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

[Jim Grisanzio]

Richard L. Hamilton wrote On 04/04/07 13:58,:
> Does marketing mostly represent the opensolaris.org community
> (and is this explicit somewhere, i.e. does something in the community structure 
> have some real control over marketing), 


Yes. Open, community-based marketing, not Sun corporate or product 
marketing. That's my perspective.

The current Marketing Community actually grew out of the PR-press list I 
started during the pilot program. This pre-dates marketing involvement 
in OpenSolaris, and there was no UG community or even any discussion of 
UGs at that time. Back then it was simply a list where the pilot 
community could discuss PR/marketing/blogging issues without having to 
clog up the main technical lists. I felt it was important at the time 
since we were under attack so much before we launched, we couldn't say 
much publically due to the NDA, and we needed a forum to discuss the 
various issues and how/if to respond. We also used it to start blogging 
about what we could talk about.

Then when we launched, we re-named that list to the generic "marketing" 
and created a community space around it since Sun marketing teams were 
then forming to help support OpenSolaris and that would be their space 
to work and build a marketing community. Then almost immediately after 
we launched, the Sun marketing director expressed an interest to me in 
starting user groups and in funding some programs. I didn't have any 
cash, so it would have to come from marketing. The idea quite literally 
came from marketing, actually, and then Eric, Sara, Laura, and I created 
the User Group Community as a result. We didn't have a lot of cash, so 
we decided to form a community, rather than creating a Sun "program" 
which no one seemed to want anyway. So, it became individual user 
groups, all housed within the UG community, which itself lived within 
the meta OpenSolaris community and was supported, in part, by the 
marketing community, which, of course was already established and 
separate from the UG community. Very confusing. And to top it off, the 
site isn't really structured for how we've build the UG community. Each 
group has a page and a list and there are about 40 or so leaders as a 
result. It's a mess. And a mess primarily because it's been pretty 
successful, which, of course, is great.

So, the marketing and UG communities have always been pretty much tied 
at most times. Sun marketing people have provided resources to various 
groups at times (when they had resources to offer), and when Sun 
participates in conferences (Tech Days, Open Source events, etc), it's 
generally the marketing people interacting with the various user groups. 
And although Teresa, Eric, Linda, and I are not in marketing 
specifically, we've been involved all along as well and mix rather 
freely at times with our marketing colleagues at events such as 
conferences.


> or does it mostly represent Sun's
> interests in the community?  


I'm not sure how Sun expresses it's interest in the community, to be 
honest. Perhaps you mean Solaris product marketing?


> If the former, the restructuring makes sense;
> if the latter, I think it gives the _appearance_ of reducing the user groups
> to a mere appendage of Sun.  I don't think that's the _intent_, but stupid
> conspiracy theories have been started on far less.


Yah, I think we're safe from the conspiracy types on this. And here's 
why I say that: I don't have any new money or control to offer in my 
proposal. I'm only suggesting that we clean up the structure and 
mandates of both communities and focus what little resources we all 
have. I'm expecting the new OGB to be talking a hard look at all the 
OpenSolaris communities and projects, and I can't help but see some ways 
to consolidate here.

If we do this, I think it will take some time, especially with the 
website team to figure out the structure.

Jim