On Saturday 25 November 2006 06:06, Kay Ramme - Sun Germany - Hamburg wrote: Hi Kay,
> Graham wrote: > > I understand what John is saying here and for the majority of the users > > of the website what he says is bang on the money. > > I read what he is saying as well, but tend to disagree regarding the > bang. Who are the majority of the users of the website? Heh, well I would have said "curious consumers" if only because there are a hell of a lot more of them than developers ... What we need and always have needed is a way to turn those curious consumers into contributors. > > >> As I said, Uno (URE) is the foundation of OOo, if you do not know about > >> it, that is sad :-( > > > > Heh, well be sad for me too, because I have little idea about such > > ethereal matters either > > Sad again. Heh, Bernd has done an excellent job of correcting that, so now we can be happy. > > >> My impression is, that you basically think you are the only one allowed > >> to have an opinion how users and contributors etc. are to be guided > >> through the main page. > > > > That's a bit harsh, John was offering his opinion, an opinion which is > > as relevant as anyones > > Certainly it _is_. As relevant as _anyones_, _including_ the project leads. > > >> From my point of view OOo is build up by its > >> accepted projects, so these accepted projects very well have the right > >> to attend to interest. > > > > I'm sorry, I don't understand this > > Unsure what you 'don't understand', you do know that OOo has so called > accepted projects, don't you? Heh Yes, just stumbling across language barriers and have since figured it out with a little jabbing in the right diction by Bernd. :) I'll just toss in a thought here. If I want to do something about an extension, I would perhaps talk and listen to the UNO team, if I have a problem with impress then the graphics project is the one that will have the loudest voice. The front page, we listen to the website project. If however you feel the world needs to know about you..... :-) > > >> And just another word regarding the terms contributor or contributing. > >> IMHO these are chosen badly, > > > > Agreed, but this was exhaustively discussed by the website team during > > the last upgrade and nothing better was suggested.... That doesn't mean > > to say that there isn't a better way, just we haven't found it yet. > > Admittedly I haven't participated at the discussion. So, if possible I > would like to reopen it. IIRC Maarten was involved in that discussion > > >> I am pretty sure that only a very few > >> people arriving at the homepage already know that they want to > >> contribute, especially developers (which we are lacking, in contrary to > >> users) are mostly curious about how things work, despite wanting to > >> 'contribute' in the first place. > > > > One of the things we need to do is to define why developers would want to > > contribute their time to the project. I've been working on a marketing > > Actually, I am not only interested in developers, but certainly also in > testers, documenters, usage reports, FAQs, examples etc. > > > pamphlet aimed at developers over the last few weeks. (In response to a > > little prompting from Erwin :) ) > > (http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=69698) Despite repeated > > asking no-one has been able to contribute anything to that in terms of > > elements that are attractive to developers. (other than John that is! ) > > I am going to take at look at it ... > > > It would seem to me that to create webpages targeted at developers we > > would need to be able identify what it is that would make working on OOo > > attractive to them.... in other words that same type of thing that seems > > to be so hard to get for the flyer > > IMHO it is the same with OOo as with all open source projects, it is > about itching your scratch (or was it scratching your itch :-), earning > some honor, commercial interest etc. etc. Heh, Eric Raymond has a lot to answer for! :) And you are quite right. However we can't base a flyer on "Come work on OOo and we'll scratch your itch!" it might create unreasonable expectations. ;) We need to better articulate the rewards... It's a challenge. Of course OOo is not a Bazaar model and neither is it a Cathedral builders model. One of OOo's challenges is to find the middle ground where we're comfortable > > > I know that marketing is probably a dirty word amongst developers but > > what we > > Not being a marketing expert at all, I wouldn't say that it is a dirty > word, au contraire I would say that basically everything is about > marketing and presentation ... ;-) :) > > > have here is the need for simple marketing procedures > > > > Identify your market > > Identify their needs/desires > > Identify how we can fill those needs/desires > > and tell them. > > Please don't forget 'our needs', this is IMHO one of the differences > between open source and may be commercial entities, eventually it is to > everybody's advantage. Agreed wholeheartedly, however one of the problems I've observed over my time with OOo is our inability to retain volunteers. Not all our needs are being met by the community. Marketing is a little different because when we get into the sales end of things we get our satisfaction from outside community when a customer says: "Wow! this is really great software, thanks for introducing it to me." That's a blast. We need to get that same sort of blast to people who's only source of reward is the recognition of their peers. That however is Human Resources territory and we don't have a HR Project... perhaps we should have. > > > cheers > > G > > Kay > Cheers G -- Graham Lauder, OpenOffice.org MarCon (Marketing Contact) NZ http://marketing.openoffice.org/contacts.html "GET LEGAL - GET OPENOFFICE.ORG" http://why.openoffice.org ISO 26300 compliant "GET DRESSED - GET OOOGEAR" http://www.ooogear.co.nz Promotional gear for the discerning OOo Advocate --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
