Hello
Responses inline.
Ian Laurenson wrote:
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.
I don't often use OOo either :) MarCon is just the in house abbreviation for Marketing Contact.
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.
We are conducting marketing. AFAIK, we were the first OSS community to establish a marketing project. I don't think we are going to give that up easily. Also, based on our success other OSS projects have now started their own marketing projects, and are following us with developing a marketing plan. GNOME and the Fedora Project come to mind.
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.
Any person that subscribes to a list, or joins a project I would have thought would be doing this as a matter of course.
By joining a project (e.g. MP) as a member you are following up a commitment to participate in fulfilling the aims and objectives of that project.
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.
Do you mean the MP web site or the OOo website ? If the former, I got told that active members of the project do not visit the website, so I have geared it towards press and analysts, or people new to marketing and the MP. But as always I'm open to suggestions.
* Provides peer support for people in their sub community.
Again, I expect existing subscribers and members as good netizens and contributors to OpenOffice.org to mentor new people.
* Can respond rapidly to suggested improvements. * Has sufficient flexibility, dynamism, and interaction that the community feels that
the web site belongs to them.
These last two I'm struggling with a bit, so I went and looked at other OSS projects - large ones. GNOME, Mozilla, and Debian. The people that change or update the website are longstanding members of that community, are in lead roles similar to that we have here, and are familiar with using the tools required to make those changes.
* 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.
One of the reasons for having MarCons, is so that organisations have a point person. We have had occasions in the past where several OOo advocates have contacted the same organisation. This results in much confusion, miscommunication and makes us look very unprofessional. Suffice to say, with one particular company wrists were well and truly slapped.
* Advertise for and directly approach people to be facilitators to fill particular niches.
We do periodically, but they need to be drawn from known, trusted, and active members of the OOo MP community.
But by responding to your questions, it has confirmed for me what I see as a problem which I will address in another mail.
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.
It is linked from the Press Kit, Intro, About etc. More recently from the Contributing Page.
[...]
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?
We have a MarCon group, and there are two specific lists for their activity. The list archives are private to MP members and only MarCon members may post.
Note: The MarCon lists are most active when a press release is forthcoming, and the most active members are the non-English speaking members.
We tend to use [EMAIL PROTECTED] to share news between the NL projects and the MP.
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).
:)
Like all OSS communities with various projects and lists, the accepted netiquette is that you subscribe and wait in the wings (lurk) to see how things work. Then when you are comfortable, introduce yourself and let us know how you can contribute [1].
We have gone the extra step to provide guidelines on the MP website for fans or advocates (http://marketing.openoffice.org/), specifically: http://marketing.openoffice.org/Marketing_HOWTO.html and other links to more specific detail in the SMP, see: http://ooosmp.homelinux.org/GoalsandObjectives/MarketingProject
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'm unhappy about throwing more technology at the problem, which I see as a lack of or miscommunication.
I would be happy to work with Graham Lauder for New Zealand.
Talk to Graham and let me know how you envisage working together. Here is "What do MarCons do?" from http://ooosmp.homelinux.org/GoalsandObjectives/MarketingProject
"A MarCon:
* is available and responds readily to individuals and organisations that contact them with regard to OpenOffice.org. * liaises with the Marketing Project Leads in representing, and coordinating relationships with OpenOffice.org. * conducts research and is aware of OpenOffice.org marketing opportunities in their area, e.g. potential users, conferences for OpenOffice.org to attend etc. * distributes OpenOffice.org press releases if applicable to their region. * conducts presentations and seminars if requested. * shares ideas, thoughts, plans, what has worked and not worked with OpenOffice.org. * uses the OpenOffice.org Marketing Project as a resource and requests assistance and ideas to assist them to market OpenOffice.org in their region. * joins the Marketing Project and offers their specialist skills to contribute to the goals and activities of the Project. * subscribes to or monitors [email protected] and [EMAIL PROTECTED]"
It is coming up to a year since we revised the list of MarCons prior to brainstorming the SMP. It is time to do this again, as some I have not heard from since adding them to the list.
Marketing is a somwhat distributed activity, and while most of the activity is here, we work with other projects for example Distribution, BizDev, Website, and NLC.
[1] A response I send to every application to join the MP. See below.
All the best Jacqueline McNally Lead, OpenOffice.org Marketing Project
---///--- Subject: Joining OpenOffice.org Marketing Project
Hello
Thank you for submitting your request to join the OpenOffice.org Marketing Project.
One of my tasks as a project owner is to approve/disapprove new members to the Marketing Project. You are currently listed in the "Requests pending approval" queue.
I would like to ask, as you have requested Observer role in the Marketing Project that you introduce yourself on the Marketing list and let us know what you wish to bring to the project.
If you are not already subscribed to [Marketing], see: http://www.openoffice.org/mail_list.html#project to subscribe to the normal or digest distribution. Participation on this list is independent of any project roles.
Successful projects and communities are due to active team members collaborating.
I'll wait to hear.
All the best Jacqueline McNally Lead, OpenOffice.org Marketing Project ---///---
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