Re: [libreoffice-marketing] LibreOffice promo trailer?

Dear Mike,

On 4/15/19 10:26 AM, Mike Saunders wrote:
> Glad to hear it! Also, that video is three years old now, which is an
> age in the software world of course, so I plan to make a new version at
> some point. If you (or indeed anyone else) have any feedback or
> suggestions for a newer version, just let me know!

great, my suggestions for a new version:

1. The current version is well to use in a presentation but too long for
any kind of airtime. So there should a "spot version" as well (something
like 20 seconds?).

2. The part starting to explain software freedom (1:05-1:12 [1]) should
show more "convincing" picture material. Compare the FSF video "user
liberation" [2] watching 0:10-0:54: Here the speaker tells about
"freedom respecting tools" and what I *see* is a hammer that I can copy
and share with others (so what I hear fits to what I see). The
corresponding part in "This is LibreOffice" [1] shows the Download page
of libreoffice.org - showing the Download page would fit more in the
part "so try it today ... download the latest version" at 1:59 (no need
to end up with showing the download page but maybe cross-fading from the
LO logo to the download page and back to the logo).

3. Maybe some people of the FLOSS community would be very happy to see
the FSF logo next to the OSI logo in 1:15 and even more happy to hear
"it's free/libre/open source software" instead of "it's open source". ;)

4. The most essential part of a video promoting FLOSS should be about
the question "why I should I use FLOSS like LO?". "This is LibreOffice"
has the following answers:
4.1. it is a professional office suit -> okay, but MS Office is as well
4.2. "built around Open Document Format" -> okay, but doc(x) is an open
format as well; I know this was not MS' choice but decision makers
unfortunately argue with this fact *against* LO
4.3. "I can open many types of file from other office software" ->
interesting because most of the people don't know the fact that they
don't need Adobe Acrobat for editing PDFs, so I would emphasize the fact
that LO Draw can edit PDFs ("you can even edit PDF using LO Draw")
4.4. LO is "free to use, share and modify":

4.4.4. "free": for most of the people this means "without paying money"
so this is not a very convincing argument. At my university they sell
Office365 for 5€ to the students and a lot of them are very willing to
pay this small amount of money not considerung that they just payed 5€
for a "gateway drug". An LO trailer should emphasize that paying for
proprietary software ends up in paying for an "ankle monitor" (in terms
of "get them while they are young" and data privacy). Maybe a better
message would be "with LO you will always be free to donate but never be
forced to pay a license (and your personal data)".

4.4.5. "share": This is the most important fact about using FLOSS in my
opinion and should be the most important part of a LO promo trailer. The
message should be: It is *social* to use LO and *unsocial* to use
proprietary office suits. Prorpeitary office suites create vendor
lock-ins, LO not. Using LO you use and promote software that everyone in
the world can use, especially those who even can not spend 5€. So if you
use LO instead of MS Office you don't contribute to "*excluding* digital
(learning) spaces".

4.4.6 "modify": Not interesting for the majority of people because they
can not code. The interesting fact here should be that you can *let*
someone modify the software anytime. Maybe the trailer could point on
the history of LO: Most of the people *know* OpenOffice but *don't* know
LibreOffice so the video could tell something like "LO for exmaple was
developed by modifying an existing FLOSS: Do you remember OpenOffice?
LibreOffice started as a modification of OpenOffice to satisfy the
demands of users like you. LO will always allow you to (let someone)
modify it."

4.5 Emphasizing that LO is a stand-alone software would be an
interesting fact as well in times any software company tries to push
users to their cloud services, something like "using LO you will never
need an internet connection, it works fully offline."

I know that it is very hard to communicate all these facts in a trailer
of 2min. I think the whole part about the particular LO parts from 0:09
to 0:49 can be told in 10-20 seconds: "Use Writer for your text
documents, Calc for your tables, Impress for your presentations etc".
There is no need in my opinion to explain the users what they already
know using MS Office (the reaction I've experienced introducing people
to LO: "Ah okay, so "Writer" is "Word", "Calc" is "Excel" and "Impress"
is "PowerPoint", got it!").

Anyway: Thanks for all your work promoting LO. I hope my comments will
help making the existing nice promotion trailer even better! :)

Best regards
Roland

[1] https://invidio.us/watch?v=3KC0ZdcA6s8
[2] https://u.fsf.org/user-liberation/



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