This scares away new users who may not consider themselves techies but genuinely want to learn about openSUSE and how to use it as a regular joe user. Sadly, after several weeks after a distro is released, these users tend to stop using openSUSE. Once people have decided to try openSUSE, we want them to STAY with us. :-) Helping Hands is a series of live discussions by experts in various areas of openSUSE GNOME and applications that run on GNOME. We hope this becomes a weekly event. For one hour, an expert will present on his/her topic of choice and answer questions from users. Eventually, while this is clearly GNOME-centric at this time, I hope to see this program expand to other areas of openSUSE, including KDE, CLI, etc. What a great way to grow our openSUSE family! Once we're ready to go in about two weeks, I hope we, the Marketing Team, can work together to spread the word. We want users to visit us and experts to volunteer their time. It is only an hour of their time and a great way for them to promote their project. As I am the coordinator of this project, I could really use your help in finding ways to make this an even better and sharper marketing tool for openSUSE. http://en.opensuse.org/GNOME/HowTos -- ---Bryen--- Let's rejoice a "There are no dumb questions" culture. But I really need you to have a "No dumb answers" policy before I answer your question. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse-marketing] Sneak Peeks & "Getting to know openSUSE 11.0"
by Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier 16 Jun '08

16 Jun '08

Hi all, One quick thought - as we only have three shopping days before the release of openSUSE 11.0, we might want to consider our post-11.0 game plan. The Sneak Peeks are great, but we might want to think about doing some of the ideas / topics that haven't been covered for the Sneak Peeks as "Getting to know" type articles. In general - we need to have a stream of material beyond the launch date that will help bring in people. A couple of possible topics: Getting Started with openSUSE GNOME / KDE - A short guide to GNOME and/or KDE for new users. Ten Tricks for New openSUSE Users - 10 things that are non-obvious that might be cool for new users, like Zypper tricks or features that are specific to openSUSE. I *highly* encourage -marketing list members to think up cool openSUSE topic ideas and pitch them to magazines or web sites that might pay to run them. We can always link to external articles and we will reach new audiences if articles are published on external sites as opposed to our own. (Plus, you know, you make a little money in addition to helping openSUSE.) Thoughts? Best, Zonker -- Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier openSUSE Community Manager http://zonker.opensuse.org/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse-marketing] LUGRadioLive UK
by Andrew Wafaa 16 Jun '08

16 Jun '08

I appreciate I have already asked the question on IRC in the past about openSUSE and LRL UK'08[0], but there were no real responses (I'm not complaining much, honest). After a fairly healthy discussion on #opensuse-project last night about an openSUSE Conference the idea of holding some un-meetings before any such event was thought to be a good idea. Now I know LRL isn't necessarily the best of breed in OSS conferences, but one thing that it does have in it's favour is the relaxed manner of the event. As such I think it would be a missed opportunity if openSUSE was unable to have some form of presence there, and we could try and have an un-meeting there at the same time - even if it was done as an official BoF session. There are many members of different communities from distros (not just Ubuntu) to hardware hackers and anything in between, an ideal ground for showing Green really is the new Brown :) I have already mentioned in the past that I am attending and would be more than happy to help with a booth or anything else required. Attendance is in the region of 200 people so not a huge event but still one that hits a large audience through the podcast[1] and fanboys. Any comments or views? Thanks, Andy [0] - http://lugradio.org/live/UK2008/ [1] - http://lugradio.org/ -- Andrew Wafaa, openSUSE Member: GNOME Team. awafaa(a)opensuse.org | http://opensuse.org/GNOME openSUSE: Get It, Discover It, Create It at http://www.opensuse.org http://www.wafaa.eu -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse-marketing] News Site Listings
by Bryen 16 Jun '08

16 Jun '08

Has anyone come up with a nice list of news feed sites that we can suggest our article writers to submit themselves to, such as lxer, slashdot, etc.? Might be nice to ensure that when someone writes a really good article that it be picked up in multiple locations. Pointing them to that list motivates them to write even more and well.. the world is just a little bit greener for that. :-) -- ---Bryen--- Let's rejoice a "There are no dumb questions" culture. But I really need you to have a "No dumb answers" policy before I answer your question. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse-marketing] Countdown image
by Pascal Bleser 15 Jun '08

