[advocacy-discuss] Postconference meditations

[Laurent Blume]

Damian Wojslaw a écrit :
> 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. :)

Oh, I'm not saying they should be the only one, or give thousands of
€€€! But they should lead by example, until UGs can fly by themselves..
After all, they've consistently shown who owns the OpenSolaris
trademark, so it's also in their own interest that it becomes known
among the industry.

Beside, sponsoring is not only about money. It's also, as has been done,
helping in providing venue, speakers, swag, and announcing the event to
customers.

>     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.

AFAICT, this is starting to work. I see more and more references to
OpenSolaris in topics not specifically speaking about it. Though sadly,
it always means «OpenSolaris 2008.05», and not «the OpenSolaris project».
At least, it should mean that companies will be more and more interested
in putting their logos on the side of the OpenSolaris UGs'.

> 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.

Agreed, though there is usually enough space to talk about more general
technology that applies to everybody (ZFS, SMF, for example).
I think conferences per se should always try to reach nationwide (for
European-size countries), and try to keep a good part of it in English
to reach further.
But you said that already :-)

Laurent

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