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Marketing

Utah Open Source Conference

Christer Edwards (aka Zelut) recently represented GNOME at the Utah Open Source Conference. He’s got some great pictures up and has some good things to say about GNOME, including that he’s getting involved more (which is great to see!)

Read his full blog post (with pictures) here.

Christer and I were also recently talking about how we can expand GNOME usergroups in the US – he’s got some great ideas and experience. Still formulating my thoughts, expect a blog post soon on that as well.

GNOME Marketing Hackfest

We are in the final phases of planning a Marketing Hackfest to be held in Chicago, IL USA Tuesday and Wednesday, November 10th and 11th.

Google has been gracious to host us at their offices in Chicago and Novell is also helping with sponsorship.

Is this something you’d be interested in? Join the Marketing mailing list and let us know!

We’re finalizing the agenda now, but we have lots of stuff to work on, including:

  • Case studies of GNOME success stories
  • The new GNOME.org website
  • Presentation materials
  • GNOME 3.0 marketing campaign
  • GNOME Event box materials including posters, brochures and more

And that’s just a sampling! If you’re good with art, writing or editing we’d love to have you there. Nothing is quite like a hackfest and feeling the energy created by working together in the same room getting stuff done.

2009 GNOME Annual Report Kickoff

It’s that time of year to start thinking about the GNOME Annual report and recapping all the wonderful activities the GNOME community has been involved in over the past year.

Lucas has done an awesome job over the last few years and this year has asked me to help with coordinating the annual report.

The annual report is one of the first things I ever contributed to GNOME (as an editor) and I hope I can do as good a job as Lucas has done.

With that said, we need your help! As I mentioned in the kickoff email, we need help with:

  • Is this the right format? Are these the right sections?
  • Writers! Want to write one of these sections? Grab it! Want to write something not listed? Add it and write it!
  • Editors. Good editing is as important as good writing.
  • Artwork and layout.
  • High res photos of GNOME community members.

If you have ideas for articles that should be included, links and information for the authors, or any new ideas, please let me know or feel free to edit the GNOME Annual Report 2009 wiki page!

And just like Lucas has done in past years, don’t be surprised if I reach out to you individually to help.

An Introduction to GNOME 3.0

(This is the first in a series of blogs posts about Ohio Linux Fest)

I gave a talk this weekend at Ohio Linux Fest titled “An Introduction to GNOME 3.0”. The purpose of my talk was, which I hope to do a few more times this year, is to start introducing the community to the changes coming in GNOME 3.0. Change is hard, especially when we’re talking about a change to the user interface, and I believe the sooner we start engaging and educating the community, the more helpful it will be.

The presentation focuses on three things:

  1. What is GNOME
  2. History of GNOME (up to and including a brief overview of GNOME 2.28)
  3. GNOME 3.0

One thing I hope attendees take away is that GNOME 3.0 is more than just GNOME Shell. I believe the call to action in the GNOME 3.0 community that Vincent and the release team started back in April and that continued at GUADEC really motivated a number of teams to see what they could do to contribute to GNOME 3.0. In the presentation I talk about Accessibility, Documentation, Marketing, the GNOME Developer Platform, the GNOME Activity Journal and Zeitgeist, Tomboy Online and GNOME Shell (including a demo).

I spent a lot of time reading Presentation Zen these last few months and used the concepts the book advocates. In addition to the presentation, I also provided a handout (available as a PDF on my website as well) for attendees to take away that goes into a little more detail and cites and attributes all of my sources.

I’ve uploaded my slides, images, and the handout on the GNOME Marketing wiki, all available in one archive. This material is available under a Creative Commons Share-alike 3.0 license. I’m sure I’ve got a few things wrong here and there, and I look forward to any feedback anyone has.

I’ll be giving this talk in November in St. Paul, MN at the Penguins Unbound LUG, and I’m hoping to reach out to a few more LUGs in the Midwest, as well as submit it as a talk at SCALE next February. If you’d like me to come give a talk somewhere, let me know via email or my blog.

I'm going to Ohio Linux Fest

Ohio Linux Fest

I’ll be in Columbus, Ohio this weekend for Ohio Linux Fest. It will be my first time attending OLF, though I did book a flight last year and had to cancel at the last minute.

I’ll be giving a talk – “An Introduction GNOME 3.0” where I’ll cover what GNOME is, how it started, touch on the recent 2.28 release, and what may be coming in GNOME 3.0. I’ll post my presentation, both the handout and the slides, next week on the GNOME Marketing wiki. (Nothing like procrastinating to get it done).

