Hello,
as some of u know, I try to redesign the installer of ur distro. Some time ago I did a blogpost about the slideshow in it.
http://karl-tux-stadt.de/ktuxs/?p=2587
I think the text information in the slideshow, and which slides we show, should be reimproved too. So I made a little brainstorm what should the slideshow contain and in which order should they showed. U can find it here: http://karl-tux-stadt.de/tmp/yast-installer2.png
1. project should be a little introducion what openSUSE is and how its created 2. one of my points was, that in the old slideshow would showed many slides with what the installed distro has, u never keep all names of the programs in ur mind during the install process, so better make a generally slide that says, u have all installed what u need and can find more. And show a way how to find the programs 3. in the old slideshow openFATE wasnt mentioned, I think thats not good because a user who work with ur ditro all day can sometimes have good ideas what we can do better. So we should give him a whole slide 4. How u can find help, should be contain some words to openSUSE wiki and forums and so on 5. How u can help, should descirbe that we are a project from contributors and that there is a way to contribute too 6-7. 2 slides with ways to contribute 8. Build ur own should be a slide about SUSE Studio 9. a slide about the OBS 10. a last slide, for short repeat and invite to be part of openSUSE
The only problem is, I dont like to do this alone without a discussion, second reason I am not really good wit english texts ;)
So would u help me with this? As I know Jos created a piratepad or something like that.
br gnokii
Hi,
This is mainly a personal opinion as such might not be like other people but I'll try to be superficial enough to keep things simple...
I would probably treat the slideshow as if it was a TV premier commercial time. This means, doing a triage of the stuff more important you have on your showcase.
From a Marketing perspective, I would probably claim that using this space to "educate" your users could be nice. It's in fact one of the main variables for any service marketing. Education, in a way we should have a pedagogic behavior towards the audience.
As you say, and very well in my opinion; it's a good idea to face it from a 'look what you can do with your opensuse' then exactly from a more 'dead' perspective such as 'look we feature all this cool software' and no one remembers later.
I don't know the time frames involved, but maybe a small brainstrom through a collaborative tool and try to create something like a 30 sec pitch for any of the features you guys want to highlight and start from there?
I like the invitation part, and honestly this should be a good thing and actually being done... but there's something I would like to remember first about this 'invitation' we should have already to go alongside with it a small 'place' or something that could work as a easy start up ramp. Imagine you get people attention, then what? you are going to send them into a wiki ? you are going them into mailing lists? foruns ? I mean that idea should actually be far more explored and the concept developed. I would strongly go for the 'invitation', I believe it might become a win.
Another thing I would like to comment, or maybe I'm wrong... but it's just how I see it from lurking. The Ambassadorial initiative is having a lot of positive sinergies. I would also consider taking one slide to helping it getting a boost and some more visibility... In a way, Ambassadors are the community front office. I believe it's a good investment in promoting Ambassadors, specially in such a flashy thing as in an installer. I believe it will pay off well.
There is one 'another thing' also I can point... For people who are already in a way familiarized with another distro or even first comers... getting access to packages and repositories for me was somehow tricky. It was in a way easier with Fedora because I was already familiarized with 'yum' and their own repository, rawhide was also a place where I shopped around... rpmfind... and barely I needed something out from there.
When I landed on openSUSE with a more serious approach, I had to get familiarized with zypper, your software repo's and some browsing adventures searching other repo's. I would eventually spare some space on slides for some tools that help people who are for example changing from another distro. Zypper is a good start... osc is a must in my opinion. And it's probably a good hook to link to build and studio, which without doubt should be present. I believe that investing on this tools could actually trigger more interest in people that are trying openSUSE and are already familiarized with another flavour. Some $care for repo's info and a little intro could also be fun either for first timers, casuals...
nelson
On Wed, 2010-08-18 at 13:44 +0200, S.Kemter wrote:
Hello,
as some of u know, I try to redesign the installer of ur distro. Some time ago I did a blogpost about the slideshow in it.
