Re: Inquiry - General marketing questions from a student of international business
by Alex
I will respond to some questions, as most of them were answered by the
great post by Tejas. and BTW, no offense taken--direct questions are
the best!
On 3/23/06, Patrick Windt <paddy.windt(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> I just feel fascinated by the task of marketeers in the Fedora community.
> Although you are not a commercial distribution, I should believe that even
> the marketing department has some goals to obtain? For example; get review
> in 5 magazines a month, or get so many registered fedora users, or so many
> downloads....
Nope, we do not have any set goals, and we do not have a structure to
enforce them. Whatever the community does, is great, and a good thing
is that there are thousands of people out there who each contribute
whatever little resources they can spare, and together we achieve the
impact you see.
> Finally, is the marketing "department" of the fedora community in contact
> with the creators/developers?
Yes, by all means. As we are not a commercial organization, but a
group of volunteers, many of us "moonlight" as developers or vice
versa. We have email lists to which anyone can subscribe, such as
fedora-marketing list, and on these lists everyone can submit their
input.
We also have a wiki, on which our projects and sub-projects keep their
information for the whole world to review and comment on.
This is how we ensure that information flows freely between the
projects within Fedora, as well as between the project itself and the
rest of the world :)
Now if I may ask you a question--in what project are you going to use
the information about Fedora? Is there any way you might be interested
in contributing?
Thank you,
Alex
> On 3/23/06, Alex Maier <lxmaier(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> > Partick,
> >
> > Please visit http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing/ for
> some
> > background information.
> >
> > Fedora is not a commercial distribution, so we do not really have a
> > corporate strategy behind all our actions. Rather, we try to draw
> > attention to our projects and recruit more contributors.
> >
> > I have forwarded your request to fedora-marketing-list, and the folks
> > there shall be in touch with you shortly with all sorts of in-depth
> > comments.
> >
> > I really do not feel like I am the only person who konws all the truth
> > about Fedora Marketin, and this is why I asked them to help me out :)
> >
> > If you have any more questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch
> > with me again--I will try to help as much as I can.
> >
> > Thank you,
> > Alex
> >
> > On 3/20/06, Patrick Windt <paddy.windt(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Dear mrs. Maier,
> > >
> > > So if I get this right, seeing that you are indeed head of marketing,
> the
> > > fedora marketing team focusses their attention on promotion. Is Fedora
> Core
> > > not adapted to fit the needs of it's members, by lets say a broad
> survey, or
> > > is it estimated what the target audience wants?
> > >
> > > Does the fedora marketing team have any firm strategic or operational
> > > targets to obtain?
> > >
> > > I'm mostly interested in fedora's marketing strategy since it is very
> much
> > > different from a regular company. It is indeed non profitable and you do
> not
> > > have a tangible item.
> > >
> > > Friendly greetings,
> > >
> > > Patrick
> > >
> > >
> > > On 3/20/06, Alex Maier < lxmaier(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Dear Patrick,
> > > >
> > > > Thank you very much for your inquiry. I lead the Ambassadors project,
> > > > and this is what I can speak for :)
> > > >
> > > > The Ambassadors project is a grass-roots initiative mostly centered
> > > > around "getting the word out" to the people outside the Fedora project
> > > > and also helping Fedora Project communicate with Fedora and Linux
> > > > community.
> > > >
> > > > If you have any more questions, please feel free to get in touch with
> > > > me or the entire Steering Committee (Famsco) for more help.
> > > >
> > > > Thank you very much for your interest in Fedora,
> > > > Alex
> > > >
> > > > On 3/18/06, Patrick Windt <paddy.windt(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > Dear mrs. Maier,
> > > > >
> > > > > As an international marketing student, I was wondering in what
> aspects
> > > the
> > > > > marketing department of "fedora" is integrated in the final product
> > > release.
> > > > > Or is the marketing of fedora solely based on "getting the word out"
> ?
> > > > >
> > > > > I would love to get some insight in the marketing plan of Fedora...
> > > > >
> > > > > --
> > > > > Kind regards,
> > > > >
> > > > > Patrick Windt
> > > > > paddy.windt(a)gmail.com
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > Check out the new content on Fedora Project page!
