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

[Jim Grisanzio]

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.



> 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?

Jim