[osol-mktg] Mascot Contest

[Sara Dornsife]

Carl,
There has been so little interest in this contest since I posted this 
message. I wonder if now isn't the right time to do it. I appreciate 
your input and your suggestion of two parts to the contest is good.
Thanks,
Sara


Carl Trusiak wrote:

> I believe it should be #1, a mascot should be selected by the 
> community!!! One of the criteria for submission acceptance must be a 
> trademark/copyright check. The contest could be broken into two areas, 
> concept and design.  That way, if someone has a good idea, they can 
> get recognized and someone wit good graphic skills could refine it and 
> still get recognized.
>
> Carl Trusiak, RobustaOS
> http://www.robustaos.com
>
> Sara Dornsife wrote:
>
>> Absolutely. I think that's a great idea.
>> Sara
>>
>>
>> Patrick Finch wrote:
>>
>>> 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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>>>>
>>>>   
>>>
>>>
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>>>  
>>>
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