> http://fedoraproject.org
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > >
> > > Kind regards,
> > >
> > > Patrick Windt
> > > paddy.windt(a)gmail.com
> >
> >
> > --
> > Check out the new content on Fedora Project page! http://fedoraproject.org
> >
>
>
>
> --
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Patrick Windt
> paddy.windt(a)gmail.com
--
Check out the new content on Fedora Project page! http://fedoraproject.org
18 years, 1 month
Fwd: Inquiry - General marketing questions from a student of international business
by Alex
Hey folks,
I have received this inquiry and tried to respond to it as good as I
could--mind helping me out a bit?
Thanks,
a
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Patrick Windt <paddy.windt(a)gmail.com>
Date: Mar 20, 2006 2:21 AM
Subject: Re: Inquiry - General marketing questions from a student of
international business
To: Alex Maier <lxmaier(a)gmail.com>
Dear mrs. Maier,
So if I get this right, seeing that you are indeed head of marketing,
the fedora marketing team focusses their attention on promotion. Is
Fedora Core not adapted to fit the needs of it's members, by lets say
a broad survey, or is it estimated what the target audience wants?
Does the fedora marketing team have any firm strategic or operational
targets to obtain?
I'm mostly interested in fedora's marketing strategy since it is very
much different from a regular company. It is indeed non profitable and
you do not have a tangible item.
Friendly greetings,
Patrick
On 3/20/06, Alex Maier <lxmaier(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Patrick,
>
> Thank you very much for your inquiry. I lead the Ambassadors project,
> and this is what I can speak for :)
>
> The Ambassadors project is a grass-roots initiative mostly centered
> around "getting the word out" to the people outside the Fedora project
> and also helping Fedora Project communicate with Fedora and Linux
> community.
>
> If you have any more questions, please feel free to get in touch with
> me or the entire Steering Committee (Famsco) for more help.
>
> Thank you very much for your interest in Fedora,
> Alex
>
> On 3/18/06, Patrick Windt <paddy.windt(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> > Dear mrs. Maier,
> >
> > As an international marketing student, I was wondering in what aspects the
> > marketing department of "fedora" is integrated in the final product release.
> > Or is the marketing of fedora solely based on "getting the word out" ?
> >
> > I would love to get some insight in the marketing plan of Fedora...
> >
> > --
> > Kind regards,
> >
> > Patrick Windt
> > paddy.windt(a)gmail.com
>
>
> --
> Check out the new content on Fedora Project page! http://fedoraproject.org
>
--
Kind regards,
Patrick Windt
paddy.windt(a)gmail.com
--
Check out the new content on Fedora Project page! http://fedoraproject.org
18 years, 1 month
a new look to Red Hat's Fedora pages
by Max Spevack
Hi all,
I wanted to take a second to point out some of the recent changes that
have been made to the Fedora pages that are a part of www.redhat.com,
coinciding with the release of fc5.
If you take a look, you'll see that we are running a promo on the
www.redhat.com homepage that announces the release of fc5, and that
clicking through it will drive you to www.redhat.com/fedora which has also
taken on a new look. The fc5 release is a big deal around here, and we're
treating it as such.
If you remember the old page that used to be there, you will remember that
it was fairly devoid of information, and it did not make it particularly
easy for the user to make it over to either fedora.redhat.com or to
fedoraproject.org
That has all changed -- we have a bunch of direct links into
fedoraproject.org that make it very clear (I hope) what the current
version of Fedora is, how to download it, and other useful information,
while playing well with the look and feel of Red Hat's other "top level"
pages.
I'd be interested to hear your thoughts and reactions. Let me know what
you think, and whether or not you thing the new www.redhat.com/fedora does
a good job of providing a window into the heart of the Fedora Project.
--
Max Spevack <mspevack{at}redhat.com> gpg key: mspevack.asc
http://people.redhat.com/mspevack/ fingerprint: 5A17 CF21
18 years, 1 month
Re: Note for a Fedora Project marketing person
by Alex
Dear Chris,
I am copying Fedora Marketing and Fedora Ambassadors on my response,
so they can all chime in.
Fedora is not a company, and not a commercial distribution. We are a
community project, in part sponsored by Red Hat. We are not affiliated
with Novell.
