Dear all, My name is Nelson and I'm finishing my University degree on Marketing Management by IPAM[1] in Portugal. I used SuSE Linux from 5.2/5.3 to 7.0 on my personal computers (somewhere since 98 to 2001) and used Red Hat on work (worked as sysadmin for a company that now is part of GFI International[2] and PT Inovação S.A.[3] in Mobile Networks Services, the research and development unit from Portugal Telecom). Currently I use Fedora 13, where I'm also a contributor for Fedora Marketing Team. I've joined this list after being pointed by Andreas on the Fedora Marketing lists. The reason why I'm writting this email is because I plan to submit a paper which is also based on previous Fedora Marketing list traffic which suggested that in many things we could work together. To be honest, in a way due to the purpose of my work (academical, scientific or work related), I fit better in the audiences targeted by openSUSE than exactly by Fedora. This are the two Community Distributions I admire the most, due mainly to the background relation I have with both. SuSE GmbH in 2001 sponsored one event I organized under PLUG (Portuguese Linux Users Group, now extint in favor of the walking corpse Linux.PT[4], where I was responsible for Documentation in Portuguese). This event gathered aroud 400/500 visitors during 2 days on a February weekend. I've also translated some Documentation (kernel frame buffer devices mainly) into Portuguese to the POLI Project, which is another project that died from lack of activity. My perspective over FOSS isn't shared by many, when I'm actually one of the big defenders of the importance of commercial software for several reasons. This is mainly due to my head being formatted in a Marketing Management way, and not exactly on a FOSS way. I plan to build my paper based on several topics which have not been yet decided, though I plan to have the following: 25% of available time to activities with the audience > to establish two basic things: # Promote the out-of-the-box concept present in all of us, many times ignored by pre-formated ideas. Very exploited in Marketing. # Establish a dynamic about 'the concept of Marketing' > and how we should actually face it. There is no right or wrong, on the contrary, there exist lots of perspectives. I would like to share those that better fit in the scope of Community Linux Distributions (no sales, but still a trade happens), alongside with the very basic concepts of Marketing Mix and eventually Communication Mix. 25% of time > Subject: The importance of Marketing in FOSS Communities and Products. Won't approach 'services' (products are generally seen as tangible, while services are intangible). Remaining 50% > Present a set of ideas that can be developed around possible cooperation between different Distribution Communities in order to promote our products through cooperation and sharing audiences (we all know that Fedora and openSUSE target different 'user bases', we are promoting different things, but we can still work together as Marketing contributors just like the upstream contributors do). One example of maybe a success on this field is eventually the Project started by Red Hat Inc[5] aiming to providing easier usage Networking on Linux (NetworkManager[6]) which many of us use today. Novell[7] and openSUSE[8] also have given very important steps to fulfil this goal, for example, KNetworkManager[9] can be a fine example of cooperation on this field. I would like to thank Novell and openSUSE to place very positive synergies on the FOSS community through one of the best products (non-commercial Linux) that I know, and that for a long time had a comfortable place on my Desktop/Workstation, and of course all their community contributors. Thanks all, nmarques. References: [1] - http://www.ipam.pt [2] - http://www.gfi.pt [3] - http://www.ptinovacao.pt [4] - http://www.linux.pt [5] - http://www.redhat.com [6] - http://projects.gnome.org/NetworkManager/ [7] - http://www.novell.com [8] - http://www.opensuse.org [9] - http://en.opensuse.org/KNetworkManager -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help@opensuse.org