[Marketing] Status of the Marketing Committee

Committees Marketing
1

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Folks,
how do you feel about this committee? Straight forward answers are
appreciated.

Then, please excuse the longish mail but there are some things that need
to get tackled by someone - the best fit seems to be the Marketing
Committee.

Are we going to be able to fill out the role that Tyler wants to give
up? He sent a list of things that he wants to hand off a month ago but
there was just one mail in response. Therefore I copied the points here
again for reference and will comment on some of them. Please keep in
mind that all the points listed here were so far managed by a fraction
of a full time job, Tyler had lots of other things on his plate too. We
should be able to get Marketing up and functional easily by sharing
tasks between several people. Each of us will not need more than an hour
or two per week to do this. But we do need some commitment, so please
step up if any of the following resonates with you. Maybe you also want
to post something on Discuss to attract new committee members.

- - Committee
    Chair Marketing Committee, plan meetings
- -> this is an honorable job and requires little work. If I were younger
and less overloaded I would jump the chance to take over this role. It
also gives your profile a kick and opens doors to events which would
otherwise be either closed or costly. Marketing also has a budget for
travel which can be spent by Marketing. The next OSGeo budget is
developing now, so this is the right time to request for money.

    Identify priorities – events, material
- -> increasingly this has been taken over by the Local Chapters.
Marketing focuses more on the global perspective balancing interest and
energy spent on different events and serving as hub to mediate dates of
events to avoid overlap.

    Coordinate with volunteers
    Design and host material
    Coordinate with designers as required
    Coordinate printing, shipment, payment of material for events
- -> thanks to Tyler we have a good set of material now. Printing and
maintaing this material is increasingly a globalized thing meaning that
we think globally but act (print, ship, etc.) locally. The German local
chapter FOSSGIS for example manages trade fair brochures all on it's own
including searching for sponsors to print things.

    Maximizing OSGeo benefit from all events we are at
    Prioritising event related spending

- - Events
    Help coordinate OSGeo's presence at events
    Speak as the OSGeo rep/contact
- -> At a recent Board Meeting we decided to create a new role called
"OSGeo Ambassador". It is yet to be more clearly defined but it gives
credibility to speakers and access to events otherwise not reachable
(see also committee chair benefits). Currently Daniel Morissette and
myself manage spending of travel money required to do this. We could
transfer this responsibility to the Marketing Committee if there is
interest and commitment.

    Plan OSGeo booth – material, manpower
    Coordinate presentations for events
- -> There are lots of good presentations available, including generic
OSGeo introductions. Cleaning up and focusing will help people to find
the right one.

    Plan special meetings with stakeholders
- -> I am not sure what this exactly is. Tyler, could you expand on this
giving examples?

    Help FOSS4G chair
    Serve on FOSS4G LOC
    Drive sponsors to FOSS4G
- -> these three tasks mainly relate to the global FOSS4G conference and
belong to the conference committee.

    Get OSGeo sponsorship needs in front of many eyes
- -> Well, yes - the need is clearly seen but that did not really get us
very far. And again - I do not believe that this is a primary task for
the Marketing committee.

Best regards,
Arnulf

- --
Exploring Space, Time and Mind
http://arnulf.us
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2

Straight forward answers are appreciated.

(1) I think much of this can be pushed down to the local chapters (LCs), with the only things staying at the "central node" of the hive would be things like maintaining a library of current collateral; this should be volunteer driven. Is there any need for dealing with physical objects, e.g. I don't see shipping of booth materials listed below?

(2) I'd like to see a set of guidelines put together for LCs to use to request funds (similar to what I did for code sprints), and delegate a small team to review & approve such requests. (Such a team would likely have one board member and two volunteers.)

(3) In my slowly-clarifying view of how OSGeo could operate, I'd like to see the Marketing Committee be able to simply go away.

(4) If we as a board decide to take on paid staff for strategic issues (as opposed to admin stuff), then those people would own marketing functions.

-mpg

-----Original Message-----
From: marketing-bounces@lists.osgeo.org [mailto:marketing-bounces@lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Seven (aka Arnulf)
Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2011 8:00 AM
To: OSGeo-Marketing
Cc: board@lists.osgeo.org
Subject: [Marketing] Status of the Marketing Committee

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Hash: SHA1

Folks,
how do you feel about this committee? Straight forward answers are
appreciated.

Then, please excuse the longish mail but there are some things that need
to get tackled by someone - the best fit seems to be the Marketing
Committee.

Are we going to be able to fill out the role that Tyler wants to give
up? He sent a list of things that he wants to hand off a month ago but
there was just one mail in response. Therefore I copied the points here
again for reference and will comment on some of them. Please keep in
mind that all the points listed here were so far managed by a fraction
of a full time job, Tyler had lots of other things on his plate too. We
should be able to get Marketing up and functional easily by sharing
tasks between several people. Each of us will not need more than an hour
or two per week to do this. But we do need some commitment, so please
step up if any of the following resonates with you. Maybe you also want
to post something on Discuss to attract new committee members.

