Re: On breaking the woohoo barrier...thoughts on how GNOME can get great

[Claus Schwarm]

Hi Dave,

On Tue, 25 Jul 2006 18:54:36 +0200
Dave Neary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

[snip]
> 
> Firefox, by the way, was not a product of marketing. It was the
> product of the will of two people, made possible by the fact that
> it's free software. There was no market analysis, someone said "going
> on the internet has to be easier than this", and then made the web
> browser *they* wanted to use.
> 

Indeed, there was no market analysis. Usually, there is not -- this is
entrepreneurship in the sense of Schumpeter (1883 – 1950): as
an exploration of the market possibilities.

However, their idea wasn't brand new: People were complaining loudly
about the bloated Mozilla Suite back then. For example, there was a
small browser-only product before Firefox called K-Meleon, running on
Windows.

Why was Firefox such a success althought it came later as K-Meleon
IIRC? Both were open source, both had a price of zero, both were
smaller and faster then the Mozilla suite, and both were easy to
install. What was the difference? I can't produce numbers or figures
but I believe the hype generated by spreadfirefox was a major factor.

> 
> Isn't that just another way of discounting them as irrelevant?
> 

No, it's not. It just means to put things in perspective. Making it
sound otherwise was not my intention.

The large majority of people are not going to read the blogs of the
engineers for a few month when they want to buy a car; they are
studying reviews from independent journalists. And the majority of
people is not even wasting their time with studying in-depth technical
reviews when they spend 40 Euros on the next technical gagdet, be it a
DVD player or a microwave.

On the other hand, these people are not willing to read a manuel when
they simply want to install additional software on their desktop.

Remebering things like this puts statements like the ones of Doc Searls
into the right perspective.


Cheers,
Claus
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Re: On breaking the woohoo barrier...thoughts on how GNOME can get great

[Dave Neary]

Hi Claus,

Claus Schwarm wrote:
> Open Source is useful in a number of ways but there's no need to
> exaggerate its influence, especially not because some projects
> re-invented a known wheel after they threw the existing one away.

Free software has changed the way software is produced - that is a fact.

> As a very simple example: Traditional marketing theory tells you to
> care about the distribution of your product. Firefox cared about it,
> and made it as simple as possible for its potential consumers:
> it offered a binary package taht worked on most distributions IIRC.

New marketing and traditional marketing (in my mind) are not mutually
exclusive. In fact, new marketing is getting back to the source - it is
going from what was called marketing in the 70s and 80s ("eat the shit
we're shovelling you") to what marketing really should be - listening to
your users, telling their stories to yourself and to others, and making
sure that your software is useful.

Firefox, by the way, was not a product of marketing. It was the product
of the will of two people, made possible by the fact that it's free
software. There was no market analysis, someone said "going on the
internet has to be easier than this", and then made the web browser
*they* wanted to use.

> However, the main point is: Neither Open Source nor the Internet removes
> the basic economic and psychological circumstances that determines
> marketing; they merely change the rules slightly.

s/slightly/radically. Do not underestimate the effect of people talking
to each other at a larger scale than ever before.

> And I already wrote that the points made by Doc Searls seem to fit a
> geek2geek market very well.

Isn't that just another way of discounting them as irrelevant?

Dave.

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Re: On breaking the woohoo barrier...thoughts on how GNOME can get great

[Santiago Roza]

On 7/25/06, Claus Schwarm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> I've never really understood why so many people seem to listen to Doc
> Searls. Maybe, that's because he tells geeks what they would like to
> hear?


yes, exactly.  we geeks love to hear these optimistic things about
supposed geeky "revolutions"... just as we like to ignore obvious
facts like most of the population not having internet access, most of
internet traffic going to the same "old" mass media conglomerates,
most of "new" media (blogs etc) not having 1/100 of the "old" media's
audience, and most of the biggest companies not giving a damn about
this "revolution", but still selling / profiting like crazy (using
this "old" marketing that supposedly doesn't work anymore)...
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/01/1433206

no matter how hard we geeks like to pretend "old" communication and
marketing (the ones we don't like, the ones most of us don't
understand) are dead, they're still alive and kicking (and healthy!).
last time i checked, uncool non-bloggy microsoft was selling much more
than your cool distro of choice.


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Re: On breaking the woohoo barrier...thoughts on how GNOME can get great

[Claus Schwarm]

Hi, Dave!

