I have taken the liberty of snipping and reorganising so that I hope this reply follows a logical order to further this discussion.
On Sun, 2005-02-20 at 20:21, Louis Suarez-Potts wrote: > >Having a title as a facilitator gives recognition and responsibility. I > >suggest the facilitator roles be annual and the people be elected. > > I agree; is it better you think than "MarCon" ? To me the language that we use shapes our attitudes. Although MarCon is used elsewhere in a similar context to refer to marketing contact, I personally don't like it as a label. To me to "Mar" something is to damage it and to "Con" is to swindle. Further I don't like the term "Marketing" for an OSS project. To me "marketing" has a concept of them and us - we are the suppliers and they are the consumers. But OSS isn't like that, as soon as an individual or a company starts to evaluate OSS they become part of the community. Thus I prefer the term "facilitator" (or possibly "liaison"), someone who is going to help new community members to find their feet in this new to them, large and daunting, but hopefully supportive and exciting community. To expand on my view of the role of facilitators (/liaisons/MarCons): * To ensure that the website for the people that they wish to support is appropriate. My concept of appropriate includes the following functions: * The web site is easy to find and navigate for someone looking. * Provides peer support for people in their sub community. * Can respond rapidly to suggested improvements. * Has sufficient flexibility, dynamism, and interaction that the community feels that the web site belongs to them. * To approach people/organisations to find out what they need in order to be able to change to OOo, and to feed that information back into the wider OOo community. Sometimes this role might be to suggest that the organisation might like to put forward a financial incentive for their particular requirements. For example a company that spends a million per year on Microsoft licenses, but can't change to OOo because a vital piece of functionality is missing. For the company to put forward say $200,000 is a small risk to gain $800,000 in the first year and a million for each year after that. * Advertise for and directly approach people to be facilitators to fill particular niches. Thanks for the link to the page of MarCons. As to the MarCons: > <http://marketing.openoffice.org/contacts.html> I didn't know that this page existed. To me there needs to be a prominent link to this page on the OOo home page. Rather than email links to people I suggest that the links be to the "home" page for that region. This leads into another question: At the moment--and I stress at the moment--that's not really feasible. > More on this when I know more. I, along with many, have long wanted a > CMS facility. > > But what do you imagine the CMS to do? See my above discussion about my suggested responsibilities for facilitators (/liaisons/MarCons). A facilitator in seconds should be able to set-up a new: * discussion forum * wiki * IRC applet (i.e. accessing the web page is all that is required to join the discussion - no other software necessary) * Calendar * Place for sharing files There are bound to be other CMS that can do this, but for an example that I have briefly used see http://moodle.org/ That is, the MarCons are effectively field agents. I think having > clearer guidelines is a good idea. I also think that we need, as John > suggests, to build up the MarCon group. We also, you know, don't have > many organized regional user groups--perhaps now? > I am happy to bounce ideas here for developing guidelines if no one else would like to do this. (I would prefer to spend my OOo time on developing addons and writing documentation to make it easier for others to do so as well). > Agreed. Charles and I had thought about regional efforts; I think again > the MarCons could be developed further in that fashion. The key point, > again, is that there has to be communication--otherwise, there is > confusion. But that's obvious. I suggest that once a suitable web platform that allows for the sort of autonomy that I have been recommending was available then the existing facilitators can advertise for and recruit more facilitators. I would be happy to work with Graham Lauder for New Zealand. Thanks, Ian Laurenson --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
