---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Chuck Payne Date: Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 3:08 PM Subject: Re: [opensuse-marketing] Marketing and Artwork, who's around? To: Efstathios Iosifidis On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 2:20 PM, Efstathios Iosifidis wrote:

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.

...

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

Hello,

We don't need ambassador-advocate or whatever name you want. We need people that will do presentations, local events, local-global presence. There's no reason to name someone advocate to make a presentation. I know few local people that do that without being active in the project (some use other distro). They just ask me for promo materials (I give them what left overs I have). Having the term advocate, we should have some Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and special outfit, just like Fedora does.

I have to STRONGLY disagree with this, when we had the program, we had people sending in reports, you had a good sense of what was going on. So the Ambassador was doing a great job. We welcome them, gave them support, explain how to market. I haven't see any of that lately. It would be nice to have the group so that we can again go out spread the word, get people involve, help them out. Hell, we don't really have a CM to be honest. I thought Jos was, but I don't see him doing that much, if you have a strong Community Manager, then you will have a strong community. I see

Personally, I see lately only the same people involve with marketing (don't know what's happening with other teams). We lack people to help. How can we increase numbers? I believe if we increase numbers on local communities. Not only events or weekly news (or magazine). I'll give you an example, look what Ubuntu did. They sent many cds to people asking (you ask a cd and they send you 10 asking you to give them to your friends). They were sending containers of cds world wide (even if they knew that 90% will go to trash). That had the result of creating users. During that period, they were working local communities too. Now they have a end-user base and active with their distro base. They attract companies to invest on Ubuntu (Valve). Right now, they don't need to send cds or any other heavy promo material to their local communities because the marketing-promo thing is automatic. They change to Unity? End unsers use unity. They promote Ubuntu phone? End users are crazy to buy Ubuntu Phone. Another thing is that they gathered many people so if someone contributes seasonal, they don't need him/her because someone else is already coming.

We don't have to reinvent the wheel. Just follow the success stories.

Regarding local community, as Kostas said, yes, weekly news was something we did and brought us some contribs (it was something like junior jobs thing). But the same time #wearedoingsomethingwrong (It's different thing to develop a team and differenent to keep it). Don't know what we did wrong. Example was the guy that started http://ubuntuxtreme.com/ (he lives in my city). Before starting it, he passed from our community. Personally I believe that we didn't have something to offer him. He was searching GPU programming (not sure if I say it correct) and we either were busy with the weekly news or global marketing. So if we don't focus on local communities, even marketing hackfests look like paid trips to me (unless we manage to do that during oSC or Summit).

So Izabel, some of us do the dirty job and some just are here to show off (and maybe make some contributors seasonal). I was here and I'll be here in the future.

There are a lot of that are doing stuff all the time, I not sure who you mean by seasonal. I didn't know we had seasonal helpers, I thought everyone helped out when they can.

Have phun, Stathis

-- http://about.me/iosifidis http://www.eiosifidis.info http://gnome.eiosifidis.info http://www.gnome.gr http://www.opensuse.gr

Great leaders don't tell you what to do...They show you how it's done. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts...absolutely. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+owner@opensuse.org

-- Terror PUP a.k.a Chuck "PUP" Payne (678) 636-9678 ----------------------------------------- Discover it! Enjoy it! Share it! openSUSE Linux. ----------------------------------------- openSUSE -- en.opensuse.org/User:Terrorpup openSUSE Ambassador/openSUSE Member Community Manager -- Southeast Linux Foundation (SELF) skype,twiiter,identica,friendfeed -- terrorpup freenode(irc) --terrorpup/lupinstein Register Linux Userid: 155363 Have you tried SUSE Studio? Need to create a Live CD, an app you want to package and distribute , or create your own linux distro. Give SUSE Studio a try. www.susestudio.com. See you at Southeast Linux Fest, June 7-9, 2013 in Charlotte, NC. www.southeastlinuxfest.org -- Terror PUP a.k.a Chuck "PUP" Payne (678) 636-9678 ----------------------------------------- Discover it! Enjoy it! Share it! openSUSE Linux. ----------------------------------------- openSUSE -- en.opensuse.org/User:Terrorpup openSUSE Ambassador/openSUSE Member Community Manager -- Southeast Linux Foundation (SELF) skype,twiiter,identica,friendfeed -- terrorpup freenode(irc) --terrorpup/lupinstein Register Linux Userid: 155363 Have you tried SUSE Studio? Need to create a Live CD, an app you want to package and distribute , or create your own linux distro. Give SUSE Studio a try. www.susestudio.com. See you at Southeast Linux Fest, June 7-9, 2013 in Charlotte, NC. www.southeastlinuxfest.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org