Thanks Paul, Dave, Michael, Frank for raising these questions.
Dave, re "Who are we targeting", I think that we want all, but OSGeo should be targeting funding sources, ie decision makers. The rest will follow.
I want to see more Government tenders and similar projects being allocated to companies which use open source components.
To reach the decision makes for large contracts, Open Source needs to be seen as creditable. And I think this will be achieved by showing case studies of successful Open Source & Standards based implementations, and for specific selling of these achievements through avenues used by decision makers for feeling the market.
I'm in agreement with Dave, LISAsoft has seen a minimal immediate ROI from conferences. Presenting at conferences is buying mind-share and is a long sales cycle. OSGeo can do conferences cheaper than others by using our volunteer workforce (who are often at the conference already), and crying poor non-profit status to get a free stand.
I think we do need to target conferences, but as Paul hints, we need to limit the conferences we sponsor to only the high value conferences.
Other channels that OSGeo Marketing should focus on is:
1. Our website. This doesn't doesn't target users or decision makers at the moment. We need to be more commercial in our approach. Jody Garnett has review notes on how to improve this, and this is something that I think is worth spending budget on.
2. Case Studies, and how to present them. (as already noted by a number of blogs lately). No one has mentioned a webinar channel or news feed yet.
3. Training material. And packaging this up with software. (We do have a separate committee for this).
4. LiveDVD. Another channel for getting our software out there which complements the Conferences.
Dave McIlhagga wrote:
One other aspect to think of .. who are you primarily trying to reach. I see two primary groups -- and they would probably take two different strategies if you want to get to them both:
1. End Users - hard to get to in the traditional GIS space since from my experience most users of open source geospatial come from the IT domain.
2. Software Developers - especially corporate interests who embed open source geo technologies into their service/product offerings -- this group can sometimes be found at geo events -- but also general IT events.
These two groups are very distinct and require completely different messages -- but are probably both very valuable to attract as they are both instrumental to the ecosystem.
Dave
www.dmsolutions.ca
On 1-Dec-08, at 12:21 PM, Michael P. Gerlek wrote:
Good point. At the risk of flogging dead horses...
If the question in the floor is "what's the best way to reach people with our message?", then we should first ask "what's our message?". I could come up with different responses depending on whether we say "promoting open source as an alternative to proprietary stacks" (a general, broad mssg), "getting people to use GDAL and MapServer" (a specific mssg), etc.
-mpg
-----Original Message-----
From: marketing-bounces@lists.osgeo.org [mailto:marketing-bounces@lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Dave McIlhagga
Sent: Monday, December 01, 2008 6:01 AM
To: Paul Ramsey
Cc: OSGeo Marketing
Subject: Re: [Marketing] Exhibition Pack
It begs another question too ... is targeting geospatial events really
the best way to get to people? Corporately we've pretty much given up
on it as it just doens't translate into business. I'm not sure if the
same rule would apply to OSGeo since the marketing drivers are
different -- but it might be worth trying to do some form of basic
cost/benefit analysis of the best way forward.
Dave
www.dmsolutions.ca
On 30-Nov-08, at 10:01 AM, Paul Ramsey wrote:
40 is absurdly huge. Why don't you troll back and actually look at the
email list for instances of people saying "we're doing this
conference..." if it's 20, I'll be surprised.
P.
On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 3:25 AM, Cameron Shorter
<cameron.shorter@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks Tyler for putting numbers in.
What we need to complete the budget is a quantity column.
How many conference packs do we need to create (I reckon 1 per
local group =
20)?
And how many conferences do we support per year. Again, I reckon 2
per local
group per year = 40. Plugging these figures into to the budget and
we don't
leave much budget for anything else.
Attached is a spreadsheet with a quick sketch at what I'm talking
about.
Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo) wrote:
Following from our last meeting and earlier discussions, there'd
been
consensus to focus marketing efforts on getting a few primary
pieces of
marketing material together. With the intent of having a "pack"
of material
that could sent to (or downloaded and prepared by) someone wanting
to
represent OSGeo at an event. Without addressing the issues of
who/what/where could get such a package, we've been focusing on
what it
might contain.
Detailed thoughts were hashed through in our last meeting. I
threw some
cost estimates up into a table today. Please have a look, suggest
revisions, etc.
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Exhibition_Pack#Cost_Summary
After we a general idea of potential costs (either per component, or
overall), then we can plug them into our 2009 budget. Following
that we
start talking about preparing the components, deciding how to
distribute
them, searching for sources, etc.
Tyler
Tyler Mitchell
Executive Director
Open Source Geospatial Foundation
tmitchell@osgeo.org
P: +1-250-277-1621
M: +1-250-303-1831
_______________________________________________
Marketing mailing list
Marketing@lists.osgeo.org
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
--
Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Systems Architect
Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254
Think Globally, Fix Locally
Geospatial Solutions enhanced with Open Standards and Open Source
http://www.lisasoft.com
_______________________________________________
Marketing mailing list
Marketing@lists.osgeo.org
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
_______________________________________________
Marketing mailing list
Marketing@lists.osgeo.org
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
_______________________________________________
Marketing mailing list
Marketing@lists.osgeo.org
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
_______________________________________________
Marketing mailing list
Marketing@lists.osgeo.org
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
--
Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Systems Architect
Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254
Think Globally, Fix Locally
Geospatial Solutions enhanced with Open Standards and Open Source
http://www.lisasoft.com