I do not think we will have the money to pay for the participation in
the event your friend is organizing, but we certainly will be glad to
help out with content anyway.
If you can think of any form of cooperation that will benefit both
parties, please get in touch with me again.
Thank you,
Alex Maier
On 3/23/06, Chris Preimesberger <cpreimesberger(a)comcast.net> wrote:
> > I am a reporter at eWEEK.com, but I am using a personal affiliation with a
> friend on the following project.
>
> A colleague of mine, Tom Donoghue, runs a couple of decent sites,
> DevTownStation.com and OpenEnterpriseTrends.com. He is starting to get into
> online "events" to help his business grow. He did his first interactive
> online event recently
>
> Tom asked me to help him with a new online event, to be called "Open
> Enterprise Trends Desktop Demo Summit" or something more sexy than that-- we
> don't know yet. This would give companies a chance to showcase their desktop
> software (Fedora 5?) in a coordinated, organized event (perhaps 4 to 5 hours
> in length) in which users log in for free and hear a panel discussion,
> company pitches, and see actual demos of the products online. Uses also can
> ask questions at appointed times to the companies.
>
> Naturally, the companies showcasing their work would be sponsoring the
> event, and therein lies where the costs would be for Novell, for example.
> I'm not sure what the participation fee would be; Tom could tell you that.
> But to be involved in a neutral-host, highly publicized (we hope!) event
> like that -- might Novell be interested?
>
> Let me know. If so, I can have Tom call you and give more info.
>
> /cp
>
> Chris J. Preimesberger
> IT Editor/Writer
> Redwood City, Calif.
> (650) 780-9200 office
--
Check out the new content on Fedora Project page! http://fedoraproject.org
18 years, 1 month
Re: Fedora Slogan Idea
by Alex
I like your thinking Brandon! I too think that we should use the logo
tagline in more slogans.
Thank you for raising this question on the list,
Alex
On 3/23/06, Brandon Gauthier <gauthierbl(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> Hello,
>
> I'm not total sure who to send this too but on the FedoraProject.org Wiki I
> found a Slogan page. After reading the different ideas I noticed that not
> one refers to the fedora logo's design principles (I found them here:
> http://www.capstrat.com/development/fedora/). I like the
> new fedora logo and it's clear a lot of thinking went into make it. Why not
> use part of the logo design principles as the slogan?
>
>
>
> "Infinite innovation. Infinite openness. Infinite freedom."
>
>
>
> In could be shorted to just "Infinite freedom." But I really think that the
> full line expresses more. It gets the fedora message across in a
> professional, concise way that works with the logo.
>
>
>
> Just something for you guys to think about,
>
> Brandon
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
--
Check out the new content on Fedora Project page! http://fedoraproject.org
18 years, 1 month
Fedora Core 5 Review (linuxforums)
by Rahul Sundaram
Hello Clement Lefebvre,
While on the lookout for good reviews on the latest release of Fedora
Core, I came across your excellent one
(http://www.linuxforums.org/reviews/fedora_core_5_review.html) and I
would like to add some comments.
I like the way the review starts out with a look at the buzz around the
release and the community rather than just the software bits. Its quite
surprising that many reviews completely drop off that aspect of a open
source project.
While Anaconda has gone through a major revamp in Fedora Core 5, we have
been receiving feedback on going the extra mile by improving the level
of polish and tackling better some of the minor issues. The ability to
test a keyboard layout seems to be one of them that you have highlighed
in the review. It doesnt seem to be a requested feature so far, so I
went ahead and filed a RFE (Request for Enhancement) against Anaconda.
Refer to https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=186408 for
more details. I would appreciate if you can add more details to it. We
have this feedback procedure on both the release notes and the release
itself documented in our release notes that you seem to be fond of
reading at http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/release-notes/fc5/#sn-
Feedback.
You have remarked that you didnt like that the Firstboot program asked a
few questions on well... the first boot instead of Anaconda asking
everything upfront. There is a reason behind that which might not be
immediately obvious. All the options asked in Anaconda are required
steps to complete the installation while the rest of the Firstboot ones
are optional (though highly recommended). This two step process helps
streamline the interface better while letting the user skip the optional
steps easily.