15 Jun '08

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 So... countdown nears 0, and I wonder... :) What to render in the neat countdown images we serve from counter.o.o on release day ? And what afterwards ? - - "out now!" - - "released today!" (and what to display after release day?) - - "get it while it's hawt" (just kidding) - - "green! now!" Any ideas ? The shorter it is, the better, because it's only a few pixels of space and the text has to be short enough to be readable (and not more than 2 lines). cheers - -- ~ -o) Pascal Bleser <pascal.bleser(a)opensuse.org> ~ /\\ 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) Comment: Using GnuPG with SUSE - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFIVZB0r3NMWliFcXcRAp90AJ9MT3mJOt5o1lcJBPS4YpLyYiL9+QCgjlRK oI6IZYS6+ikboEuZnrj0d6Y= =IDQG -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help(a)opensuse.org

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Re: [opensuse-marketing] Encouraging More Bloggers
by Joe Brockmeier 13 Jun '08

13 Jun '08

On Fri, 2008-06-13 at 14:25 +0200, Martin Schlander wrote: > Fredag den 13. Juni 2008 13:20:21 skrev Francis Giannaros: > > I was wondering if anyone had some ideas about how to encourage more > > members in the community to blog about 11.0 when it's released. In > > previous releases I feel like this has been one of our weakest points, > > so I'm really interested in hearing any ideas! We've significantly beefed up the number of openSUSE community members blogging between the 10.3 release and 11.0. I think we'll see much more activity here. My question is how do we get people *outside* the project to blog about it? > Personally I've been planning my 11.0 announcement blogpost for months :-) > > I don't fully agree that there's too little blogging. At 10.3 time I remember > thinking there was almost too much of it. At release time there was a flood > of blogs and articles, drowning each other.. and a week later there was > nothing. For that reason I'll probably do my 11.0 announcement post 3-4 days > ahead of release to avoid it drowning in noise. You raise a good point -- promotion and marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. I hope that 11.0 encourages conversation for several weeks, not just a burst of activity for a few days followed by quiet. > I'm really not very enthusiastic about 11.0. Too much immature stuff in > critical areas: Well, I don't necessarily agree with this -- I think 11.0 is by and large a major improvement over 10.3. Remember that users have the option to install KDE 3.5 off the DVD if they prefer. There's also talk of a KDE 3.5 based live CD, which might help revive conversation if it's released shortly after 11.0 proper... Best, Zonker -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse-marketing] Encouraging More Bloggers
by Francis Giannaros 13 Jun '08

13 Jun '08

I was wondering if anyone had some ideas about how to encourage more members in the community to blog about 11.0 when it's released. In previous releases I feel like this has been one of our weakest points, so I'm really interested in hearing any ideas! Regards, -- Francis Giannaros http://francis.giannaros.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse-marketing] Getting Started with Marketing Team
by Masim "Vavai" Sugianto 09 Jun '08

09 Jun '08

Hi All, I'm really surprised with this idea. It should be a nice idea to build opensuse-marketing team all around of the world. Thanks Zonker ! So, according to 11.0 release in next 2 weeks, maybe we can share any idea for promotional stuff, eg : hold a release party & install fest, preparing sticker and leaflet, presentation material (I look at a nice material on Linux Tag 2008 on wiki but some of them are in German) and create an installation tips for 11.0. -- Best Regards, Masim "Vavai" Sugianto /************************************************************/ Blog (ID) : http://www.vavai.com/blog/index.php Blog (EN) : http://www.vavai.net Community : http://www.opensuse.or.id /************************************************************/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse-marketing] Because 2 is better than 1
by Bryen 09 Jun '08

09 Jun '08

I was thinking over the weekend about a conversation with Zonker on IRC the other day regarding selling Boxed versions versus free downloads, because ultimately, as he pointed out, people are more drawn to "bargain prices" than "free." As far as I know, there's only two primary distributors of the boxed version. Digital River and Amazon. Neither of them actively go out and sell openSUSE. So, I got to thinking and I thought hmm... selling the boxed versions might actually help boost openSUSE awareness. The more people actively selling openSUSE, the more it gets promoted and visible in the world. So, why not, as a marketing scheme, we open up our doors a bit and let people resell boxed versions? For example, if you buy $1,000 worth of openSUSE you can get a discount price for resale. maybe $49 a box or whatever. Then you kill two birds with one stone. A) More people actively selling openSUSE, and 2) Novell gets more money upfront. As Zonkers also pointed out, Novell is hard pressed to add more goodies to the box because they don't see real numbers yet. If we can and do do something like this, I would suggest for the time being opening this up only to active openSUSE members. What do you think? Surely this would help boost our marketing efforts even if it is a "sales" thing. Bryen -- ---Bryen--- Let's rejoice a "There are no dumb questions" culture. But I really need you to have a "No dumb answers" policy before I answer your question. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help(a)opensuse.org

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