[Mageia-discuss] Mageia logo proposals and selection

[Romain d'Alverny]

On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 22:26, Fernando Parra <gato2707 at yahoo.com.mx> wrote:
>
> I agree with this POV, Our main goal must be capture as many as possible non-linux users, no cannibalize the same linux users from other distros.

Well, no, it's not, either way.

(at this stage or it would be as a side effect)

Please, let's focus.

Mageia.org main goal is to build a community revolving around an
ambitious, great Free Software project, empowering back all
contributing people/companies (relationships, skills, knowledge, new
appetites, technologies, products).

Here and now, it is a Linux distribution - and that's something really
large; right now, it is building and releasing a Linux distribution
from a technical and process point of view (before December) and
preparing coming February FOSDEM.

Building this progressively with sound and efficient processes, plus
attracting great contributors is the mean by which we can make
something great and enjoy it. That's not a guarantee but a
requirement.

Attracting a lot of users is a consequence of... well, many things,
some of which we can influence on. Partly through our contributors.
It's somehow a goal as well to grow our user base, in that we hope
that what will be built will be useful and liberating to many.

Targetting such a very specific set of users may be done later, if
it's not designed within the initial roadmap, either through a
specific community initiative, either through a specific company that
builds partly on that (say, a derivative from - or complement for -
the Mageia main release). And such a specific initiative may or may
not be of use to upgrade the next roadmap of the project (that's how
we can expect several teams contributions to integrate into the main
release anyway).


Note that it's not a matter of marketing versus developers or users
versus packagers here. It's a matter of who gives the direction and
coordinates. No team takes precedence over another, Council and Board
being here to articulate the whole thing, vetting proposals from here
and there.

Yes, teams and people making them are excellent (so we expect); yes,
teams proposals/works may be excellent. No, that won't prevent us to
say no to great work or great people, if it does not fit.


> What should we do? Whatever it takes! (According to our values)

Your sentence may just be equivocal - so, just to make sure... Mageia
values barely promote a "whatever it takes" attitude. ;-)


Anyway, I repeat here what I wrote above in other words:

 * first marketing effort to be here is _not_ defining what type(s) of
specific users we would target or package the product for; a product
that is not yet even built: "1. bake some cake you like; 2. present it
to others; 3. learn from that; 4. repeat";

 * first marketing effort to be is toward the contributors community
(development, packaging, design, translation, qa, doc, triage, users
return & feedback, communication, marketing, facilitators); first has
been the announcement, about one month ago; next has been the values
publication; next are the logo/identity ideas around that we expect to
focus, next are the mission, vision, roadmap docs, missions for each
team as soon as we setup collaboration platforms; that takes time,
attitude, determination, adjustments;

 * if this effort can not be properly accomplished with and toward
existing contributors, nothing else planned may ever make potential
contributors tick, even less end users; moreover, it would fail at its
most critical role: educating all contributors about marketing pieces
relevant to them and to the project;

 * we take the following approach:
   - we first design and release prototypes for ourselves, with high
enough expectations to go forward;
   - we try/find good experiments to understand if that matches other
people needs or expectations and how;
   - so we refine and deliver;
   - iterate.

We won't build the project identity and roadmap at once; it will
always be an iterative process that will consolidate. Our identity
won't be so much from what we planned it to be than from what we
deliver and how we do it, over time.

That doesn't prevent listening, analyzing and drafting things in
relation to users (and including them actively in the iteration
process), that just means that we have to spend a few months to build
and to learn about ourselves before we can only expect to
learn/project about others (such as target users we don't have a
single consistent clue about but disparate opinions on, see previous
discussions about targetting users).



Cheers,

Romain