John McCreesh wrote:
Exactly. The model we propose for the Marketing Project and NL-Projects is equally applicable to any project. The core project works in the English language and acts as a clearing house / repository of best practice / co-ordination point etc for worldwide project activity - see the diagram at the bottom of http://ooosmp.homelinux.org/GoalsandObjectives/MarketingProject
Why make it harder for English? The MP doesn't organize conferences for Romania, or design flyers for Japanese (since you brought up the example of MP). Why should it treat English differently? I think there should be an English project that can focus on grassroots efforts for English. Separate from the global things that happen at MP.
If someone wants to act as a focus for marketing activity in a specific market (which could be a geography, or an industry, or...) then that's what MarCons (Marketing Contacts) do, Organising a conference is a good example.
The (English) flyers designed for OOo 1.x were widely translated. Equally, if an NL-project produced some good case studies, I would hope they would provide an English translation for the central library which could then be translated on into other languages.
I think it's counter productive to mix together global tasks, and local ones. They are different, and should go through different purposes. For example, it might make sense to have a community-wide vote on the SMP, or the OOo logo, or any global marketing strategy. But it doesn't make sense to have a similar process for a conference in Spain. If you had such a system, it would be totally unefficient. This is what's happening with English right now. You have a system that might make sense for designing a global brand image, and then apply it for tasks that aren't global. The slowness and the bureocracy of the MP project might be acceptable when designing a global task, but they are a real hinderance when you apply it to anything that is done in English. I don't see why English should get the short end of the stick like this.
From a marketing perspective, I am delighted whenever activists pop up and offer to organise local conferences or do any other marketing activities etc. regardless of their linguistic affiliations. This is why we developed the MarCon role, to give flexibility.
Note that there is a clear distinction between what Marketing Project leads do and MarCons do - see http://ooosmp.homelinux.org/GoalsandObjectives/MarketingProject
Anyone who wants to contribute to marketing activities in a market in which they have specialist knowledge - please become a MarCon. Anyone who wants to try and help pull the whole thing together, please, please offer your services as a project lead :-)
John
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