[Mageia-marketing] what are the (future) plans of the Mageia marketing team

[Romain d'Alverny]

Hi there,

thanks for your message! And Happy New Year, to you and everyone here!

On Thu, Dec 23, 2010 at 15:16, suikerstroop <suikerstroop at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am new to the Mageia Marketing. Can some one give me short information
> about the structure, future plans of the Mageia Marketing team.
> Who are the Mageia Marketing project leaders. How can I get in touch with
> them? What is global situation of the Mageia Marketing team.
> Are there other dutch speaking people involved in the Mageia Marketing team.

I'll let the other members of the team complete.

The whole Mageia thing is still in the making. From past September, we
basically set up:
 - the project & the association
 - the code of conduct - http://mageia.org/en/about/code-of-conduct/
 - a set of values - http://mageia.org/en/about/values/ (coordinated
by the marketing team)
 - the teams and how we're going to work together -
http://mageia.org/wiki/doku.php?id=org
 - the logo - http://blog.mageia.org/?p=289
 - lots of discussions - (-discuss and -dev mostly for now)
https://mageia.org/mailman/
 - a first roadmap to release a first test-drive ISO -
http://mageia.org/wiki/doku.php?id=roadmap
 - a set of policies - http://mageia.org/wiki/doku.php?id=policies
 - the build system

Among discussions has been especially one about "users targetting", on
-discuss and with the Marketing team. This thread for instance
(pointing to one of my answers, which still stands):
https://mageia.org/pipermail/mageia-discuss/20101018/002460.html

About the roadmap, we've slipped out of the initial schedule (that was
especially to release our first alpha ISO in December). We're now
targetting end of January for that first alpha release. Teams are
still building themselves, especially those that will technically
contribute to the distribution.

What we can improve right now is, more interaction/integration of the
marketing/comm' teams with the other teams of the project. At this
time, what is on the marketing/comm team plan would be:
 * making sure everyone is on par
 * vision/mission docs (there were drafts produced about this, any status?)
 * working on the first alpha release process (that is targetted to a
very specific, small set of people)
 * working on the next unstable release
 * preparing the stable release (around April), after the first alpha
(that is, understanding what it will be, and how it can be released,
and for who, for what purpose)
 * preparing a plan for further releases, later (with more specific
user targets)

Moreover, that's a bit out of the topic, but I wonder how we may
integrate more marketing/communication/artwork/web teams together?
(not make a single one, but have people gather more among those)

> How can I donate money?

http://www.mageia.org/en/donate/

> How and where can I meet Mageia Marketing people in real life and not just
> the internet. Does the Mageia marketing team intend not only visit the
> FOSDEM in Brussels in February 2011, but also other kind of events.

Some Mageia founders (me included) and contributors will attend FOSDEM
(see http://mageia.org/wiki/doku.php?id=events:fosdem2011) and expect
to attend some other events; see
http://mageia.org/wiki/doku.php?id=roadmap (will be updated
regularly). What other kind of events do you think of, for instance?

> Does Mageia try to reach a broader user base than only (hardcore) nerds?

What makes you think of that? and what is your definition of
(hardcode) nerds? :-)

More seriously, Mageia as a project welcomes contributors from various
origins, including hardcore nerds (whatever discipline they are from).
And it aims at various types of users. But.

But first, the project focus is on _contributors_, as this is what
will make the project sustainable or not at first. This is the stage
we are in at this time, while we are building our first release
process, as well as the whole project, at large. "Contributors" is a
small word for a large definition; see our teams on
http://mageia.org/wiki/ .

Second, the project focus will shift on use cases we can target with
our base distribution, and what projects can derive from that. The
goal is not to make yet another classic Linux distribution. So while
it may produce a pretty decent Linux distribution for desktop/server
use, it may as well produce something else from that.

> Are there plans to open meeting points and demonstration rooms for showing
> people the Mageia-distribution.

We don't have the means to do that but local initiatives are welcome.

> Are there plans to have a Mageia CDEES such as Ubuntu have?

CDEES?

> What are the planned release cycle of Mageia? How long will
> Mageia be supported by updates?

Nothing discussed/decided about this yet. I guess it will have to wait
about the technical releases so that we can discuss/decide about this
for the first stable release (expected around April).

Cheers!

Romain