[opensolaris-summit] Advocacy Panel Discussion: An Idea forDiscussion

[Jim Grisanzio]

Stewart, David C wrote:
> +1 on the panel concept
>
> Are you thinking it would be more about how to attract the next 100,000
> users?  Or is it how we evolve the current structure to scale up to
> handle the next 100,000?  I got the feeling from your description it was
> more about the latter, but the former seems more urgent.
>   

Both. There are many tens of thousands of people who don't even know we 
exist, and we have tens of thousands who are already here but are not 
necessarily active.

I just grabbed 100K out of the air. I have no clue what a right number 
would be, but my intention is to emphasize scale -- which is something 
we really haven't done thus far and need to figure out from an advocacy 
perspective. We will have new tools -- the distro, the package 
repository, etc -- that will enable us to engage very large numbers of 
people who we've never met. So how we use those new tools to build a 
community that sticks around and contributes back is the key question to 
address. We already have community development operations under way, but 
we are adding new stuff that is quite different, and that will require 
new thinking and new engagement models. Part of this is involves 
infrastructure constraints and opportunities and part of it is just 
getting existing people talking to new people at multiple levels and 
working those new guys into the community. Also, keep in mind that we 
will have two sites to work with going forward -- .com and .org. We'll 
have to figure out who plays where and with what and under what rules. I 
don't have very many answers here, but these are some obvious issues we 
ought to talk about. :)

Jim

-- 
http://blogs.sun.com/jimgris/