[osol-mktg] Re: [ug-discuss] Community Consolidation -- Marketing & UGs

[Kaiwai Gardiner]

On 06/04/07, Jim Grisanzio <Jim.Grisanzio at sun.com> wrote:
>
>
> Kaiwai Gardiner wrote On 04/05/07 09:25,:
>
> > Ultimately, however, the goals of the two organizations are different;
> > on one side you have users who simply want to communicate their
> > pleasure/displeasure/concern and so forth with OpenSolaris and want to
> > have nothing to do with the marketing side of the equation.
>
> Hello, Kaiwai ...
>
> I would argue that "community" marketing is very much the process of
> communicating "pleasure/displeasure/concern," etc. Community marketing
> (for lack of a better term, I guess) is based on open conversations and
> direct engagement, whereas corporate marketing has been traditionally
> based largely on delivering messages into markets from the outside with
> very little participation involved. The marketing community on
> OpenSolaris is not about delivering messages; it's about creating a
> community effort based on open participation in community issues to
> spread the word about OpenSolaris. In this discussion, I've been
> advocating dropping the word "marketing" because it's obvious that it
> gets in the way. I also see UGs as being directly related since they
> produce content, they evangelize OpenSolaris, they talk openly on lists,
> they hold meetings, etc. They, quite literally, create something from
> nothing and they do it largely based on their own initiatives.


Ah, if it is done that way, then sure; the way I saw 'user groups' was along
the lines of 'technical support' discussion list; as long as the marketing
list doesn't end up getting unindated by requests for technical support, it
should be all good.

The community could be called 'non-Technical' which embraced a general
discussion list, marketing discussion and technical support discussion.

> The problem is pretty much, where doesn't marketing sit in the grand
> > scheme of things? in regards to Sun, for example, if Sun does marketing,
> > what is the OpenSolaris marketing for? if Sun's marketing the
> > 'subscription and support packages' what is our aim?
>
> Sun has formal marketing programs for products and services and
> occasionally pitches in to help promote OpenSolaris. Sun spends millions
> on the effort, too, with all sorts of global programs. However, Sun does
> not do a lot of grass-roots activities around OpenSolaris. That's just
> not what big companies do for the most part. Sun, however, has given us
> a site, some code, and some tools and from that we can create our own
> stuff. That's what I'm trying to say. Forget Sun in this conversation
> and forget the word "marketing." Let's just talk about how the
> OpenSolaris /community/ gets the word out about the OpenSolaris and how
> we as a community engage each other. We go to conferences. We talk on
> lists. We design t-shirts. We build distros. We hack code. We form user
> groups. We do press interviews. Etc. How do we take all those activities
> and quantify them a bit more? How do we engage new people? How do we
> make it easier for people to get involved?


So the correct way of seeing it would be that Sun marketing is a member of
the marketing community where by they contribute to the marketing of
OpenSolaris as well as marketing their own services and products.

As for grass root 'activities' the problem with leaving up to a large
business is this; its like leaving something up to a government department
to manage - and we all know successful they are at doing something :-)

Getting back to a grass roots, my pet project will be on the hardware
support documentation for first time installers then I'll worry about other
things later :-)

Matthew
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