[Mageia-marketing] It's time to think about Mageia 2

[Marcello Anni]

> 
> > 2011/6/13 Patricia Fraser <trish at thefrasers.org>:
> > >
> > > Tasks, however - there are always lots of those. Making the
> > > release public; encouraging people to become part of the
> > > community; starting discussions like the visual branding one;
> > > participating in the forward-thinking discussions over on Discuss
> > > and Devel - and as you say, listening, listening, listening.
> > 
> > Not to forget the practical tasks of a marketing dept.  like
> > preparing demos, and other things for events, creating marketing
> > stuff (fan articles), etc.
> > (you know I had to add that!)
> 
> 8-) There's always a parade somewhere needing to be rained on...
> yes...
> 
> 


ok, i will answer to (the most) of your replies by a single e-mail....

@ romain (first)

ok, i understand, but this way you're saying this is only a comunication team. 
In a few words:

* comunication->promote, comunicate about the project
* marketing-> attention to the users, rethinking of the project, long-term 
vision about the project and the products, target-oriented.

you're saying we will have a brainstorming session, that will bring a list of 
ideas and we must advocate them (personally) to implement them. This is not 
marketing, i'm not saying is wrong, but it's not marketing and this will 
prevent the project to have a long-term vision and a group of dedicated people 
that work on the whole project (see my proposals).

i will try to advocate my proposals personally but i can do it only in my 
spare time (that it's not much), a marketing-plan (updated often) supported by 
the council since its long-term vision to the action plan would have a 
stronger impact on the results...

@ romain (second)

>How is Skype going to address these? (proprietary technology, with
>debatable quality and core trust issues, notwithstanding its future
>now that it's been acquired)

this is one reason that explains why i would like a structured plan that will 
guarantee the goals of the project... how can we see "For people" when a lot 
of people use it and asks for it in the repos? what is the balance between 
"for people"-"open source"? a plan is thought for these reasons, and the 
action plan is needed to adapt the project to the long-term vision, if anyone 
will act by himself (and mabye opposite to others) the project will remain 
only another fork, whatever things you say....


@ wobo

there are things that are not motivated by technical reasons, but marketing 
reasons... it's quite difficult to advocate to a developer one thing he s not 
interested in... without considering that 10 marketing people should mean tons 
of e-mails to the developers to convince them to implement their features...

@ patricia

>When we first started the marketing team with Yorick, it seemed like
>we were trying to do the marketing plan ahead of the community
>development - telling them how to be, in effect - and the community
>(unsurprisingly) told Yorick (and by extension the rest of us) just
>exactly how they felt about *that*. 

and so why anyone told me the plan wasn't requested instead of letting me 
working on it?  


>Tasks, however - there are always lots of those. Making the release
>public; encouraging people to become part of the community; starting
>discussions like the visual branding one; participating in the
>forward-thinking discussions over on Discuss and Devel - and as you
>say, listening, listening, listening.

ok, but this is done by every linux project (even community-driven), why do 
you think our is the best one? because we're working on it? the fact is that 
we will remain only a one of the various fork, weaking the whole linux 
community furthermore....


My conclusions are: i'm really disappointed about the direction of marketing 
team, i've decided to leave mandriva proper because i've found more interest 
about it in mageia than in mandriva  ( i remember many lacks in MUG and in 
customer support, for istance), i will propose my ideas and i will try to 
advocate them, but now it's clear to me that the great changes of mageia are 
not other than words. in fact we're managed by a group of people (without 
power?) and developers that could implement the lacking features in mandriva 
instead of creating a new fork (has mandriva ever not allowed contributors to 
implement their favourite features?)  and spending all this huge energy (and 
time).


cheers,
Marcello