My two cents:
I think a meeting to discuss the direction of the Ubuntu Marketing team
would be a great first step. I would be excited to participate. I can make
time on Monday the 2nd as suggested by Martin. We do need a leader(s) to
provide a coherent goal/strategy and to prioritize activities supporting
that strategy. My opinion is that marketing should focus on getting the
Ubuntu message out. Ubuntu is "Linux for human beings" but a lot of less
tech savvy users either don't know about Ubuntu or are intimidated by
anything "Linux" (they think "oh I don't know enough about computers to use
Linux - that's for programmers.")
I would suggest:
- The main *goal *of the Ubuntu Marketing team should be to increase the
OS marketshare for Ubuntu.
- The *strategy *would be to raise awareness and understanding of the
benefits of Ubuntu vs. other OSs
- The *activities *would be activities (blogging, setting up labs at
universities, hosting Windows 7-style "launch parties" [kidding on that last
one] etc.) that the community and Locos would carry out. We could decide on
specifics of those at the meeting.
These are my suggestions for a starting point and I hope that you all can
improve on them. And while I don't think that we need financial support from
Canonical, it would be nice to have an "official" representative from
Canonical at the meeting. A little direction from Canonical could go a long
way in helping the community decide where to focus and then supporting the
community in its activities.
Mozilla has done a great job of this. Check out (
http://www.spreadfirefox.com/.) By contrast, the efforts of the Ubuntu
marketing group have been (or at least seemed to me) very ad hoc and
targeted at the existing Ubuntu community. E.g. I love the magazine and the
volunteers do a great job on it. However, the magazine isn't an initiative
to evangelize people outside of the existing Ubuntu community - it is
something that engages the existing user base.
Perhaps some Locos are doing things to get the word out about Ubuntu, but it
would be great to do some coordination and share what works.
Jake
On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 10:59 AM, Martin Owens wrote:
> Hey John,
>
> First, please don't post giant text. Or if you do, make all of your text
> giant. :-)
>
> On Thu, 2009-10-22 at 10:36 -0500, John Vilsack wrote:
>
> > Thanks for the offer. I'm not looking to throw anyone under the bus
> > about what occurred. It was just all standard fare if you are used to
> > those sort of politics. The people who held up the greatest amount of
> > resistance know who they were an no amount of reconciliation seemed to
> > matter. If you keep prodding enough, they will make their presence
> > known :)
>
> If you feel there is such a problem and it can't be reconciled, then
> we'll call a meeting. How does Monday 2nd November 2009, 23:00 UTC (6pm
> EST) sound, we'll have it in #ubuntu-meeting and make sure that the
> community knows it's going on.
>
> First and only agenda item, to elect a leader, or if enough people can
> not agree, to elect a board. 5 is usually a good number, but it depends
> on how many people are interested in marketing.
>
> Those who were burned last time only need to come to this one meeting,
> if it turns sour then you need not invest any more time than that. But
> it's worth not giving up just yet. Assuming we can get a gracious leader
> with a bit of vision, then the politics will largely fall away.
>
> Regards, Martin
> >
>
>
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