Hello Erwin,
Erwin Tenhumberg wrote:
Hi all,
Due to the recent discussions there seem to be more general
questions that need to be answered independently of the actual
events and the people going to those events.
For example, is it better being present at an event at all, even if
the presence is poor, than having no presence?
Since we all want that OpenOffice.org appears in the best light
possible, I think we need define some kind of minimum level of
presence or engagement, in case we decide to go to an event. I'm
not sure what this minimum level should look like. A simple
table where 50% of the time nobody is available as a contact
person because the booth is understaffed, is probably not
something that puts OpenOffice.org in the best light (I'm not
saying that this has happened!).
+1. We could also add as a perequisite: at least one computer with OOo
on it.
Another question is, who may say what (as an "official"
OpenOffice.org representative)?
It would be useful to have some consistent messaging and a few
official spokes people, e.g. the marketing project leads,
community council members and maybe native-lang project leads.
From my point of view it does not work if everybody feels
empowered to represent OpenOffice.org in press interviews
without engaging an "OpenOffice.org official". An open source
project obviously has less boundaries and restrictions than
a corporate environment, but for example at Sun there are
very strict policies regarding press interviews, etc., and
I think these policies make sense. We probably need official
press kits and press FAQs for those people to hand out who do
not hold an official OpenOffice.org role. Even the "official
spokes people" should not be allowed to say anything they
want to about OpenOffice.org, because wrong or misleading
statements from them can be very damaging to the project.
Absolutely yes. In theory, the MarCons and generally the project leads
are qualified to be representatives. The other people speak only on
their own behalf. As for Marketing material, I think, although some here
may have a better idea, that we have to make sure to use:
-the press kit (on the web site it's in the about us section)
-the newest product brochure made for the 2.0.
At least that's how I've seen the FR community behave...
A question that affects me myself as a Sun employee is, how
much a sponsoring company (Sun in my case) may promote itself
when it is officially representing OpenOffice.org.
Yes, I admit that I do mention Sun and I do let them look good,
but I typically also try to include most/all other "good citizens",
i.e. I also mention companies like Novell in my presentations.
Novell (e.g. Michael Meeks) typicall mentions Sun. If I'm
supposed to do an OpenOffice.org presentation, I'm not just
using the StarOffice customer pitch, even though StarOffice
is based on OpenOffice.org and Sun is still the main code
contributor.
Another question might be, what events we "officially" want
to support, i.e. fund with money from Team OpenOffice.org,
mention on the OpenOffice.org home page, etc.
At some point the question would also boil down to this one: how much
money can we spend on the whole.
Then, I would classify events in the following way:
I. the OpenOffice.org events : OOoCON OOoRegicon, official events made
by NL projects
II. the FLOSS events: Linux World, Linux Expo, Solutions Linux, local
events, etc.
III. the other events: the NEA is a good example, but there are others
of course.
On these three types of events, we should apply the subsidiarity
principle (EU commission is taking control of my brain). The
subsidiarity principle means that an event that can be supported (ie.e
funded) locally, by the corresponding NL projects for instance, has to
be funded locally. If it can't, the request has to be sent either to the
Marketing project either to Team OpenOffice.org (this point needs some
work) who will then see if it can send money or not, and why. In short,
subsidiarity means that what can be done and funded locally has to be
done and funded locally.
Second point, related to the aforementioned policy. Who is in "charge"
locally of funding or supporting the event. NL project leads or, when
there's no NL projects, MarCons. If there isn't any MarCon available,
call either Jacqueline or John and they'll get parachuted over the
warzone :-) ...
Third point. You saw the three different kinds of events I described
above. Let's put some priority on them, and let's add some flexibility
to these priorities.
category I: highest priority. Maximum efforts should be put there.
Except for OOoCON, the subsidiarity policy applies.
category II: average priority, depending on the context: are we having a
major release? is there something important we should tell the world
about? subsidiarity applies there too.
category III: education events are important, but we should make sure
that we wouldn't make a mistake in going there (sometimes computing is
just not the topic), and there are tons of other events. If you pick one
that you feel could help boost OOo's popularity, go for it. Subsidiarity
also applies here.
If you wish I can design a .sxc matrix about this...
Hope this helps,
Charles.
There are probably some key events that we should focus on.
I'm not sure what the selection criteria should be, but
enough local "human resources" could be one since flying
people from Germany to India or from Russia to the US just
to do booth duty is probably to expensive, at least if
these people receive some kind of sponsorship.
I'm looking forward to you open and friendly feedback as
well as your proposals how to answer these questions!
All the best,
Erwin
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