[Mageia-dev] Identifying Target Markets

[Thorsten van Lil]

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: mageia-dev-bounces at mageia.org [mailto:mageia-dev-bounces at mageia.org] Im
Auftrag von Graham Lauder
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 30. September 2010 13:21
An: Mageia development mailing-list
Betreff: [Mageia-dev] Identifying Target Markets

>A mistake that is often made is branding from an internal aesthetic when in

>fact branding should be more aimed externally to attract a new demographic.

>If the gods are in alignment then ideally it should point toward our
principle 
>point of difference and again this influences our branding choices in terms
of 
>Colour Pallet Logo and so forth.

This point is a bit difficult to me, as we (as the community) are the
internal and external in one. We create the distribution for us (the whole
community) and try enlarge the community.

For example, afaik nearly 75% of the mandriva user (and there for Mageia
user) use KDE. If we for example aim an group of people which KDE doesn't
fit, we will probably loose more users the win new users. That's the tricky
part of a community distro I think ;)

>The "feel" to me that came from the brainstorming was that Mageia could be 
>marketed as the "Family Distro".   This being a principle point of
difference 
>when a user makes a decision as to what operating system to run.

Although I don't count myself to this group, I'm totally fine with the idea
and see that it is a nearly untapped market. But on the otherside: how big
could this market be?

>So for instance as well as the standard software, educational programmes
would 
>be installed by default, be NetSafe (Dans Guardian), have OOo4Kids
installed 
>as well as a full office suite, Tuxtype, TuxPaint and so on.

Here I see some problems:
If we release a LiveCD and a DVD (like Mandriva does), there will be enough
space on the LiveCD for extra software. On the DVD there is enough space I
think, but is it for example really necessary to ship to office suits, just
to define our aimed market?

>Documentation added to show parents how to set up accounts for the kids and

>how to make it Net safe.

That's a really cool idea! As we also debate about a welcome center, there
should definitely be a link in it, to that kind of documentation.

I think that the normal home user and a young family have nearly the same
requirements. Both need an easy to install and maintain and use system (yes
I know: who doesn't want this). Maybe we can create a distribution which
fits such requirements and specialize to the family with meta-packages,
special documentation and tools for them? 

Regards,
TeaAge