[ug-discuss] OpenSolaris User Group Growth

[John J McLaughlin]

 > I wanted to start a discussion about things Sun could do to help grow 
the UG Community

What can Sun do to help the user group grow? Here are a few of my ideas:

- Leverage technology: to make skilled Subject Matter Expects available 
as speakers via SunBTV
    - Recently  I attended a Sun marketing session on the topic of 
LDoms. It was delivered via SunBTV to the Sun office in Atlanta (and others)
    - That is a great way to make speakers available at a reasonable cost
    - Timezone coordination is needed to make it work.
    - Videos of sessions can be made available via OpenSolaris.org to 
members
    - Local meetings can leverage the content

- Can we get John Gage, Greg Papadopoulos, Hal Stern, Ingrid Van den 
Hoogen to be the OpenSolaris User Group advocates?
    - Executive level sponsorship could make a big difference

- Fund a unique, valuable, professional user group publication
    - that's where teaming with SNI (publishers of "System News for Sun 
Users") could be of value
    - members should be encouraged to provide papers and other content 
for the user group publication and the web site

- Make the OSUG attractive to developers
    - developers choose their target platforms. If developers choose 
Linux or Windows, there's no opportunity for OpenSolaris
    - people choose apps --> apps decide platforms --> good apps drive 
volume --> developers  choose volume platforms to create new apps

- Make the OSUG attractive to application vendors (free or commercial)
    - if people find the right apps easily on Solaris, then they have a 
reason to use Solaris and care about OpenSolaris
    - Sun has a whole market development organization to support ISVs 
that could with the OpenSolaris community

- Leverage Free and Open Source s/w
    - blastwave.org is an amazing resource for Sun and the OpenSolaris 
community
    - we should be constantly promoting some of the gems in that collection

- Sun Communications
    - Can we get Sun to promote OpenSolaris.org @sun.com and in other 
Sun e-communications

- OpenSolaris.org website needs help
    - Sun's web team have done a ton of work to develop sun.com
    - Can they help improve opensolaris.org?
       e.g. Sun has a couple of "front pages" features to drive people 
into the web site/ Today, those are
          "Triple your capacity" (a product promotion)
          "Revolutionary Technology" (Dr. Marc Trembly article)
           "Get Exciting New Promotions Now" (well, it is Q4)

- Many people at Sun find can/will only do things in their job description
    - field marketing people must be goaled to create and support local 
user groups work
    - same with sales management
    - Sun field sales and marketing can
       - connect OpenSolaris chapters with the users in their geo
       - provide resources (such as meeting locations)
       - communicate local user group events on a regular basis

- Leverage the Partner community
    - most of Sun's business is conducted via Partners (resellers)
    - can Sun help motivate the Partner community to support local chapters
    - how can one chapter work with multiple Partners? Easy! each 
meeting can be sponsored by a different Partner
    - e.g. change the Partner "gtm" program to provide funding to 
support local OpenSolaris chapters

- Joint Press Releases
    - Sun and OpenSolaris.org should do joint press releases once per 
month.
    - There should  be a monthly deadline for all the local chapters to 
post
       (a) a summary of their last meeting
       (b) agenda for the next
    - that material and other news from the board and marketing 
community would make up the press release

- Sun and the OpenSolaris User group should support regular OpenSolaris 
conference in the US
    - e.g. spring in California and fall in New England
    - membership required
    - members are encouraged to present papers
    (in the early 90's, the Sun User Group (SuG) could draw 10k to San Jose)
    - other than JavaOne, Sun has not been successful at making a 
conference work. I think that's because they lack the grass root support
    - It could be called OpenSolarisOne  :-)
     - how about teaming with the SDN Techdays people
        http://developers.sun.com/events/techdays/locations.jsp
    - Theses conference should be made attractive to developers, 
administrators, Partners and IT management

- Sun marketing pays a lot of attention to finding new customers. How 
can the OpenSolaris User Group help?
    - E.g. develop and promote material to help convert people to 
OpenSolaris from Windows and Linux - presentations, white papers, demos etc.

-johnj

Jim Grisanzio wrote:
> hey ...
>
> I wanted to start a discussion about things Sun could do to help grow 
> the UG Community. There are about 50 OpenSolaris User Groups right now,
> http://opensolaris.org/os/community/os_user_groups/osug-leaders/ so 
> congratulations for a job well done over these first two years! Now 
> how do we get to 75? 100? 150? There is a growing interest at Sun to 
> help out, which is excellent.
>
> ....
> All ideas welcome ...
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jim


-- 
John J. McLaughlin, Editor-in-Chief/CTO, System News Inc. Publishers of
  "SunFlash" (http://sunflash.sun.com)
  "System News for Sun Users" and "System News for Sun iForce Partners"
flash at systemnews.com +1 (954) 234 8990  http://sun.systemnews.com
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