only note I have to make other more curious is
"I am Open For Business with Apache Ofbiz"
David E Jones sent the following on 11/12/2008 10:50 AM:
>
> One of the things discussed at the recent conference (OFBiz Symposium @
> ApacheCon US 2008) is to do more marketing of OFBiz. One of the
> weaknesses of the community-driven software model is that there is no
> central organization that consolidates profits from the software and can
> use them to market the software. While there are many advantages of
> community-driven software (and IMO that is why OFBiz is some of the best
> ERP/etc software available), marketing isn't one of them.
>
> Or isn't it? One thing was discussed at the conference and that may work
> well is some community driven marketing for the project. There are 2
> different forms of this discussed, and there could be many others:
>
> 1. grassroots "viral" campaign: the tag line is "I am Open For Business"
>
> 1.a. the first idea is to post this on social and business networking
> sites (facebook, myspace, linkedin, etc, etc), and to get others to do
> it as well, even if they aren't quite sure what it means (because it
> kind of sounds funny); if people google "open for business"
> ofbiz.apache.org is the first result; if people also link to
> ofbiz.apache.org then we'll have an even stronger position on google and
> other sites; I have already added this to my facebook account (just "is
> Open For Business" in the "What are you doing right now?" thingy, and on
> LinkedIn I'm not sure where is best, perhaps as a current position as
> it's most visible, and I've added a new group call "I am Open For
> Business" that everyone should join
>
> 1.b. to extend this the more gregarious among us should create funny
> videos and upload them to YouTube and similar sites, and funny pictures
> and upload them to Flickr and similar sites, and hopefully others will
> see these and make their own and share them, again even if they don't
> know what "OFBiz" even is; the videos or pictures should have someone in
> the foreground saying or holding up a sign that says "I am Open For
> Business", plus optionally something that describes what they are
> doing/showing, and something in the background that is related to a
> business they actually run (in front of the business, by products
> made/sold, in a warehouse or call center, etc), or to just a hobby or
> something they enjoy doing (bungee jumping, working on a laptop at
> Starbucks, whatever); in a way this is a variation on the "I am a PC"
> thingy, but actually this idea pre-dates that ad campaign... still that
> campaign may make this all the more interesting and successful
>
> 1.c. if you post things anywhere that represents a group, feel free to
> use "We are Open For Business"
>
> 2. paid advertisements driven by any company that wants to get involved;
> these can show collaboration and also further demonstrate the community
> driven nature of the open source project, ie with the open source
> project in the middle and not any company or what what; the adds we have
> a big "We are Open For Business" and would have the OFBiz logo in the
> middle (yes, we'd have to coordinate through the ASF PRC), and logos of
> each company spread around the add, and even logos of end-users who give
> us permission either connected directly to OFBiz or connected to one or
> more of the service providers; these ads would be paid for be the
> service providers; as part of this I think we should also add
> consideration for service providers who can't afford to sponsor it so
> that they can be included in the ads
>
> The general idea is to emphasize the community-driven nature of the
> project. There is no individual or organization that represents OFBiz on
> its own, it is an open project driven by a number of individuals and
> organizations, so it's correct to say "I am Open For Business" and "We
> are Open For Business".
>
> On a side note, I think both of these have been discussed before... so
> the main point of this message is to take action, now. So, go to your
> public profiles and add "I am Open For Business", and take a funny (or
> interesting) picture or video and post it around.
>
> -David
>
>
> ============================
> Related Note: OFBiz Alliance
>
> Related to #2 there was also some discussion of some sort of "OFBiz
> Alliance" that would be an organization that owns a trademark, is run by
> all members of it, and the main points would be to qualify vendors
> (service providers mostly, perhaps product companies and end-user
> organizations and such as well) and certify them. This isn't really an
> activity that fits within what a non-profit open source organization is
> all about, ie I don't think we want the OFBiz PMC in the business of
> creating a stamp of approval for other organizations, so this would be
> something separate.
>
> The main idea is that organizations could use the trademarked logo if
> approved by the members, and conditions for that approval would be
> things like using OFBiz internally to manage your business (eat your own
> dog food type of thing, ie for project/issue mgmt, sales automation,
> billing/accounting, etc), and to have a certain number of customization
> projects completed, with case studies for at least 1-2 and preferably
> for all projects where the client allows the case study, and perhaps
> also to have a regular stream of contributions going back to OFBiz
> (preferably with committers on staff, or at have people contributing and
> moving toward becoming a committer because again it wouldn't be good to
> have an OFBiz PMC decision to be part of this. While those are the main
> criteria, there might be small fees to register and help protect the
> trademark and to maintain a web site that talks about what the alliance
> is all about, who are members, etc.
>
> One neat thing that could come of this is an opportunity to collaborate
> in a more coordinated way on larger projects. If all members of the
> alliance are using OFBiz for their project management, and we added some
> "distributed delegation" features to the software, then we could do some
> really nice things with projects that are larger than any single service
> provider can handle, or where the client demands multiple service
> providers and common practices among them in order to mitigate risk.
>
> So, in general the idea is to give organizations an incentive to do
> certain things that are good for them and for the community, and to
> encourage collaboration and such that make OFBiz what it is. In return
> they have access to a stamp of approval that prospective clients can
> look for to help in their decision making. There were a few people at
> the conference who expressed interest in this, so hopefully in the not
> too distant future more of this will materialize.
>
>
>
>