I’m sure I’ll make a few mistakes, especially as I plan on demoing GNOME Shell, so feedback is welcome. If you’re there, stop by and say hi!

Happy Birthday GNOME Journal!

GNOME Journal celebrates it’s 5 year anniversary this month, with the first ever edition released in September 2004.

After taking 2008 off, I’m happy to say that 2009 is turning into a banner year for GNOME Journal, and 2009 has seen more issues published than any year other 2005, and we’re on pace to break 2005’s record of five issues.

Looking back at the first Letter from the Editor from Jim Hodapp, it’s good to see that our mission hasn’t changed:

  • There is a current lack of original written content centered around GNOME – GNOME Journal fulfills this void by creating original content that focuses on the technology, community, philosophy, and general happenings within the GNOME umbrella.
  • A void that is largely unfilled currently is how to effectively market the GNOME desktop to people who either currently use a free operating system and don’t use GNOME, or to attract those people who use another operating system altogether GNOME will not run. GNOME Journal will provide a very tangible and centralized place that people can read to gain original insite into what GNOME is and what they can do with it.
  • Lastly, GNOME Journal is entering into existence simply because it is a cool idea. It is my hope that it will also spur on increased appreciation for GNOME and allow more people to feel like they can get involved in the community.

I whole heartedly agree with the above statements, and they are just as true in 2009 as they were in 2004. There continues to be a lack of original content around GNOME; as a member of the GNOME Marketing team there is no question that it is hard to market GNOME to our existing user base; and there is no question that GNOME Journal is, and continues to be, a cool idea.

One of the things I’m most proud of since becoming the release coordinator for GNOME Journal earlier this year, is the new writers who have (and will have) contributed to GNOME Journal.

In no particular order: Stormy Peters, Les Harris, Jayson Rowe, Og Maciel, Natan Yellin, and Emily Chen.

I’m also thankful to everyone in the GNOME Community who has made time for interviews on interesting projects such as J5 and Laszlo Peter, and those featured in Behind the Scenes, including Stormy, Owen Taylor and Lucas Rocha.

We aren’t done with 2009 either! We have two special editions coming up, the first focused on Multimedia and the second is an edition of GNOME Journal written by the GNOME Women team. We’re hoping to introduce new features in GNOME Journal, including a new article every feature, as well as migrating from our current CMS to blogs.gnome.org, which will also us to do multimedia, publish to PDF, and rate articles. And a big thank you to Dave Neary letting us know our database crashed last week and we weren’t displaying any content. (Jeff Waugh – if you’re reading this, please reply to my emails so we can finish this migration. Thank you!)

We’re always looking for new article ideas, writers and editors – we’re also big on collaboration, so don’t feel that you have to write an entire article by yourself. Interested? Email me, leave a comment on my blog, or best of all, join the GNOME Journal mailing list.

And lastly, thank you to our readers. Our hits have been going up every issue, and I am grateful for all the comments left on my blog after announcing a new issue. I’m hopeful that we can turn these comments into reality, and we’re already working on a suggestion for an interview that was just recently left on my blog.

I hope you enjoy reading GNOME Journal as much as we enjoy writing it.

Become a GNOME Ambassador

Become a GNOME Ambassador!

The GNOME Marketing team is pleased to announce the creation of the GNOME Press Team. The Press Team is a subset of the Marketing team, with a focus on tracking GNOME events worldwide, and communicating and engaging with journalists all over the world to help spread GNOME news.

The Press Team is responsible for tracking GNOME events and updating the GNOME calendar, helping write press releases, talking points, and press kits and sending them to press contacts in as many languages as possible, and helping coordinate interviews with GNOME volunteers and journalists.

For more information, please visit the GNOME Press Team’s homepage on the GNOME Wiki or join the mailing list .

You can find upcoming GNOME Events on the GNOME wiki or the GNOME Community calendar.

Short term we have a lot of things we want to accomplish from creating a GNOME Press Kit for the 2.28 release to just keeping up with all the events. Longer term there are lots of ideas, including creating a social news website and more.

Help out and spread the word about GNOME!

Marketing the Marketing Team

I’m a bit behind in my blogging. After getting home from GCDS, and spending the weekend with the family, and then catching up on work after a week of vacation, I’m way overdue to blog.

The GNOME Marketing BoF was the last session on Thursday at GCDS, and the last I attended before heading home Friday. Even with the room hot and sticky, everyone was engaged, and had lots of great ideas and feedback to share. I’d like to give a great big thank you to those that were in attendance, especially as the annual football match and local tour were going on at the same time.

