On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 9:34 PM, daly <d...@axiom-developer.org> wrote: > On Sat, 2011-02-26 at 20:09 -0800, Nils Bruin wrote: >> On Feb 25, 10:52 pm, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote: >> > > 2) Pay for advertising Sage in maths journals, New Scientist, or if >> > > deemed appropriate, anywhere where the 4 M's are advertised. >> > >> > b) Is 2) something that will annoy anybody reading this? I could see >> > somebody being annoyed that valuable Sage money is being spent on >> > advertising. (I personally think advertising is a good idea.) >> >> Do you have good reasons for thinking that? Not that you need them or >> need to share them. I am just wondering. >> I would personally like to see sage develop into a platform that I can >> use for my research needs. When I look at other programs that fit in >> that category (magma, kant/kash, pari, singular, gap, python, gcc), I >> notice that none of those feel the need to advertise. Is there >> something that sage might gain from advertising that those other >> programs wouldn't? Are those other projects missing opportunities? >> > > Well, "missing opportunities" has a lot to do with project goals. > > If you are advertising, what is it you are advertising? Are you > trying to get more developers? Why not use sourceforge, etc to > post help requests? Are you trying to get more users?
All of the above would be good in my book. At this point, even just getting the word out is valuable. > Why not use > a direct phone/mail campaign to your likely targets, which for Sage > would be other schools and peers at other schools. That would be much more invasive and expensive. > A table at the > math conferences is a great idea and you should continue that. We do that, and I agree that it's money very well spent. > If you are advertising to attract money then what would your ad > copy be about? Money only goes where it can grow. Why would someone > invest in Sage if it is not already a commercial entity? I am a > little unclear about the financial growth potential of any open > source computational mathematics package. What is the business > plan? What is the elevator pitch? What are the 3 year payback > goals? Is it 1) advertise 2)... 3) profit! While I can understand where you're coming from given the rest of this thread, I never got the impression that this advertising campaign's goal was profit (at least not in the monetary sense). If someone's looking to spend thousands or millions of dollars of other people's money expecting a return, then these would be valid concerns, but its a bit overkill for a single individual spending a couple of bucks to try to see what intrest it can generate. - Robert -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org
