Excllent topic Erwin. On 8/30/05, Erwin Tenhumberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi all, > > Due to the recent discussions there seem to be more general > questions that need to be answered independently of the actual > events and the people going to those events. > > For example, is it better being present at an event at all, even if > the presence is poor, than having no presence?
Not if the presence is poor, but at the NEA conference with about 5000 people through the exhibiting booths Ian and I were able to handle it well. I don't think at any of these conferences we get inundated with people. 3 would probably be best so when lunches or bathroom breaks are necessary we have at least 2 people at the booth. Since we all want that OpenOffice.org appears in the best light > possible, I think we need define some kind of minimum level of > presence or engagement, in case we decide to go to an event. I'm > not sure what this minimum level should look like. A simple > table where 50% of the time nobody is available as a contact > person because the booth is understaffed, is probably not > something that puts OpenOffice.org in the best light (I'm not > saying that this has happened!). See above. Another question is, who may say what (as an "official" > OpenOffice.org representative)? > > It would be useful to have some consistent messaging and a few > official spokes people, e.g. the marketing project leads, > community council members and maybe native-lang project leads. > From my point of view it does not work if everybody feels > empowered to represent OpenOffice.org in press interviews > without engaging an "OpenOffice.org official". An open source > project obviously has less boundaries and restrictions than > a corporate environment, but for example at Sun there are > very strict policies regarding press interviews, etc., and > I think these policies make sense. We probably need official > press kits and press FAQs for those people to hand out who do > not hold an official OpenOffice.org role. Even the "official > spokes people" should not be allowed to say anything they > want to about OpenOffice.org, because wrong or misleading > statements from them can be very damaging to the project. This I completely understand and is something that I struggle with understanding for myself. That said our PR work is not very good right now. I have posted for people to join me in increasing our PR with press and have gotten little response other than to say I'm posting to the wrong list and the only list they tell me to post to they say is not used anymore. I would hope to have a better response to this at least from the leads. As of now I don't know if anyone has contacts with the press and how they are using them. But I do know that I really only see Louis quoted in articles. I would like to hear from Bruce Byfield who he contacts to get information and what type of people in the organization interests him to quote. A question that affects me myself as a Sun employee is, how > much a sponsoring company (Sun in my case) may promote itself > when it is officially representing OpenOffice.org. > > Yes, I admit that I do mention Sun and I do let them look good, > but I typically also try to include most/all other "good citizens", > i.e. I also mention companies like Novell in my presentations. > Novell (e.g. Michael Meeks) typicall mentions Sun. If I'm > supposed to do an OpenOffice.org presentation, I'm not just > using the StarOffice customer pitch, even though StarOffice > is based on OpenOffice.org and Sun is still the main code > contributor. Here are my thoughts on this. We don't sell a product. We make more money by Novell selling their product and Sun selling StarOffice. We get this money by them wanting to put development time back into OpenOffice. The unfortunate part is the ones that don't give back to the OpenOffice community at large. But those probably wouldn't sponsor nor at as an official for openoffice. Another question might be, what events we "officially" want > to support, i.e. fund with money from Team OpenOffice.org, > mention on the OpenOffice.org home page, etc. > > There are probably some key events that we should focus on. > I'm not sure what the selection criteria should be, but > enough local "human resources" could be one since flying > people from Germany to India or from Russia to the US just > to do booth duty is probably to expensive, at least if > these people receive some kind of sponsorship. Absolutely understandable. This is completely unofficial, but it seems we have the most people in Western Europe, India, Australia, USA, and I am sure there is a good South American country that I can't think of. These are the places I think we should focus on as a whole. For places like Japan I think the native language projects are the ones to look into these. Here is how I feel we should advance with this. Have 4 Main conferences we go to every year. We then have 1 or 2 conferences that we vote on to go to each year. This would allow us to look at new conferences and provide for conferences that are more regional, but important for us to be at. -- Adam Moore Community Volunteer OOo blog: AdamMooreOOo.blogspot.com <http://AdamMooreOOo.blogspot.com>
