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

[Jim Grisanzio]

Alan DuBoff wrote:
> On Tuesday 03 April 2007 11:43 pm, Jim Grisanzio wrote:
>> Sometimes consolidation can strengthen both sides.
> 
> Sure, and other times it drives them apart.
> 
>> Also, I'm not talking about Sun corporate marketing here. Sure, if Sun
>> marketing people want to get involved in the community, they are more
>> than welcome -- but they have to earn their way just like everyone else.
> 
> I hope you drop the marketing label, as a name. I don't think it represents 
> what a community is, and something like community-reachout, or similar might 
> be a better way to refer to that.


Yep. Agree. I've been up front all along that any potential merger of 
these two communities needs to be done under a new name and one that 
represents community input and agreement.


> I see the community doing this in a different capacicty, where local members 
> of the community would host booths at open source conferences.


Yes, I totally agree. Some of us have been pushing for that all along, 
too, and in some cases it's worked (but in most cases it's Sun running 
the various conference activities). All I'm suggesting here is that we 
have one space where we -- as a community -- can plan these things, 
share resources, and leverage each other's activities. It's already 
happening. You see that there have been open calls for papers for 
JavaOne and the OpenSolaris conference in Germany. This is a good trend 
and we can do more.

Also, the UG community has really grown and been successful. If you 
follow some of individual lists, it's really cool to see individual 
communities growing in China and India and Russia, etc. The list 
conversation activity for UGs has grown sharply in the last 6 months. 
I'd like to be able to fan those flames and offer a more focused effort. 
Basically, to give the effort a higher platform and call more attention 
to it.



>> Some do, and some do not -- just like other parts of the organization
>> internally. In a merger, however, I'm hoping that interest will be great
>> enough to grow a true OpenSolaris /community/ marketing/user effort.
>> Sara, Patrick, Laura, and others have been involved all along, but we as
>> a community need to promote OpenSolaris ourselves much more and not
>> necessarily depend on expensive Sun programs to do so.
> 
> Sure, in some ways. But please understand that things done from Sun will be 
> seen with a certain Sun perspective. As an example, a community type grass 
> roots movement would be "Windows Refund Day". I know that many might say 
> that's corny, but it was an excellent grass roots event that was orchestrated 
> and executed by the community.


I would hope that the OpenSolaris community would start to assert it's 
own grass-roots activities. That's the whole point here. I agree.


> For other similar events, google "burn all gifs", or "Free Dmitry Sklyarov", 
> or DeCSS...those were all grass roots movements (albeit the Dmitry cause was 
> fueled in part by the EFF).
> 
> There's other ways that out community can help, such as holding BOFs at 
> conferences, getting together with other community members, helping people to 
> get Solaris installed, configured in the best setup for them, etc...I think 
> for the most part, many of the community enjoy this aspect of getting 
> together and networking with other OpenSolaris folks.


Agree. We just did an installfest here in Tokyo:
http://blogs.sun.com/jimgris/entry/opensolaris_installfest_pics
And we gave out about 50 Starter Kits and we also participated in an 
Open Source Conference in Tokyo a few weeks ago as well to launch the 
Japan OpenSolaris User Group:
http://blogs.sun.com/jimgris/entry/tokyo_open_source_conference_opensolaris

We need to get better at posting pics and presentations, though, so 
everyone knows what's going on.



>> But what Sun can't do is
>> the massively distributed grass-roots activities, and that's where the
>> community comes in. That's what we as a community have not fully
>> explored since we launched. I don't have answer here, but that's the
>> direction of my thinking.
> 
> It takes motivated people also, that stuff doesn't grow on trees.

Indeed. :)


>> Yes, we need to re-name the new (potentially combined) community and it
>> can't be marketing. There's nothing wrong with the word "marketing" per
>> say, but it connotes Sun corporate control and money, and that's most
>> certainly not what I'm after and it's not what any of the Sun
>> OpenSolaris marketing people want either. So, to avoid the confusion, we
>> ought to consider a new name that we all agree on.
> 
> We're certainly in agreement, but I'm not sure what to call it. I see it as a 
> reach-out type program, maybe someone can think of a better word that has 
> better meaning.


Yah, I have no clue what to call it either.

See you at J1 ....

Jim