Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Re: Engaging Users?

2013/10/21 Charles-H. Schulz <charles.schulz@documentfoundation.org>:
> Now let me ask the "What" question, after we sort of figured out the
> "if" and the "how" parts. This would mean: what do we tell users? Do we
> tell them there's a community behind LibreOffice (good point Zeki, many
> people are not aware of that, which in a sense is flattering) or do we
> give them clear pointers to the various tasks, roles and teams of our
> project?

I was involved with Pardus GNU/Linux projects old community, i was one
of the community managers for a short period of time. We tried a lot
of models... The project also had paid community coordinators... It
was bad times for the distro(government's wrong decisions etc) and it
didn't worked out. The last project we tried was building a community
portlal(a social network build on elgg software)...

As you already know, expanding the community has some key points,
recruiting qualified contributors and maintaining their will to make
regular contributions. Encouraging them and appreciating their work is
required to avoid exclusion.

Having the first introduction on download page will be good, but there
will be first time users and old users(upgraders). Driving them into
community processes must be very clear, the will to contribute and
their potential skills must be clearly matched that the newcomers can
find a good place to get into the community. Also lots of people will
say - ok now, tell me what can i do?

The best and old way is personal relations, i am always trying to
persuade my network to contribute to LibreOffice and it works - the i
have convinced Efe Gürkan Yalaman and he was one of our GSoC students.
I think many people in our community do the same. But it will be hard
to take care of a potential contributors pool, which requires too much
time. The solution could be applying EasyHacks model for other areas.
Showing them the works to be done or on progress and pointing the
minimum required skills.

I see this topic very important, and i think we need volunteers to
team up and work on this subject specifically. A survey can be helpful
to determine our user profile; how they think about becoming a
contributor, do they see it very hard to get on, or are they aware
enough that LibreOffice needs involvement of -many- new contributors
to improve, do they think that the project have enough contributors?
Targeting right questions will trigger pro-active thinking of
potential contributors, also we may ask them what obstacles they see
avoiding them to contribute etc.

User list and other social platforms will be a good pool for this survey.

Last, i think that such survey will give some answers to us or provide
a new paradigm specific on LibreOffice's user/community model. At
least, it is a basic interaction which can trigger the awareness of
the need of contributors.

Best regards,
Zeki

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