Open Source is useful in a number of ways but there's no need to
exaggerate its influence, especially not because some projects
re-invented a known wheel after they threw the existing one away.

As a very simple example: Traditional marketing theory tells you to
care about the distribution of your product. Firefox cared about it,
and made it as simple as possible for its potential consumers:
it offered a binary package taht worked on most distributions IIRC.

Could you imaging Spreadfirefox's success when they would have
offered a source tarball, only? Do you really think, some people
blogging about the new, cool browser would have had any effects
when people were required to compile Firefox first? But that's how the
majority of open source projects deal with distribution.

Seems to me traditional marketing considerations are still working:
Firefox is one of the most successful open source projects ever. ;-)

However, the main point is: Neither Open Source nor the Internet removes
the basic economic and psychological circumstances that determines
marketing; they merely change the rules slightly. Whether or not one of
these technologies influences what you do depends on the market you're
in.

And I already wrote that the points made by Doc Searls seem to fit a
geek2geek market very well.


Cheers,
Claus
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Re: On breaking the woohoo barrier...thoughts on how GNOME can get great

[Dave Neary]

Hi Claus,

Claus Schwarm wrote:



> If Doc Searls' thesis about the viability of traditional marketing is
> correct, why are OSS projects that care about this traditional
> marketing more successful than those who not?

I think you have the cart and the horse in the wrong order there.

What has happened is that while maturing, free software has not just
changed the way we produce software, it has also changed the way we
market it. From spreadfirefox and firefox flicks through the phenomenon
of blogging software producers (Sun, 37signals, mozilla (again), but
also GNOME, KDE, ...) free software has changed the entire culture of
software over the past 10 years, including its marketing.

The most successful free software products are the ones who have been
leading this change, they are the ones who have clued in to the
cluetrain the quickest, and who have added the slightest amount of order
and direction to the massive community of users around the projects.

Cheers,
Dave.

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Re: On breaking the woohoo barrier...thoughts on how GNOME can get great

[Claus Schwarm]

Hi, 

On Thu, 20 Jul 2006 17:11:44 +0100 (BST)
Paul Cooper <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> 
> At the risk provoking a further rant, I suggest having a look at the
> latest SuitWatch from Doc Searls,
> 
> http://lists.ssc.com/pipermail/suitwatch/attachments/20060720/b35fd219/attachment.cc
> 
> wherein amongst other things Doc questions whether traditional
> marketing is viable any more.
>

In case you're interested in a different position, here's a quote from
Jono Bacon [1]:

 "Since my entry to the Open Source community, I have seen developers
evolve. Back in the early days, developers were largely code heads who
cared for nothing but code. Many of these developers wrote awesome
code, but produced terrible websites, ugly interfaces and terse
documentation."

If Doc Searls' thesis about the viability of traditional marketing is
correct, why are OSS projects that care about this traditional
marketing more successful than those who not?

IMHO, in the field of FOSS, marketing is done more often by developers;
some of them excel here -- think Firefox --, others don't. Or as Jono
puts it: Some evolve! And maybe one should add: Others don't!

Stated differently: Why should the GNOME project care about usability if
its motivation is not to ease the life of as many people as possible?
And is this not marketing?

I've never really understood why so many people seem to listen to Doc
Searls. Maybe, that's because he tells geeks what they would like to
hear? Well, his points may hold within the area of geek2geek products
but they should not be generalized -- and the text you pointed to has
a strong habit of over-generalization. ;-)


Cheers,
Claus

[1] http://www.jonobacon.org/?p=720

 
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Re: On breaking the woohoo barrier...thoughts on how GNOME can get great

[Paul Cooper]

Hi,

- Santiago Roza <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 7/17/06, Havoc Pennington <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[snip]
> that's also a marketing angle: marketing is not just selling stuff. 
> i
> suggest you read my rant :P in this same list, if you feel like:
> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/marketing-list/2005-December/msg00057.html
> 
> 
> > The goal should not be "get people to use Linux" but to provide
> benefits
> > to people.
> 
> providing benefits is an important goal, but not the only one from a
> marketing point of view.  you have to find out what they really want,
> give it to them, and then communicate it properly.

At the risk provoking a further rant, I suggest having a look at the latest 
SuitWatch from Doc Searls,

http://lists.ssc.com/pipermail/suitwatch/attachments/20060720/b35fd219/attachment.cc

wherein amongst other things Doc questions whether traditional marketing is 
viable any more. I'm lucky enough to be going the tutorial he's giving at OSCON 
- I'll do my best to take notes, post them on my blog and share here if people 
are interested.

