John, This message is being sent to the list because I believe in open communication - even though some of the content is specifically for you.
Your article is a very interesting take on your participation with Ubuntu and the Ubuntu-Marketing team and for it's thorough and thought out content I thank you. You raise some interesting points about perceptions and reality. I am mindful of your visual impairment, but I recall a fellow list member, in another list I moderate, who has to hunt for each character, one-at-a-time, to produce his contributions. I had been reading his emails for years before he told me of his circumstance - only as way of apology for sending an email to the wrong address. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that I understand what you're writing, but not how it would stop you from contributing. If you have specific issues that need software support that you are not able to overcome, then please let me know and I'll attempt to assist you where I can. Your comments about group dynamics and email are interesting because my view is not even close to yours. I've been using email as my primary communications medium since I came on-line in 1990. That's 18 years of email. I never stopped using it, nor did the people who build and maintain Ubuntu. I'm sorry that the Windows experience has caused you to steer away from email, but then, the rest of the world just continued to use it. I realise that this may sound factious, since there are more Windows users than Linux users today, but for me the reality is that Windows didn't provide me with the user experience I expected, so I changed, and kept using email. Another way to look at this highlights just how far we are apart in our experiences. Over the weekend I was having dinner with a doctor and her husband. Her computing experience is one of disaster and confusion. She hates the things, is required by her medical centre to use them and describes how she cannot access information within her system and she speaks fondly of paper files and reports. She is about a decade away from retirement and she resents that she cannot provide the health care that she wants to give to her patients. I spent an hour explaining that her problem was solvable with open standards and government regulation that mandated those standards. I told her of how I manage many Gigabytes of data each month - that is find, organise and store widely diverse information - as part of my day-to-day work life. I understand that she has a training issue, and that there is an aspect that relates to her profession, but fundamentally her computing experience is poor. Should this team market to her? Probably. Does this team have the resources to market to her? Sure. To her colleagues in Perth, Western Australia? Probably. To the world? Probably not. To all the professions across the world? Absolutely not. So, yes, Ubuntu needs to be marketed to the world, but there is absolutely no way that we can do it ourselves, here, within this team. Do I share your frustration that we cannot just get up and market this thing to everyone? Not any more. The reason I'm not frustrated about it, is because I look at this from a system perspective. We are building a system that makes it possible, using volunteers and community members to harness their energy to do the marketing that they want to. Personally I market Ubuntu most days. Not actively go out and do letterbox drops, or advertising, or seminars, but just in talking to people about Ubuntu, about OpenSource, standards and other things that cause people to have a frustrating Windows experience. So, yes, to actively participate in this community you need some skills. We welcome you with open arms, we try to introduce new skills to you as we go and we try to support you as time goes by. Is it hard - sure. Is it frustrating - sure. Is it rewarding? Answer me this. If you were a Windows user, where is your community that helps you, fixes software for you, gives you free advice and a place to share your concerns and ideas, central resources to manage your machine and community representation across many countries of the world, where you can talk to people in Mexico, Denmark and Australia, just by hitting the send button on your email client? So, please do not feel disheartened, rather feel encouraged that we take note of your contributions and consider them together with the contributions from other team members. -- Onno Benschop Connected via Optus B3 at S31°54'06" - E115°50'39" (Yokine, WA) -- ()/)/)() ..ASCII for Onno.. |>>? ..EBCDIC for Onno.. --- -. -. --- ..Morse for Onno.. ITmaze - ABN: 56 178 057 063 - ph: 04 1219 8888 - [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- ubuntu-marketing mailing list ubuntu-marketing@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-marketing
