________________________________
From: Paulo de Souza Lima <paulo.s.lima@varekai.org>
To: marketing@global.libreoffice.org
Sent: Wed, 10 August, 2011 20:51:47
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Building a network of marketeers
Hi Florian,
Hello,
since September 28th, 2010, everyone of you has done a fantastic job,
invested a tremendous amount of work, and has been contributing a lot to
make LibreOffice what it is today -- a software used worldwide, a
well-recognized brand, and a name people trust in, something that stands
for
free software, open standards and a major productivity suite.
Many of you have recognized that we have not yet set-up fixed community
roles, official titles or named team leads. This has been on purpose, to
not
create fixed structures from the beginning, and I have a feeling we are
performing very well with this approach. In the next months, I am sure
that
we will see some more structure growing, but I hope it will not be as
diverse and large as we had it with OpenOffice.org -- to me, the "flat"
approach we are following at LibreOffice works very well and keeps
lowering
barriers for people joining the community. When many people contribute
their
amazing talent, creativity and a lot of time, it is not necessary to have
too many different "hierarchies" in the project.
I fully agree to that!!! We are working just fine without such titles and
hierarquies...
However, there is one area where we should move forward and work for more
structures, and that is marketing.
Those who have been involved with OpenOffice.org remember our so-called
"MarCons", the marketing contacts, and I would like to start building
something similar in the LibreOffice community. We had various
discussions
on the marketing mailing list on this topic, and there is a common
agreement
that this approach is worth a try. For those who don't remember, have a
look
at this page: http://marketing.openoffice.**org/contacts.html<
http://marketing.openoffice.org/contacts.html>Don't
be irritated by the fact that some well-known LibreOffice people are
still listed, it seems that nobody updated the page since September...
<snip>
What I want to do is to have a strong and solid network of marketeers for
the *LibreOffice* project. They do not represent the Foundation as legal
entity, but even more do represent the Community, the project and the
product.
So, in a nutshell, I am aiming for a distinction between the Foundation's
official spokespeople, and the LibreOffice project's spokespeople. The
rationale behind this is that in the future, the Foundation might have
several projects, each with their own contacts.
Ideally, for every international projects that we currently have -
http://wiki.**documentfoundation.org/Local_**Mailing_Lists<
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Local_Mailing_Lists>-
we should find at least two community representatives, ideally even
three.
They will be listed on an official website, should get some official
title
that we still can decide on ("Marketing Contact" might be a good choice,
but
I'm open to other solutions), be elegible to use LibreOffice business
cards,
and will be the first point of contact for any marketing, PR or
journalist-related inquiries in their area. So, while not legally
representing the Foundation, those contacts should be recognized as
officially spokespeople for the project and the community.
Their list of tasks is wide and interesting, like organization of trade
shows, translating press releases, giving interviews and answering
journalist questions. They will also have many important duties inside
the
project, the most important one being a "gateway" between the
international
marketing of LibreOffice and the local marketing, communicating ideas in
both directions and giving feedback. Marketing heavily depends on the
market
and the area, and the better everyone understands the situation of
different
areas, the more we can improve our global marketing efforts.
Of course, and especially since this is a volunteer job, nobody has to do
the job alone. ;-) The most important is that there are trusted contacts
in
each region who have an overview what is going on, who are willing to
coordinate things, and who can also cry for help in case things do not
work
out the way they plan. Challenges and tasks will heavily differ between
various regions, but the core set of todos will be rather similar.
In order to make that magic happen, I also aim for improving the
communication between the various international groups. One proposal that
we
currently investigate is to transform the marketing conference calls into
some sort of monthly updates on what is going on in the community. We
will
also ensure that all marketing contacts will receive press releases
before
they are made public, so they have enough time to translate them or, see
above, search for another volunteer to do the translation.
Should those people be voted and have a mandate or those positions will be
for a "lifetime"? =)
I think we could locally promote ellections from time to time. What do you
think?
Before I start writing an encyclopedia on community marketing and make
everybody tired, I have some tasks for you. ;-)
I would like to ask everyone to discuss this idea on their local mailing
lists in their native language (feel free to translate my e-mail if you
want), and to hear what they are thinking. Share this idea with them, let
us
know their questions, feedback, ideas and of course constructive
criticism,
and ask if you have some people on the list who would be willing to serve
as
marketing contacts. Ideally, we find a good combination of newcomers and
experts, in order to help new contributors join our marketing efforts,
while
having experienced colleagues at their side, helping them to find their
way.
I will try to draw some graph illustrating my ideas and put it into the
wiki.
Albino has put this into discussion in our local list.
Ideally, the local groups will propose candidates and have a vote on them
in
the neat future, and we then can start a kick-off meeting via Skype,
phone,
or even face to face in Paris.
I would be honoured to work with a strong network of marketeers to shape
the
future of LibreOffice, and I look forward to your feedback!
So, I suppose the candidates should be able to speak English, not only
read/write in that language, am I wrong? If I'm right, this issue will
reduce the possibilities of many candidates, at least in Brazil.
In the other hand, local marketing teams could have one or two contacts
between them and the international marketing team, and open wider
possibilities to people who can't communicate in English. I'm not sure how
this could work yet. Any idea?
Thanks,
Florian
--
Florian Effenberger <floeff@documentfoundation.org**>
Steering Committee and Founding Member of The Document Foundation
Tel: +49 8341 99660880 | Mobile: +49 151 14424108
Skype: floeff | Twitter/Identi.ca: @floeff
Cheers
--
Paulo de Souza Lima
Técnico em Eletrônica e Administrador
http://www.pasl.net.br
http://almalivre.wordpress.com
Curitiba - PR
Linux User #432358
Ubuntu User #28729
"For people to achieve peace in their relationships, spiritual peace and
the
peace among people, it's necessary, earlier, to win the internal battle
between virtues and defects" - Talal Husseini - Acropolitan Philosopher
--
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to marketing+help@global.libreoffice.org
Problems?
http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/marketing/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be
deleted
--
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to marketing+help@global.libreoffice.org
Problems?
http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/marketing/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be
deleted