Paul

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Re: On breaking the woohoo barrier...thoughts on how GNOME can get great

[Santiago Roza]

On 7/17/06, Havoc Pennington <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


> thought about from a design rather than marketing angle; why would end
> users use GNOME and Linux if those things were not designed/invented to
> benefit them?

that's also a marketing angle: marketing is not just selling stuff.  i
suggest you read my rant :P in this same list, if you feel like:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/marketing-list/2005-December/msg00057.html


> The goal should not be "get people to use Linux" but to provide benefits
> to people.

providing benefits is an important goal, but not the only one from a
marketing point of view.  you have to find out what they really want,
give it to them, and then communicate it properly.


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Re: On breaking the woohoo barrier...thoughts on how GNOME can get great

[Calum Benson]

On Mon, 2006-07-17 at 16:17 +0530, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay wrote:

> One of the things that seems to be drifting with GNOME both in its
> current form and in the upcoming (and proposed Topaz) is that a whole
> bunch of features are getting tossed at the end user without actively
> bundling them together in a coherent whole of benefits accrued. 
> 
> Why would end users use GNOME and thus Linux 

Or Solaris, or FreeBSD... :)

Cheeri,
Calum.

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Re: On breaking the woohoo barrier...thoughts on how GNOME can get great

[Havoc Pennington]

Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay wrote:
> On 7/14/06, *Jeff Waugh* <[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> > wrote:
> 
> I have been banging on this drum in the Ubuntu community for a
> while, but I
> guess I haven't been banging it sufficiently loud in GNOME: Whenever
> we talk
> about GNOME, we *must* talk first and foremost about benefits, and
> then back
> it up with the features.
> 
> 
> Amen. :)
> 
> One of the things that seems to be drifting with GNOME both in its 
> current form and in the upcoming (and proposed Topaz) is that a whole 
> bunch of features are getting tossed at the end user without actively 
> bundling them together in a coherent whole of benefits accrued.
> 
> Why would end users use GNOME and thus Linux unless they are sold on the 
> benefits of using them ? The bells and whistles would come later and 
> would come in a logical followup.
> 

wrt marketing, Seth Godin ("Purple Cow") does a good job arguing for 
making something that stands out, vs. figuring out how to get whatever 
you made to stand out (after you're done making it).

thought about from a design rather than marketing angle; why would end 
users use GNOME and Linux if those things were not designed/invented to 
benefit them?

The goal should not be "get people to use Linux" but to provide benefits 
to people. Linux or GNOME or Java or Mono or a web site or a hardware 
device or whatever it is should be implementation, not goal.

Havoc
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Re: On breaking the woohoo barrier...thoughts on how GNOME can get great

[Calum Benson]

On 17 Jul 2006, at 11:36, Gergely Nagy wrote:

>
> Yet, if you said "I think it applies more to Josh than Harrison", I
> would have to go and look up who they really are. But if you said "I
> think it applies more to the admin guy than the programmer", I could
> easily say yes, you are right :)

That's just a question of familiarity though... the whole point is  
that you should get to know your personas as well as you know your  
friends.  Of course, that's why it really helps to include photos...  
some companies even encourage you to pin the persona photos on your  
cubicle wall so they're always in your thoughts when you're writing  
or designing stuff :)

Cheeri,
Calum.

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Re: On breaking the woohoo barrier...thoughts on how GNOME can get great

[Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay]

On 7/14/06, Jeff Waugh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I have been banging on this drum in the Ubuntu community for a while, but Iguess I haven't been banging it sufficiently loud in GNOME: Whenever we talkabout GNOME, we *must* talk first and foremost about benefits, and then back
it up with the features.Amen. :)One of the things that seems to be drifting with GNOME both in its current form and in the upcoming (and proposed Topaz) is that a whole bunch of features are getting tossed at the end user without actively bundling them together in a coherent whole of benefits accrued.
Why would end users use GNOME and thus Linux unless they are sold on the benefits of using them ? The bells and whistles would come later and would come in a logical followup.:Sankarshan-- You see things; and you say 'Why?'; 
But I dream things that never were; and I say 'Why not?' - George Bernard Shaw
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Re: On breaking the woohoo barrier...thoughts on how GNOME can get great

[Gergely Nagy]