http://karl-tux-stadt.de/ktuxs/?p=2587
I think the text information in the slideshow, and which slides we show, should be reimproved too. So I made a little brainstorm what should the slideshow contain and in which order should they showed. U can find it here: http://karl-tux-stadt.de/tmp/yast-installer2.png
- project should be a little introducion what openSUSE is and how its
created 2. one of my points was, that in the old slideshow would showed many slides with what the installed distro has, u never keep all names of the programs in ur mind during the install process, so better make a generally slide that says, u have all installed what u need and can find more. And show a way how to find the programs 3. in the old slideshow openFATE wasnt mentioned, I think thats not good because a user who work with ur ditro all day can sometimes have good ideas what we can do better. So we should give him a whole slide 4. How u can find help, should be contain some words to openSUSE wiki and forums and so on 5. How u can help, should descirbe that we are a project from contributors and that there is a way to contribute too 6-7. 2 slides with ways to contribute 8. Build ur own should be a slide about SUSE Studio 9. a slide about the OBS 10. a last slide, for short repeat and invite to be part of openSUSE
The only problem is, I dont like to do this alone without a discussion, second reason I am not really good wit english texts ;)
So would u help me with this? As I know Jos created a piratepad or something like that.
br gnokii
Hello,
This is mainly a personal opinion as such might not be like other people but I'll try to be superficial enough to keep things simple...
I would probably treat the slideshow as if it was a TV premier commercial time. This means, doing a triage of the stuff more important you have on your showcase.
From a Marketing perspective, I would probably claim that using this space to "educate" your users could be nice. It's in fact one of the main variables for any service marketing. Education, in a way we should have a pedagogic behavior towards the audience.
As you say, and very well in my opinion; it's a good idea to face it from a 'look what you can do with your opensuse' then exactly from a more 'dead' perspective such as 'look we feature all this cool software' and no one remembers later.
I don't know the time frames involved, but maybe a small brainstrom through a collaborative tool and try to create something like a 30 sec pitch for any of the features you guys want to highlight and start from there?
I like the invitation part, and honestly this should be a good thing and actually being done... but there's something I would like to remember first about this 'invitation' we should have already to go alongside with it a small 'place' or something that could work as a easy start up ramp. Imagine you get people attention, then what? you are going to send them into a wiki ? you are going them into mailing lists? foruns ? I mean that idea should actually be far more explored and the concept developed. I would strongly go for the 'invitation', I believe it might become a win.
Another thing I would like to comment, or maybe I'm wrong... but it's just how I see it from lurking. The Ambassadorial initiative is having a lot of positive sinergies. I would also consider taking one slide to helping it getting a boost and some more visibility... In a way, Ambassadors are the community front office. I believe it's a good investment in promoting Ambassadors, specially in such a flashy thing as in an installer. I believe it will pay off well.
There is one 'another thing' also I can point... For people who are already in a way familiarized with another distro or even first comers... getting access to packages and repositories for me was somehow tricky. It was in a way easier with Fedora because I was already familiarized with 'yum' and their own repository, rawhide was also a place where I shopped around... rpmfind... and barely I needed something out from there.
When I landed on openSUSE with a more serious approach, I had to get familiarized with zypper, your software repo's and some browsing adventures searching other repo's. I would eventually spare some space on slides for some tools that help people who are for example changing from another distro. Zypper is a good start... osc is a must in my opinion. And it's probably a good hook to link to build and studio, which without doubt should be present. I believe that investing on this tools could actually trigger more interest in people that are trying openSUSE and are already familiarized with another flavour. Some $care for repo's info and a little intro could also be fun either for first timers, casuals...
We should remember a familiar user of openSUSE would skip the slideshow and watch the download and installing process. So from this side makes it sense to make a whole page only for Ambassadors program? It is good that a noob becomes after installation Ambassadors and would be asked on a booth questions and he cant give no answer because he have not a lot of experience with openSUSE? We can and we should mention the Ambassador program of course, there is place in "where u can find help" and "u can help us" pages already
For the zypper - yum thing the same, I think a new user wouldnt use zypper as his first choice, he would use yast on graphical side. Of course we should give informations on the slide show but we cant educate about using yast or zypper there, there isnt enough place for it. But what we can do is point the new user to a page where he can find the needed information.
br gnokii
On Fri, 2010-08-20 at 08:54 +0200, S.Kemter wrote:
Hello,
This is mainly a personal opinion as such might not be like other people but I'll try to be superficial enough to keep things simple...
I would probably treat the slideshow as if it was a TV premier commercial time. This means, doing a triage of the stuff more important you have on your showcase.
From a Marketing perspective, I would probably claim that using this space to "educate" your users could be nice. It's in fact one of the main variables for any service marketing. Education, in a way we should have a pedagogic behavior towards the audience.
As you say, and very well in my opinion; it's a good idea to face it from a 'look what you can do with your opensuse' then exactly from a more 'dead' perspective such as 'look we feature all this cool software' and no one remembers later.
