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

Hello Zeki,

Le Mon, 21 Oct 2013 23:12:43 +0300,
Zeki Bildirici <zeki@ozgurlukicin.com> a écrit :

> 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?

Exactly!

> 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.

Yes, Easy Hacks might be a good way to present the tasks available or
in need to people to tackle them. This being said, Easy Hacks are a
fuzzy concept; I always understood them problems clearly described and
ready to be tackled. My point here is that we need to keep this
definition in mind if we want these easy hacks to be worked on,
otherwise no one will understand what they are about.


> 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.

You know, you got me thinking more here.  I think we have three courses
set for us at this stage. In no particular order:
- develop a survey targetting users on social networks and user mailing
  lists. The survey would be about how they could think about joining
  the community, what they would like to do, what barriers they
  perceive, etc.

- Coming up with easy hacks AND/OR the right information and incentive
  to contribute (that's better done after the survey results have been
  collected I guess)

- editing and reorganizing the website content. We have lots of data
  there, but it's hard to even understand and follow the pages. Not
  that the tree is hard to understand, but the content itself is heavy,
  probably too verbose.

> 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.

+1 I volunteer to propagate it on Facebook and G+ and to work on it.
Zeki - others- would you have any suggestion on the survey content
itself? I'm happy to come up with one but can't guarantee all the right
questions would be in it.

Thanks,

Charles.

> Best regards,
> Zeki



-- 
Charles-H. Schulz 
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