While IRC is indeed a useful application combined with the Freenode
Fedora IRC channels such as #fedora, it is not in general a popular
means of communication for a typical desktop user. We probably need to
set aside our Linux-y view of things a bit on that.
What you consider a inconsistency on the menu is something that has been
decided after careful thought and the menus have even more streamlined
specifically in Fedora Core 5 by the Red Hat desktop team. In general
applications are named after the task they perform rather than the
application name itself with the exception of a few well known brands
like Firefox. This has been found to be beneficial in actual usability
tests where many of the candidates who found out the application quickly
cited Firefox as a familiar name associated with a Internet browser that
aided them in performing the task or browsing the web quickly.
The conclusion that ...
"I never paid too much attention to what was going on in Fedora. In
fact, the last release I tried was Fedora Core 1. So I didn't have much
expectations about "Bordeaux", even though I got more and more excited
over the release after I had talked to some people from the Fedora
community. I have to say though: this distribution impressed me in a way
that no other distribution did before. Some things should of course be
improved, such as the automatic hardware detection or, as mentioned
above, the menus. But apart from these little details I can confidently
say that Fedora Core 5 is the best desktop GNU/Linux distribution
available at the moment. Suse and Ubuntu are working on their next
release, for sure this Fedora release placed the bar higher than it has
ever been before. A giant step was made in making Linux ready for the
desktop and “Bordeaux” is proof of this."
is indeed great to hear but I would appreciate if you can let us know
which hardware you found was not detected or auto configured by default
on the system to see whether we can improve on that in our subsequents
releases of Fedora.
Thank you for evaluating and providing detailed feedback in the form of
a seemingly popular review on Fedora Core 5.
Rahul
18 years, 1 month
[Resend] LugRadio Live 2006 - Fedora BOF
by Gavin Henry
----------------------------
Sorry, thought it bounced.
----------------------------
Dear Lists,
I've been invited to run a Fedora BOF at this years LugRadio Live event:
http://lugradio.org/live/2006/index.php/Main_Page
It's a 2-Day Event. List of speakers so far is:
Latest Speakers
* Mark Shuttleworth - Ubuntu
* Gervase Markham - TBC
* Bastien Nocera - GNOME development and Fedora
* Simon Phipps - Open Source and Sun
* Richard Moore - IBM and Open Source
* Jonathan Haslam - DTrace
* Steve Coast - OpenStreetmap
* Kat Goodwin, Jen Phillips and Phated - Women in Open Source
* Edward Hervey - PiTiVi
* Scott James Remnant - Ubuntu
* Barbie - Messagelabs and Perl
* Mirco Müller - Lowfat - a natural way to view your files...with a
twist * Sarah Ewen - Linux on Playstation 2
* Bruno Bord - This Talk May Contain Swearing
* Jonathan Riddell - KDE 4 and Kubuntu Dapper
* Matthew Bloch - Virtualisation and Bytemark
* Alex Hudson - Hula
* Martin Vogel - BBC Action Network
* Ian Lynch - OpenDocument
* Martijn van de Streek - Ubuntu
* Michael Meeks - OpenOffice.org
* Matthew Garrett - Linux and Laptops
* John Leach - Everybody Loves Eric Raymond
* Elliot Smith - Ruby On Rails
* Paul Cooper - OpenAdvantage
* Tom Steinberg - MySociety and Pledgebank
* Ewan Spence - TBC
* Christian Schaller - GStreamer
Latest Exhibitors
* CentOS
* Joomla!
* UKLinux
* MythTV
* Bytemark Hosting
* OpenDocument Fellowship
* KDE/Kubuntu
* O'Reilly
So quite high-profile!
Might also be doing a talk on Catalyst with one of the Catalyst Devel Team.
I was planning to talk about Fedora Docs and plans for FC6?
Anyone other ideas?
Can we get any goodies to give away?
Can/do we have a Blurb for these kinds of things to put in the main
LugRadio Site?
Thoughts most welcome!
Thanks,
Gavin.
--
Kind Regards,
Gavin Henry.
Managing Director.
T +44 (0) 1224 279484
M +44 (0) 7930 323266
F +44 (0) 1224 742001
E ghenry(a)suretecsystems.com
Open Source. Open Solutions(tm).
http://www.suretecsystems.com/
18 years, 1 month
