I attended the media training at ApacheCon earlier this week and as part of the day's discussions, I submitted our current project tagline "The build system that doesn't suck" to our group for feedback. The group was mostly composed of technical folks and one non-technical person (Sally, our trainer). As you might expect, the response to the tagline was not very enthusiastic. Most thought is was an okay tagline for a small project that's starting out but that it probably needs refinement for a project with bigger aspirations.
Among some comment, one was along the line of... "Let's say a developer discovers Buildr and really likes it. Before using it, she needs to have it checked out by her manager. The manager goes to the website, reads the tagline ... and ... well, doesn't get a great first impression." Don't be alarmed, though, the group thought the current tagline could still be used on t-shirts and other such promotional pieces but that the official tagline should probably be a little more positive sounding. I tend to agree with the feedback and in any case I've been meaning to brainstorm this on the mailing list... Here are some starting points I've been thinking about for the tagline: "Ready, Set, Build!" (emphasize speed / productivity) "Beautiful Builds" (elegance / beautiful code meme) "Any Code, Any Size, Any Task" (polyglot programming, scalability and customizability) Any of these strike your fancy? You think you can do better? I'd like to collect ideas during the next 2 weeks (time enough to brainstorm without pressure) and then proceed with a couple rounds of voting for the best tagline. Winner gets karma points, self-satisfaction, bragging rights and the next release (1.4.0) dedicated to her/him. alex
