[advocacy-discuss] Postconference meditations

[Damian Wojslaw]

Laurent Blume pisze:

[cut]
>   - sponsors (and well, I think the kickstart is Sun's responsability)
> on how to interact with very small entities who can't give an estimate
> of the ROI just yet, since it's still starting.
>   
While Sun is just too obvious sponsor for such thing, I believe that one 
of their main goals is to put less money in marketing. :) We do the 
marketing for them, and I belive we get to the best target ever - 
administrators and users. But also we must stop thinking that since this 
is OpenSolaris, then Sun *must* be involved. No one goes to Linus for 
sponsorship, even though local Linux user groups are more then plenty. :)
 
> I do hope a document to help put that into place will be established. It
> also would be nice if Sun got a central point of commnuication for such
> sponsorships, that would then contact the right person in a given
> country or area. It's not obvious how to deal with it on a case by case
> basis. Marketing people in each country don't always have information
> about dealing with the OpenSolaris Project members outside Sun.
>
> Laurent
>   
    This is what I was talking about a few weeks ago. A hub for 
connecting organizers and volunteering sponsors (not only Sun). On the 
other hand you are right, ROI of our events is diffiult to measure. You 
can't say: after three conferences we will have four big contracts. You 
rather target for having more and more people coming to irc channel, 
reading up docs, understanding what OpenSolaris is and trying it out.
 
A point I'd add to this is: know your target. Are dealing with admins of 
big national scale ISPs or small local wans. Their needs and 
understanding of issues is different. But most local event organisers 
know their collequies well enough to prepare talks just for them.

Regards

-- 
Damian Wojslaw
http://pl.opensolaris.org/ | SCA OS0073
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