[libreoffice-marketing] June Marketing Call Minutes

Minutes of Marketing Call

1. Getting ready for LibreOffice 24.8 upcoming announcement

LibreOffice 24.8 will be announced during the second half of August

Release notes will be ready in mid July, just after the string freeze

Being just the second major release with the new numbering scheme, it 
makes sense to recall the rationale behind the decision

The security backgrounder will be updated with numbers at end of July

The announcement press release will be ready at the end of July, before 
Italo Vignoli leaves for Taiwan for the LibreOffice Asia Conference

As usual, we will distribute the release under embargo to a selected 
number of journalists (we will reach the journalists by email at the end 
of July to ask about their interest)

2. How to better position the two different available versions

There have been some interesting discussions about the names to use for 
the two available releases, to make it easier for end users to 
understand which one is the best for their needs

The automatic update feature might reduce the impact of this issue for 
existing users, but first time users will be impacted in any case (so, 
we will have to find a solution)

3. Getting ready for a guerrilla marketing campaign after summer

After the announcement, we will start a guerrilla marketing campaign to 
raise the LibreOffice awareness in selected groups of users

We will collect ideas starting from now and organize a specific 
marketing call in the second half of July

4. Update about Microsoft Aptos font

Microsoft has releases the Aptos font with a EULA which allows free use 
independently from the operating system and the application, but does 
not allow re-distribution

Because of that, the possibility of creating a new font metrically 
compatible with Aptos is currently under evaluation by a group of 
companies (TDF in in the loop)

5. Suggestions from volunteers about new marketing activities

No specific suggestions during the call.

Prior to the call, a document about the potential of value added 
resellers (VAR) for the enterprise adoption of LibreOffice was shared.

I think it is important to provide some background on this topic:

1. I suggested to create a VAR program for OpenOffice in 2004, when the 
market conditions were completely different from today and the 
opportunity was quite significant.

2. The idea was thrown away as "idiot", and although I reiterated the 
attempts on a regular basis, it was blocked by developers at all levels 
as useless and even dangerous.

3. Eventually, the LibreOffice project was born in 2010, and I was given 
the responsibility for marketing, which allowed me to include the 
certification project in the marketing plan.

4. Although it was part of the marketing plan (and at that time it was 
still meaningful market wise), certification was postponed until 2014, 
when it was launched but limited to individuals because the general idea 
was that Value Added Resellers were not bringing any good to the project.

5. Since the launch, certification has not been supported extensively, 
and as a result the number of certified people is lower than expected, 
and definitely lower than it should be.

6. Some key developers have continued to fight against certification, 
and are still against it, although today there are more certified 
developers than migration and training professionals.

7. Today, the technology channel we can address with LibreOffice - value 
added distributors and resellers - has radically changed, and is 
strongly connected to brands (i.e. Cisco, to make an example in a 
different market, decides who gets a large bid between its VADs and VARs 
by giving a better discount, which the next time will go to another 
organization, and as a result these VADs and VARs will never work for a 
competitive FOSS product).

8. You can imagine what would happen if one of Microsoft VADs and VARs 
would support LibreOffice, helping companies to migrate to FOSS.

In Italy, I have personally tried to convince most companies active in 
the FOSS environment to invest in creating a LibreOffice support team, 
with only one of them accepting the challenge but giving up after two 
years (no customers, as enterprises migrate by themselves although they 
all fail miserably).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Italo Vignoli - italo@vignoli.org
mobile/signal +39.348.5653829
GPG Key ID - 0xAAB8D5C0
DB75 1534 3FD0 EA5F 56B5 FDA6 DE82 934C AAB8 D5C0


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