Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Re: Defining a marketing strategy

Hi,

On Sat, Aug 11, 2012 at 11:20:32AM +0200, Charles-H. Schulz wrote:
> > Thanks for creating the page, but ... I will not be attending Berlin
> > as I doubt very few Americans (South, Central or North) will have the 
> > funding abilities to do so.

I think it is essential to involve people esp. from markets were we dont have
such a strong presence yet, so I second Charles comment: Please consider
joining. Even you are seriously interested in joining. but are absolutely unable
to be there in person, we should find a way to include you in the discussion by
attending remotely (IRC, Skype, TeamSpeak, TDF conf call). But the first,
consider real physical presence.

> > Secondly, unlike what the subject line of 
> > discussion "Defining a marketing strategy" of this thread, the wiki
> > page states:
> >
> > "Note that there is not a section about 'product strategy' or 
> > 'development direction' as that is a whole different issue and does
> > not belong here.

Yes: product strategy and development direction are directly depending on
development ressources -- that is mostly people who are not proposing ideas on
that page. Building a strategy on something that is not controlled by marketing
contributors is fragile and will lead to a lot of frustrations. The marketing
strategy need to be implementable by the people commited to this team, as only
that will strengthen the team and empower its members.
 
> > Note again: Nothing here has any commitment to it yet, if you want to 
> > see it implemented, commit yourself and make us love your idea in
> > Berlin! "

If you do not put such a statement in such a brainstorming page, you will
quickly get bogged down in a flamewar about some (controversial, most likely
not too relevant) topics, focusing the discussion on that instead of enabling
seeding out the most relevant, implementable and noncontroversal proposals for
the gain of everyone. We need to find those and focus on those.
 
> > A clear indication that this will not be a serious exercise for those
> > of us who do wish to speak to the topic of strategy (again, Italo
> > would have to take part in the discussion as we have all agreed that
> > he leads in the area of marketing for the project).
>
>  I think that what Bjoern is trying to do is to square out the topic;
>  but let me just add two things. First, there are travel refunds
>  options available for the Berlin conference if you submit a talk and
>  that it is accepted, so I'd like you (and others) to seriously
>  consider this as an option. Besides, it's fun and it's a great moment
>  to spend together. Second, I plan to contribute to the marketing team
>  much more in the coming months, so expect me to bug everyone much more
>  often than I did in the past. Contrary to Italo I will not focus on
>  the PR and communications side of things, I will rather dwell on more
>  "traditional" marketing concept. 

Yes, I am sorry to have jumped in here in the middle of the discussion as an
otherwise mostly lurker -- I just didnt want to let this topic dongle too long
and keeping it up.

> > If you are looking for marketing ideas, there are over 12 months, and 
> > more, of good ideas on the marketing section, and, it would only take 
> > for a person to collect them in one area -- which has already been
> > done "Marketing wiki pages" <-- I did made an effort of keeping the
> > wiki pages organized as best as possible and have committed to
> > re-organize the pages.

The critical part is not collecting the ideas. As the saying goes "ideas are a
dime a dozen, but implementation is priceless". For this to happen one needs
compromise: Sticking back ones own pet peeve, which unfortunately few others
are caring for and sticking to the things were a broad consensus of commitment
can be found. We need to galvanize and focus the team on those, even if
indiviually, there are ideas that contributors would deem higher.

> > [...]
>
> We can definitely work on this here (mailing list + wiki) and I don't
> want anyone to feel excluded by not going to Berlin (but still, in
> Berlin, we'll have a collaborative and public session about that
> topic).
>
> As for the wiki, I did examine (over time and regularly) our marketing
> wiki, and I must say that defining a marketing strategy is definitely a
> priority *especially* reading what we have in the wiki. We have all
> sorts of ideas, but there are action proposals without any coherence,
> any general idea about where we want to go. It's a bit like there are
> two conceptual layers missing above them. So let's have this discussion
> now, at the very least, it will help the Berlin session even more so
> and get us started on this (very) important topic.

Let me add, why I put so much emphasis on Berlin in this: There are two
essential parts for one particular proposal to have a chance of success:

- a set of people commited to the cause
- general support (or at least not outright opposition) from the wider part of
  the project

The first one is the hard and more critical one. And joining the commitment on
one proposal/task (and, as we all only have 24 hours in a day: putting back
the others) is _much_ easier when discussing things face to face. Now that also
works over mailing lists and wikis, but it is _much_ slower and has a huge
overhead. And of course having a proposal with one or more people commited (and
maybe actually already working) on it, has a lot better chances to collect
critical mass.

It is something that is a lot easier to find out in personal meetings: put 20
people in a room, give them a bullet list of 10 ideas and you will have a good
idea after 20 minutes which three are getting a consensus of commitment and
support. You then have to check if any those collide and adjust accordingly.
Finally, the hard part again is nailing down the commitments of those pushing
for these selected proposals(*).

All of the above is very hard to do remotely.

Best,

Bjoern

(*) Note that in a community of volunteers. you might get better results with a
suboptimal idea, if it gets wide support, than with a brilliant, but
unsupported idea.

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