[libreoffice-marketing] Re: [libreoffice-design] New templates contest

Le 2014-12-14 12:57, K-J LibreOffice a écrit :
> I don't think that we have to hurry so. We shouldn't do it. If you start
> the contest mid/end week 51 (if you have discussed and fixed the rules
> in that time), promotion should happen in week 51/52 between all the
> christmas mails and songs and so on. The RC2 is in week 2, the RC3 is
> two weeks later. For voting you need about one week. There would be no
> time for discussions, improvements, especially it's holiday time and
> some people are on vacation starting December 20th.
>
> So:
> Start the contest before christmas with 4 weeks open to get proposals.
> Promote it before christmas and after holiday (January 5th) again.
> Deadline: January 18th
> One week for discussion and opportunities to improve the proposals.
> Maybe two days for the defined group to veto.
> Vote (on ml) for one week.
>
> So we have a result earliest January 27th and we get in 4.4.1.
>
>
> Just my 2cts.

Phew ... coming in really late on this discussion and having read the 
other recent comments elsewhere,

I also agree with KJ that there is no need to hurry. IMO, better to give 
people enough lead time and time to develop nice templates is better 
than to push for a fast submission. At least making the contest result 
for the roll-out of 4.4.1 will allow the serious template designers some 
time to submit quality work rather than hurried work. I can't imagine a 
serious template developer hurrying with a template submission and 
compromising quality ... we risk getting submitted templates that are 
more alpha-early-beta than getting polished templates ready for 
user/commercial use.

We often worry about lack of community involvement, but, when there is a 
wonderful occasion where community involvement with such a contest where 
there is a low-entry level of understanding of LibreOffice and where 
template usage is directed towards our users, we do not even provide 
users the chance to vote on a template contest ... surely a users idea 
of what a good and purposeful template would be different from a 
designer's perspective.

IMO, I would even be in favour of pushing this to 4.4.2 or later to 
leave ample time for user voting ... templates usage are always driven 
by user usage, and users are quick to recognize the utility of a good 
template, they would need some time to experiment with any submitted 
templates before voting.

IMO, the template contest is being put on in too much of a short 
time-frame, will have no community-building value to it -- the users 
will not even have a say as to which template(s) they find useful.

Why not just call the contest, and, as newly submitted templates come 
in, have the designer team do a quick test to QA their addition to the 
4.4.x series, and then have users vote on the most useful template 
sometime around 4.4.2 or 4.4.4 ... this will give users enough time to 
try out the templates and we will gain more in community involvement. It 
would not stop the designers from voting on their choice of template, 
which could still be run in conjunction with the user choice.

I also worry that we are giving our user base the impression that 
contests such as these are put on quickly without proper lead time ... I 
am not sure it helps our brand that is highly recognized and respected. 
Sometimes, taking a little extra time will help show our user base that 
we value quality and that our contests are taken seriously.

Marc


--
Marc Paré
Marc@MarcPare.com
http://www.parEntreprise.com
parEntreprise.com Supports OpenDocument Formats (ODF)
parEntreprise.com Supports http://www.LibreOffice.org


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