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

[Bruno F. Souza]

On 04/04/2007, at 10:48, Jim Grisanzio wrote:

>
>
> 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.
>
>

There are a few separated concepts here:

- User Groups: each UG is a separated community! Because of that, the  
UG community should be targeted for helping people starting UGs and  
maintaining UGs, because the UGs themselves are not interesting to  
the larger community. What they do (and they community they serve) is  
what a developer will care about, not the discussion on how to run  
the UG. This is something just a few will care about. Also, the only  
way to UGs to be efficient on the long run is if they are  
independently run by motivated people, and that they can form their  
own communities. It is important that they can be independent, that  
they don't depend on a single company, because it is clear that Sun  
cannot support all UGs around the world, so, if they depend on Sun,  
most of them will be disappointed at some point. We can debate if by  
being a OpenSolaris UG this ties them to Sun or not, that's another  
issue that I won't go in right now. But the independence factor is  
important: UGs are strong and effective when they are long lived.  
They don't get to be long lived if they aren't independent. Because  
of that, the UG community focus should be to support UGs, not support  
OpenSolaris adoption (there is a subtle but important difference here).

- "Evangelism": this is a larger them UGs concept. This involves a  
lot of aspects, from Sun adoption efforts to community generated  
content, to UGs doing technical talks, etc. Evangelism is not a  
community either, and as UGs, most developers are not interested in  
Evangelism per si: they care for the results (the talks, the  
articles, the events). So, evangelism is one of the efforts UGs  
(among others) can do to build a community. UGs do that to expand  
their local communities and to serve the needs of local developers.  
Sun does this to create its own community, and to serve the needs of  
it. Also, keep in mind that one of the main reasons UGs are  
successful is that they provide the local information (in the local  
language, targeted for local needs), that Sun is usually not able to  
provide, so, these evangelism are not necessarily a joint effort:  
more likely then not, they are parallel activities with similar  
objectives

- Marketing: I'll not try to define marketing here, but from what I  
see, this is really not a community either... IMHO, these are efforts  
to direct some existing, always limited, budget to create a community  
(of users, or buyers, of fans) around a product. In the open source  
arena, marketing can do a tiered approach, that is instead of  
investing to reach the end user, invest in empowering the community,  
that will then reach the end user. Marketing can have great results  
in fuelling the UGs, and provide evangelism material, content and  
support. If marketing will also focus on the end developer, that is  
fine too, but it is my opinion that nothing beats in terms of  
investment/results investing in building a strong, independent  
community. Now, to be fair, UGs take a long time to be effective, so,  
there needs to be a marketing effort that is independent from UGs  
support right now.

And, in my experience users will come to a "learn OpenSolaris" site,  
and find UGs in their area they are interested in joining. But most  
developers don't care about UGs issues like starting a UG, organizing  
events and technical meetings, etc. Most developers also don't care  
to write articles, or to create marketing or evangelism material.

So, with all of that, a few things that I imagine:

- although lots of the people are the same, I expect that most of the  
discussions are separated, so, we should expect to have separated  
mailing lists for example.

- all the initiatives done will need to have its own "developer  
focused" area, that is easy to see on the site, because the  
discussions happening inside these communities are not of interest to  
most developers, just the results. So, developers will want to know  
where there is a forum they can discuss OpenSolaris in Chinese or  
where can they get a Getting Started article. But they will not care  
about discussing how to start a Chinese-speaking UG that can host the  
forum, nor the discussions on who should write and how to promote the  
Getting started article.

I think we can have a "single" community, but that focus on several  
objectives. But my main worry is that because the Marketing community  
objectives are more focused on promoting OpenSolaris, I would not  
want that we forget that the UG community focus is to promote  
stronger UGs, not really to promote the adoption of OpenSolaris (to  
promote is the focus of the UGs themselves, not the UG Community).  
So, for me, the relationship between the two communities are on the  
results and the activities, not on the building or organization of  
the communities themselves...

Tks,
Bruno.
______________________________________________________________________
Bruno Peres Ferreira de Souza                         Brazil's JavaMan
http://www.javaman.com.br                      bruno at javaman.com.br
         if I fail, if I succeed, at least I live as I believe