I don't know the time frames involved, but maybe a small brainstrom through a collaborative tool and try to create something like a 30 sec pitch for any of the features you guys want to highlight and start from there?
I like the invitation part, and honestly this should be a good thing and actually being done... but there's something I would like to remember first about this 'invitation' we should have already to go alongside with it a small 'place' or something that could work as a easy start up ramp. Imagine you get people attention, then what? you are going to send them into a wiki ? you are going them into mailing lists? foruns ? I mean that idea should actually be far more explored and the concept developed. I would strongly go for the 'invitation', I believe it might become a win.
Another thing I would like to comment, or maybe I'm wrong... but it's just how I see it from lurking. The Ambassadorial initiative is having a lot of positive sinergies. I would also consider taking one slide to helping it getting a boost and some more visibility... In a way, Ambassadors are the community front office. I believe it's a good investment in promoting Ambassadors, specially in such a flashy thing as in an installer. I believe it will pay off well.
There is one 'another thing' also I can point... For people who are already in a way familiarized with another distro or even first comers... getting access to packages and repositories for me was somehow tricky. It was in a way easier with Fedora because I was already familiarized with 'yum' and their own repository, rawhide was also a place where I shopped around... rpmfind... and barely I needed something out from there.
When I landed on openSUSE with a more serious approach, I had to get familiarized with zypper, your software repo's and some browsing adventures searching other repo's. I would eventually spare some space on slides for some tools that help people who are for example changing from another distro. Zypper is a good start... osc is a must in my opinion. And it's probably a good hook to link to build and studio, which without doubt should be present. I believe that investing on this tools could actually trigger more interest in people that are trying openSUSE and are already familiarized with another flavour. Some $care for repo's info and a little intro could also be fun either for first timers, casuals...
We should remember a familiar user of openSUSE would skip the slideshow and watch the download and installing process.
openSUSE installer has one thing that probably makes it unique (I know at least Anaconda doesn't do it), it has 3 nice tabs where you can check multiple stuff, if I am not wrong you have tab 1 with the slideshow, you have a 2nd tab with the install process and a 3rd tab with a release notes.
I would probably point that:
- familiar users/fidelized users > will be interested in install tab or release notes tab. - newcomers with skills on linux will pretty much be looking at everything and checking stuff out. - potential fanboys will be looking at the slide show (familiar or not).
So in a way, since we don't have any census or statistical data to support any claim, I would probably use those slides in a different, but that's just me.
So from this side makes it sense to make a whole page only for Ambassadors program? It is good that a noob becomes after installation Ambassadors and would be asked on a booth questions and he cant give no answer because he have not a lot of experience with openSUSE?
I am not sure on what are the goals of Ambassadors or what plans they have, but aren't they supposed to develop work as a front office for openSUSE on the field? Aren't they supposed to help develop the community (hey ain't the community a part of openSUSE?), so for me it makes all the sense an investment on flagging Ambassadors program, specially now when it seems to be something new... I think it's win to introduce it to the community. Makes more sense then just advertise for a web browser, security tools and such, features that are already well associated with openSUSE.
We can and we should mention the Ambassador program of course, there is place in "where u can find help" and "u can help us" pages already
For the zypper - yum thing the same, I think a new user wouldnt use zypper as his first choice, he would use yast on graphical side. Of course we should give informations on the slide show but we cant educate about using yast or zypper there, there isnt enough place for it. But what we can do is point the new user to a page where he can find the needed information.
A new user that has no knowledge on GNU/Linux, sure... A user who is checking out openSUSE for development and which has already knowledge about UNIX like system, imagine someone coming out from Slowlaris or HP/UX... I find it hard they will be looking for YaST. But look, your SWOT missed an important point which can be very attractive to new developers and that I runned against it the other day... Your package dependency structure is very clean, unlike the one Fedora where I can point you a simple example:
notification-daemon depends on a branding theme, which has dependencies to very own core of gnome. You want to do a clean install of notify-osd for example and half of gnome gets vaporized if you follow dependencies. This doesn't happen on openSUSE which has a cleaner dependency structure. This is a hell of a kick arse advantage for GNOME developers or for fanboys who want to run customized stuff.
That by itself is a very strong argument for anyone to move to openSUSE for developing (though I have the feeling that in a way openSUSE has much popularity amongst networking/security people, specially sysadmins and NOC rats).
I don't have statistical data to prove it, but it sounded reasonable. Anyway I do like your work and the color palette you chose. As for the slide show, you guys are more prepared to decided to what to place and not to place there, as you know far better what is the experience you want to provide your trusted users... but consider your targeted user base and also invest a bit on people swapping over distro's.
