As part of the new identity (logo, web site, other marketing collateral) for
OFBiz we need to set down some of the general principles and ideals of the
project. Si mentioned this in his email a few days ago (on the 23rd) in topic
#3 and this can drive a lot of the visual elements and organization of the site
and other stuff. I appreciate Tim Ruppert who has been pushing some of this
along (including pushing me along, thankfully) for identifying this as a to do
and conversation point for this mailing list.
I guess there are 2 main parts of this to brain-storm on (meaning nearly
anything goes at this stage...):
1. a tag line (short motto, whatever)
2. a project summary, perhaps even more like a mission statement
For #2 I saw some interesting guidelines for a mission statement, namely some
questions to as ourselves:
1. What is the best thing the project/community does?
2. What do you want do to?
3. What would my customers value most?
4. What should we do?
In addition to those the goal should be to keep it short and to the point, much shorter
than the typical "elevator pitch". This might be a good starting point for a
more conversational elevator pitch, BTW.
The new logo has kind of a power button motif, and that fits pretty well with OFBiz for a tag line like
"Turn On You Busines" or "Power On Your Business". Or we could cozy up to the line a
little and use something like "Turn On Your Developers" because OFBiz is so great for empowering
developers and increasing their productivity. Too bad we're not in the video game industry, that would go
along great with a spokes-model. ;)
But seriously, something more business oriented related to power on or turn on
seems pretty good. Of course, this in brain storming, so don't take my ideas
too seriously!
For the mission statement my thoughts are to include something to emphasize the
community oriented nature of the force behind the project; the flexible,
powerful and customization orientation of the software and architecture; the
business oriented functionality to make things directly applicable to your
business; and so on.
There is kind of a mission statement, more of a project description though, at the top of
the ofbiz.org home page in the "Introduction: What is OFBiz?" box, but I think
we can do a lot better than that. There is also some reasonably good content and ideas on
the Philosophy page that I wrote a long time ago (with feedback and ideas from various
people, many of whom probably won't even get this email), and those could be a good
source of ideas too.
The Strategic Plan is a few years old and needs some updating for changes in the last 4 years ;o) , but the same basic stuff there still applies very much to what OFBiz is all about from a business perspective. This is really the core of how OFBiz has moved forward. Here is the URL:
http://www.ofbiz.org/strategic-plan.html
Some of my more recent thoughts on this are something along the lines of:
"The Open For Business Project harnesses the power of a loosely coupled community
and a collaboration empowering open source license (the Apache 2.0 license) to bring to
you the best in loosely coupled enterprise software that can be molded to the needs of
your changing organization."
We might want a bit more than that and maybe have different items that address
different stake holders in the project.
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After a bit of discussion on this I'd like to put in on the OFBiz.org New Site
Plan page on docs.ofbiz.org, which is here:
http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBIZ/OFBiz.org+New+Site+Plan
Thanks in advance for all of your feedback, help and ideas!
-David
