[osol-mktg] Mascot Contest

[Patrick Finch]

Hi,

I'd vote for #2 as I think that we'd be guaranteed a professional-looking mascot with fewer concerns around the legal aspects (which aren't entirely clear).

A question, if we went down path #2:

"Sun pays a bunch of artists to create mascots on our behalf based on guidelines created by the community."  
Could/should community members who have some credentials as artists be encouraged to tender for one of these contracts with Sun?  

regards

Patrick




----- Original Message -----
From: Tim Foster <Tim.Foster at Sun.COM>
Date: Wednesday, September 7, 2005 2:53 pm
Subject: Re: [osol-mktg] Mascot Contest

> Hey Sara & All.
> 
> On Tue, 2005-09-06 at 17:43, Sara Dornsife wrote:
> > Option 2 (aka Mascot Creation)
> 
> That's the one I'd be inclined to go for.
> 
> As regards mascots, given the choice, I'd actually be more inclined to
> /not/ have a mascot. Most of them I've seen in other projects tend to
> come across as either childish, or sinister - OpenSolaris is clearly
> neither !
> 
> If we had to have a mascot, I'd prefer to go for something that looks
> more professional (more along the lines of the thunderbird or firefox
> icons)
> 
> I'd rather see a lot more brand-imagery, posters, stickers and that 
> sortof thing to help capture developer mind-share, rather than cartoon
> characters, but I think there may be other more important stuff to 
> lookat first.
> 
> (and maybe I'm being a killjoy here, I don't know - sorry :-)
> 
> > I have a few questions.
> > Which way would you like to go?
> 
> Yep, so I'd go for option 2, I think.
> 
> > Is now the time to do this?
> 
> Well, as I mentioned before, there's a wodge of marketing stuff I'd 
> liketo help with, before spending our time on things like mascots (or
> posters, stickers, etc.) But always, we should be focusing on
> developers, right ?
> 
> 
> Stuff like :  (and sorry for straying wildly off-topic here - probably
> worth changing the subject line if you feel like replying to this
> stuff!)
> 
> * Elevator pitches
>   - how to get people excited enough to look at OpenSolaris-based
>     distros. Some of us probably have this in our heads already, but
>     it'd be nice to have it written down somewhere too.
> 
> * Code information/tutorials
>   - Yeah we've got blogs already and the wicked fast code browser,
>     but how do I persuade people to develop drivers/functionality
>     for OpenSolaris, as well as, or opposed to, other free OSes.
>     How do we teach new folks (like me!) about the code, apart
>     from just telling them to dive in - the code comments
>     are excellent, but perhaps there's more we can do ?
> 
> * Newbie/Reviewer-assistance
>   - Is there a single location where folks looking at
>     OpenSolaris distros for the first time can get help, so we could
>     hopefully make sure the reviewer gets to concentrate on
>     the neat features (as opposed to, say, spending the entire
>     review complaining about our installer... ) Apart from the 
> dynamic     forums & mailing lists, do we have anything static that 
> people     can look at ? Perhaps the answer is along the lines of
>     "Google is your friend" - it'd be nice if we could have something
>     official.
> 
> * Newsletters ?
>   - Again, we've got the blogs - and I see Dan Price writing 
> excellent     posts summarising the new features being put into the
>     Solaris Express builds, but perhaps there's a case to be made for
>     a more structured monthly newsletter targeted at developers :
>     perhaps even constructed from blog entries, to help folks explore
>     the code a bit.
> 
>     The articles you see on java.net or netbeans.org are excellent in
>     this respect. I wonder could we start to write material like this
>     as well ? ( check out http://today.java.net/pub/q/articles )
>  
> My point is, if we're marketing to developers, we should be asking 
> whatsort of marketing information we need to be producing to help 
> open the
> door a bit more to these guys.
> 
> Hope this helps,
> 
> 	cheers,
>                	tim
> 
> -- 
> Tim Foster - Tools Engineer, Software Globalisation, Sun 
> Microsystems, Inc.
> Project Lead, Open Language Tools https://open-language-
> tools.dev.java.net/http://blogs.sun.com/timf         
> http://www.netsoc.ucd.ie/~timf
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> opensolaris-mktg mailing list
> opensolaris-mktg at opensolaris.org
> 

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