From my understanding, what gives you some advantages are the 3 tabs on the installer and depending on who's installing it and their degree of interest you will split people's attention through those 3 alternatives, so in a way that gives you a small extra margin to innovate in the slides and insert other things.
That's just my view.
br gnokii
On Wednesday 18 August 2010 13:44:48 S.Kemter wrote:
Hello,
as some of u know, I try to redesign the installer of ur distro. Some time ago I did a blogpost about the slideshow in it.
http://karl-tux-stadt.de/ktuxs/?p=2587
I think the text information in the slideshow, and which slides we show, should be reimproved too. So I made a little brainstorm what should the slideshow contain and in which order should they showed. U can find it here: http://karl-tux-stadt.de/tmp/yast-installer2.png
- project should be a little introducion what openSUSE is and how its
created 2. one of my points was, that in the old slideshow would showed many slides with what the installed distro has, u never keep all names of the programs in ur mind during the install process, so better make a generally slide that says, u have all installed what u need and can find more. And show a way how to find the programs 3. in the old slideshow openFATE wasnt mentioned, I think thats not good because a user who work with ur ditro all day can sometimes have good ideas what we can do better. So we should give him a whole slide 4. How u can find help, should be contain some words to openSUSE wiki and forums and so on 5. How u can help, should descirbe that we are a project from contributors and that there is a way to contribute too 6-7. 2 slides with ways to contribute 8. Build ur own should be a slide about SUSE Studio 9. a slide about the OBS 10. a last slide, for short repeat and invite to be part of openSUSE
The only problem is, I dont like to do this alone without a discussion, second reason I am not really good wit english texts ;)
So would u help me with this? As I know Jos created a piratepad or something like that.
http://piratepad.net/k4ca6dcQ5m That would be this one.
I basically took your 10 points and thought about that, changed a few things.
I think this is a difficult issue - what exactly is our goal with these slides? Educate our user on ? what ? entertain? inform? make him/her do something?
Before we really start defining the slides I think we should discuss that. Thoughts?
br gnokii
On Fri, 2010-08-20 at 19:48 +0200, Jos Poortvliet wrote:
On Wednesday 18 August 2010 13:44:48 S.Kemter wrote:
Hello,
as some of u know, I try to redesign the installer of ur distro. Some time ago I did a blogpost about the slideshow in it.
http://karl-tux-stadt.de/ktuxs/?p=2587
I think the text information in the slideshow, and which slides we show, should be reimproved too. So I made a little brainstorm what should the slideshow contain and in which order should they showed. U can find it here: http://karl-tux-stadt.de/tmp/yast-installer2.png
- project should be a little introducion what openSUSE is and how its
created 2. one of my points was, that in the old slideshow would showed many slides with what the installed distro has, u never keep all names of the programs in ur mind during the install process, so better make a generally slide that says, u have all installed what u need and can find more. And show a way how to find the programs 3. in the old slideshow openFATE wasnt mentioned, I think thats not good because a user who work with ur ditro all day can sometimes have good ideas what we can do better. So we should give him a whole slide 4. How u can find help, should be contain some words to openSUSE wiki and forums and so on 5. How u can help, should descirbe that we are a project from contributors and that there is a way to contribute too 6-7. 2 slides with ways to contribute 8. Build ur own should be a slide about SUSE Studio 9. a slide about the OBS 10. a last slide, for short repeat and invite to be part of openSUSE
The only problem is, I dont like to do this alone without a discussion, second reason I am not really good wit english texts ;)
So would u help me with this? As I know Jos created a piratepad or something like that.
http://piratepad.net/k4ca6dcQ5m That would be this one.
I basically took your 10 points and thought about that, changed a few things.
I think this is a difficult issue - what exactly is our goal with these slides? Educate our user on ? what ? entertain? inform? make him/her do something?
Before we really start defining the slides I think we should discuss that. Thoughts?
I do go for promotion and education under one guide line: openSUSE as a whole. Not just focusing the Linux Distro (Release Notes?), but also focusing the community and the projects within, like Ambassadors.
From my perspective: Slideshow = deploying advanced Guerrilla Marketing
strategies!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_marketing
And be mindfull that Guerrilla Marketing doesn't need to be thinked on a commercial basis or brain washing strategies ;) This is important... My advice: 'Think out of the box'.
nelson
br gnokii
-
Jos Poortvliet -
Nelson Marques -
S.Kemter