We’ve got a lot going on – some of the things we discussed that we need to add or update in our release calendar include:

  • GNOME 3.0 Marketing Campaign – Feedback was great, lots of stuff to do! From the campaign itself to writing and presenting at conferences to creating a video campaign, there is a lot of cool stuff we can do to educate GNOME users about the changes GNOME 3.0 will introduce.
  • Case studies. Putting together case studies on the success GNOME and its downstream partners have can be a powerful tool. And a big thank you to Novell offering, and immediately following through, on a great success story.
  • Social Media. Starting with Thomas’ PR talk on Wednesday, and continuing on Thursday, a lot of great ideas were shared that show there is a lot of low hanging fruit we can do in the social marketing space.
  • GNOME Press Team. More to come on this soon! The short story is we have an opportunity to build a team that tracks worldwide events and talk about them to the press. This includes conferences, talks, events and more, and helping put the press releases together and be available as a contact to journalists to answer questions.
  • GNOME website. I’m going to send out an update soon on the content the marketing team is responsible for in writing and editing for the new gnome.org.
  • Friends of GNOME. We’ve had some great success so far this year in raising money to help GNOME. And there is more coming! We need to continue to build on this success through fundraising activity, and we have some cool things planned.

If you’re interested in helping out and spreading the word about GNOME, now is a great time to join the Marketing team!

Gran Canaria Part II

I continue to have a great time here at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit. I keep putting off blogging as I’m just overwhelmed with everything going through my head, and trying to make a succinct blog post has been a challenge.

One of the best parts, especially as it’s my first GUADEC, is how welcoming everyone is. I think I’ve had lunch or dinner with a different group of people every meal. (The meals here are pretty good, but the conversations are even better).

I had the opportunity Monday to give an update on Documentation in the GNOME 3.0 Status session. It’s a bit intimidating standing in a spotlight (literally) and talking for 3-5 minutes about everything we’re doing. (Yes, Shaun, I made sure to make a point you released Mallard after 4 long years, though I forgot to give Bastien credit for helping fix my laptop so I have Mallard working on it). I was very nervous – I really need to practice my public speaking skills, especially as I want to do more talks for Marketing later in the year on the upcoming GNOME 3.0 release.

I also met Thomas, who does a lot of work on GNOME PR here in Europe and Germany, including working in the Press Room here at Gran Canaria for the Desktop Summit, and he had some great ideas of how we can improve our marketing communications, and some fair challenges about how it’s been done in the past. I look forward to working on bringing some of those ideas to life.

Speaking of Marketing, yesterday I had the chance to talk about the work the Marketing team is doing before the Advisory Board. I thought it went pretty well, and it wouldn’t have happened without Claus’ work on the marketing campaign on the Marketing wiki. I had a great conversation with Andreas last night as well, and I’m glad we have the Art team’s support with some of the ideas we have. I’m happy that a few people have come up to me and volunteered to help out more with Marketing stuff. Definitely need to get that task list and release calendar ready! And please come to the Marketing BoF at 3:00 tomorrow to learn more, though I’m guessing a lot of people will be doing the local tour.

The only downside to going to the Advisory Board meeting was missing a couple of the sessions I really wanted to see late yesterday afternoon. I need to go track Aaron down and learn more about what’s new in Banshee!

I’ve also recruited a few more writers for GNOME Journal – don’t forget, if you have a cool app you want to talk about or demo, please come find me. I’d love to turn those into articles for GNOME Journal later in the year.

Join the GNOME Marketing Team!

The American Marketing Association defines marketing as:

Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.

I don’t think there is a question that GNOME has value for customers, clients, partners and society at large.

It’s our job to shout about that value from the rooftops, far and wide.

Right now though, we need to focus on the first part of that sentence:

Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes…

Now is a great time to join the GNOME Marketing team. We’re getting organized, including organizing sub-teams, revamping our team member page (add your name!), updating the tasks we want to accomplish (don’t click that yet, we are still migrating our content!), and beginning to define the messages we want to communicate, and how we will communicate them.

I strongly believe that GNOME 3.0 offers us a unique opportunity for marketing GNOME, first to our current users about the changes coming, and to even more audiences about the benefits of GNOME, including developers, GNOME Mobile, and non-GNOME users.

We need volunteers who are passionate about communicating the benefits of GNOME. We need writers, editors, art designers, researchers, speakers, event organizers, project managers and more.

We need you. Join the mailing list or sign up on our wiki. Let’s tell the world about GNOME.