On Mon, 2006-07-17 at 10:44 +1200, Glynn Foster wrote:
> Hey,
> 
> Santiago Roza wrote:
> > On 7/14/06, Glynn Foster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > 
> >> I even started on some profiles, with a more 'human' aspect [1] -
> >> http://live.gnome.org/JoshWilliams
> >> http://live.gnome.org/HarrisonJacobs
> > 
> > 
> > and what's the difference between these two and the ones we had
> > before, other than having a random "human" name and a face (both
> > american btw), a similar job, a similar age, and very similar needs?
> > :)
> 
> I think having a name and a face is amazingly useful - helps people to
> visualize the types of people they are and what their lives might
> involve. I didn't know about the other Personas wiki page [if it even
> existed then], otherwise I would have taken those profiles, added some
> pictures and names.

Yet, if you said "I think it applies more to Josh than Harrison", I
would have to go and look up who they really are. But if you said "I
think it applies more to the admin guy than the programmer", I could
easily say yes, you are right :)

Greg

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Re: On breaking the woohoo barrier...thoughts on how GNOME can get great

[Glynn Foster]

Hey,

Santiago Roza wrote:
> On 7/14/06, Glynn Foster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
>> I even started on some profiles, with a more 'human' aspect [1] -
>> http://live.gnome.org/JoshWilliams
>> http://live.gnome.org/HarrisonJacobs
> 
> 
> and what's the difference between these two and the ones we had
> before, other than having a random "human" name and a face (both
> american btw), a similar job, a similar age, and very similar needs?
> :)

I think having a name and a face is amazingly useful - helps people to
visualize the types of people they are and what their lives might
involve. I didn't know about the other Personas wiki page [if it even
existed then], otherwise I would have taken those profiles, added some
pictures and names.


Glynn
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Re: On breaking the woohoo barrier...thoughts on how GNOME can get great

[Santiago Roza]

On 7/14/06, Glynn Foster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> I even started on some profiles, with a more 'human' aspect [1] -
> http://live.gnome.org/JoshWilliams
> http://live.gnome.org/HarrisonJacobs


and what's the difference between these two and the ones we had
before, other than having a random "human" name and a face (both
american btw), a similar job, a similar age, and very similar needs?
:)


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Re: On breaking the woohoo barrier...thoughts on how GNOME can get great

[Claus Schwarm]

On Fri, 14 Jul 2006 10:22:30 -0300
"Santiago Roza" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> 
> yeah i guess that's hard... i didn't know about that wiki page either,
> and i wrote that text  :)


Oooh, I'm sorry.

I think it saw a remark by Calum about 'still no personas' or so,
remembered your text, and moved it over in a five minutes job so it
didn't get lost, and for others to help. I wanted to add a link or so
to your mail for credit but somehow never got to do it.

I'm so sorry I forgot about it. I just corrected it.

My apologies!

Claus

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Re: On breaking the woohoo barrier...thoughts on how GNOME can get great

[karderio]

Hi :o)

On Fri, 2006-07-14 at 08:56 -0600, Elijah Newren wrote:
> On 7/14/06, Calum Benson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Yeesh, didn't know that.  Has anybody ever come up with an effective way
> > of keeping track of what on earth is happening on wikis, without
> > subscribing to every change?
> 
> Well, the method I use is to wait until I hear someone mention it
> somewhere, such as on p.g.o., or say d-d-l.  ;-)

On the Gnome Documentation Project page there is a news section, to
which I added a heads up about some major GDP wiki page changes the
other day. If we added news of major changes to the project page, you
would just have to monitor that page.

I do realise that this is light years from ideal, but perhaps it may
work some of the time...

Love, Karderio

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Re: On breaking the woohoo barrier...thoughts on how GNOME can get great

[Glynn Foster]

Calum Benson wrote:
> Quim Gil wrote:
>> El dv 14 de 07 del 2006 a les 08:41 +0200, en/na Murray Cumming va
>> escriure:
>>
>>> Should anyone ever get around to creating some GNOME personas
>> Someone started http://live.gnome.org/Personas months ago. 

Yeah, and I tried to do something like that for gnome.conf.au, but
didn't get enough time in the day to get into the session.

I even started on some profiles, with a more 'human' aspect [1] -

http://live.gnome.org/JoshWilliams

ie. has curly hair, outgoing, etc...

http://live.gnome.org/HarrisonJacobs


Would be real sweet to have a bit of fun and develop these types of
profiles at something like the Boston Summit.


Glynn

[1] I took the inspiration from a previous Solaris Desktop Summit..
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Personas (was Re: On breaking the woohoo barrier...thoughts on how GNOME can get great)

[Gergely Nagy]

We listed some user categories for www.gnome.org [1][2]. We'd like easy
entry points for target user groups to get more info, whether they are
new users just getting started, or experienced users looking for what's
new.

[1] http://live.gnome.org/GnomeWeb/GuadecMapping
[2] http://live.gnome.org/GnomeWeb/UseCases

Greg

On Fri, 2006-07-14 at 09:51 +0200, Quim Gil wrote:
> El dv 14 de 07 del 2006 a les 08:41 +0200, en/na Murray Cumming va
> escriure:
> 
> > Should anyone ever get around to creating some GNOME personas
> 
> Someone started http://live.gnome.org/Personas months ago. 
> 
> However, I've just had a look to
> http://primates.ximian.com/~federico/docs/gnome-deployments-2006/ and I
> think this is a more pragmatic, realistic and specific path to go. If we
> need to build personas we better start from here:
> 
> "The main user of GNOME is the average citizen in a government office, a
> public school, or a community center in a random town."
> 

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Re: On breaking the woohoo barrier...thoughts on how GNOME can get great

[Elijah Newren]

On 7/14/06, Calum Benson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Quim Gil wrote:
> > El dv 14 de 07 del 2006 a les 08:41 +0200, en/na Murray Cumming va
> > escriure:
> >
> >> Should anyone ever get around to creating some GNOME personas
> >
> > Someone started http://live.gnome.org/Personas months ago.
>
> Yeesh, didn't know that.  Has anybody ever come up with an effective way
> of keeping track of what on earth is happening on wikis, without
> subscribing to every change?

Well, the method I use is to wait until I hear someone mention it
somewhere, such as on p.g.o., or say d-d-l.  ;-)
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Re: On breaking the woohoo barrier...thoughts on how GNOME can get great

[Santiago Roza]

On 7/14/06, Calum Benson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> > Someone started http://live.gnome.org/Personas months ago.
>
> Yeesh, didn't know that.  Has anybody ever come up with an effective way
> of keeping track of what on earth is happening on wikis, without
> subscribing to every change?


yeah i guess that's hard... i didn't know about that wiki page either,
and i wrote that text  :)
(btw i abandoned it later because now i'm not so sure about the
usefulness of this personas thing)


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Re: On breaking the woohoo barrier...thoughts on how GNOME can get great

[Calum Benson]

Quim Gil wrote:
> El dv 14 de 07 del 2006 a les 08:41 +0200, en/na Murray Cumming va
> escriure:
> 
>> Should anyone ever get around to creating some GNOME personas
> 
> Someone started http://live.gnome.org/Personas months ago. 

Yeesh, didn't know that.  Has anybody ever come up with an effective way 
of keeping track of what on earth is happening on wikis, without 
subscribing to every change?  There's probably loads of stuff on there 
I'd be interested in, but have no way of ever knowing about, and no time 
to poke around randomly what with having to keep up with mailing lists, 
IRC, bugzilla, gnomesupport.org...

I hate wikis :)

Cheeri,
Calum.

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Re: On breaking the woohoo barrier...thoughts on how GNOME can get great

[Claus Schwarm]

On Fri, 14 Jul 2006 08:58:50 +1000
Jeff Waugh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> This is the distinction between "features" and "benefits". Apple have
> always been good about communicating *benefits* first, features
> second. I feel that Microsoft have traditionally done it backwards.
> 

Then, we should be careful to promote features first. It's Microsoft
who dominates the desktop space with 90%+ market share, not Apple. ;-)

The above example might be a little bit misleading. I like the
other one: These girls are using GNOME and Linux because of Gaim
and its functionality. This means: GNOME needs more 'Gaims' and better
'Gaims', no?

I might be wrong but this sounds to me as if we should bother to
communicate GNOME's benefits to other developers first, so they make
rocking applications for the GNOME platform. Then, we are able to
promote GNOME to end users by promoting their applications.

It would rock if somebody with a clue about the dev. platform starts a
comprehensible list for others to learn these benefits.

Otherwise we would need to code most of our applications ourselves,
like Apple does. Probably with a similar success, but without the
coolness factor of the hardware, and without the advantage of being one
of the leading providers of home computers for years. Doesn't sound
that promising, IMHO.


Cheers,
Claus
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Re: On breaking the woohoo barrier...thoughts on how GNOME can get great

[Quim Gil]

El dv 14 de 07 del 2006 a les 08:41 +0200, en/na Murray Cumming va
escriure:

> Should anyone ever get around to creating some GNOME personas

Someone started http://live.gnome.org/Personas months ago. 

However, I've just had a look to
http://primates.ximian.com/~federico/docs/gnome-deployments-2006/ and I
think this is a more pragmatic, realistic and specific path to go. If we
need to build personas we better start from here:

"The main user of GNOME is the average citizen in a government office, a
public school, or a community center in a random town."

-- 
Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org | http://guadec.org


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Re: On breaking the woohoo barrier...thoughts on how GNOME can get great

[Murray Cumming]

> 
>
>> Kathy's talk on passionate users, Apple's "Mac vs PC" adverts and their
>> success with making things cool have shown us that people don't care
>> about
>> what a computer can do, but what they can do with a computer (there may
>> be
>> more of a difference in my mind, I'm just lacking a good way of
>> explaining
>> it). The whole idea that "Here's some cool stuff you can do" rather than
>> "this computer can do these 1000 features."
>
> This is the distinction between "features" and "benefits". Apple have
> always
> been good about communicating *benefits* first, features second.
[snip]

Should anyone ever get around to creating some GNOME personas [1] then, in
the lingo of personas, they'd have life "goals", and these goals would be
achieved through tasks. I think goals == benefits, and features maybe ==
tasks.

We really need to get around to this.

[1] No, I haven't either.

[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.murrayc.com
www.openismus.com

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Re: On breaking the woohoo barrier...thoughts on how GNOME can get great

[Jeff Waugh]

> Kathy's talk on passionate users, Apple's "Mac vs PC" adverts and their
> success with making things cool have shown us that people don't care about
> what a computer can do, but what they can do with a computer (there may be
> more of a difference in my mind, I'm just lacking a good way of explaining
> it). The whole idea that "Here's some cool stuff you can do" rather than
> "this computer can do these 1000 features."

This is the distinction between "features" and "benefits". Apple have always
been good about communicating *benefits* first, features second. I feel that
Microsoft have traditionally done it backwards.

I have been banging on this drum in the Ubuntu community for a while, but I
guess I haven't been banging it sufficiently loud in GNOME: Whenever we talk
about GNOME, we *must* talk first and foremost about benefits, and then back
it up with the features.

> I guess first we need to know who we're targetting. I get a sneaking
> suspicion looking at the apple mac vs pc ads that they realised halfway
> through that they were maybe portraying the mac as too much of a fun
> computer and the PC was the work machine.

(Interesting side note - no idea what their focus group responses were for
these ads, but they've had a pretty distinct negative impression all over
the place. People tend to identify with comedian John Hodgman's dorky guy,
rather than Justin Long's smartarse, 'elitist', slacker.)

> I don't really know what we need to satisfy this mythical user, but some
> of the things my non-computery friends use computers for would be photo
> management and instant messenger.

Linux Australia had a booth at an education expo trade show here in .au, to
talk about FLOSS, share ideas, and get in the heads of education people. I
gave the GNOME pitch to a group of high school girls (who wanted "the cute
penguin stickers"), and figured instant messaging would be a good thing to
show off. I asked if they used IM ("yeah! duh!") and if they were on lots of
IM networks ("yeah, you have to be")... Then I showed them my Gaim buddies,
showing Jabber, MSN, AIM, ICQ. They all wanted it, so I gave them the Ubuntu
CD pack (which includes Windows software on the LiveCD). One of the girls
said, "Well, if Linux has amazing stuff like this that I didn't know about,
then I just want to run Linux."

*And she still does.*

> I'm sure I've forgotten something, and this probably turned into a stream
> of thoughts rather than anything coherent. Oh well

You're not alone - these are very important thoughts that are plaguing many
minds in the GNOME world and are a direct outgrowth from our massive refocus
on usability, benefits > features, making users kick arse, and 'universal
access'. This change in thinking - our collective passion for changing the
way we (and others) think about the FLOSS user experience - is making waves.

People are always asking me why Ubuntu has been so successful so quickly...
The 'Zen of GNOME', and GNOME itself, is a very big piece of that success.

- Jeff

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