- - Committee
    Chair Marketing Committee, plan meetings
- -> this is an honorable job and requires little work. If I were younger
and less overloaded I would jump the chance to take over this role. It
also gives your profile a kick and opens doors to events which would
otherwise be either closed or costly. Marketing also has a budget for
travel which can be spent by Marketing. The next OSGeo budget is
developing now, so this is the right time to request for money.

    Identify priorities - events, material
- -> increasingly this has been taken over by the Local Chapters.
Marketing focuses more on the global perspective balancing interest and
energy spent on different events and serving as hub to mediate dates of
events to avoid overlap.

    Coordinate with volunteers
    Design and host material
    Coordinate with designers as required
    Coordinate printing, shipment, payment of material for events
- -> thanks to Tyler we have a good set of material now. Printing and
maintaing this material is increasingly a globalized thing meaning that
we think globally but act (print, ship, etc.) locally. The German local
chapter FOSSGIS for example manages trade fair brochures all on it's own
including searching for sponsors to print things.

    Maximizing OSGeo benefit from all events we are at
    Prioritising event related spending

- - Events
    Help coordinate OSGeo's presence at events
    Speak as the OSGeo rep/contact
- -> At a recent Board Meeting we decided to create a new role called
"OSGeo Ambassador". It is yet to be more clearly defined but it gives
credibility to speakers and access to events otherwise not reachable
(see also committee chair benefits). Currently Daniel Morissette and
myself manage spending of travel money required to do this. We could
transfer this responsibility to the Marketing Committee if there is
interest and commitment.

    Plan OSGeo booth - material, manpower
    Coordinate presentations for events
- -> There are lots of good presentations available, including generic
OSGeo introductions. Cleaning up and focusing will help people to find
the right one.

    Plan special meetings with stakeholders
- -> I am not sure what this exactly is. Tyler, could you expand on this
giving examples?

    Help FOSS4G chair
    Serve on FOSS4G LOC
    Drive sponsors to FOSS4G
- -> these three tasks mainly relate to the global FOSS4G conference and
belong to the conference committee.

    Get OSGeo sponsorship needs in front of many eyes
- -> Well, yes - the need is clearly seen but that did not really get us
very far. And again - I do not believe that this is a primary task for
the Marketing committee.

Best regards,
Arnulf

- --
Exploring Space, Time and Mind
http://arnulf.us
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_______________________________________________
Marketing mailing list
Marketing@lists.osgeo.org
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing

3

Arnulf,
For the last year or two, committee meetings have been attended mainly only by Tyler, Alex Mandel, Brian Hamlin, and sometimes one or two others.
Alex, Brian and myself also work on the OSGeoLive DVD, and some of the activities previously being done under the marketing banner are now being done under a OSGeoLive banner.
In particular:
* Project Overviews for all projects
* A presentation for all projects

Others who have been on the committee in the past have been leaders of Open Source companies, but have drifted back into not speaking up. I can't speak for them, but expect it would come down to feeling that their time and budgets is better spent in other marketing activities - eg: building presentations and presenting at foss4g events, or more targeted marketing for their own companies.

The other activity Marketing was taking on was managing a marketing pack for conferences, and occasional seed funding for conferences. This is a particularly challenging task as previous budgets fall short of expectations from people wishing to get funded for osgeo representation at conferences.

Here is the maths:
* Previous marketing budget ~ $30K p.a.

* International or regional conferences where it would be nice to be represented: 20 to 50
* Local geospatial events where it would be nice to have OSGeo representation: 100s to 1000s. (I can think of 5 to 10 candidate annual events in Australia, and their are hundreds of countries)
* Once off costs per local chapter (banners etc) ~ $400
* Cost of a booth at a conference ~ $4K
* Travel of an ambassador to a conference ~ $2K to $10K
* Cost of expendables per event (DVDs, fliers) ~ $300

I'm personally prepared to help a committee of 10 active members, but I don't have the time to take on a greater commitment than that.

On 11/11/2011 2:59 AM, Seven (aka Arnulf) wrote:

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Folks,
how do you feel about this committee? Straight forward answers are
appreciated.

Then, please excuse the longish mail but there are some things that need
to get tackled by someone - the best fit seems to be the Marketing
Committee.

Are we going to be able to fill out the role that Tyler wants to give
up? He sent a list of things that he wants to hand off a month ago but
there was just one mail in response. Therefore I copied the points here
again for reference and will comment on some of them. Please keep in
mind that all the points listed here were so far managed by a fraction
of a full time job, Tyler had lots of other things on his plate too. We
should be able to get Marketing up and functional easily by sharing
tasks between several people. Each of us will not need more than an hour
or two per week to do this. But we do need some commitment, so please
step up if any of the following resonates with you. Maybe you also want
to post something on Discuss to attract new committee members.

- - Committee
     Chair Marketing Committee, plan meetings
- -> this is an honorable job and requires little work. If I were younger
and less overloaded I would jump the chance to take over this role. It
also gives your profile a kick and opens doors to events which would
otherwise be either closed or costly. Marketing also has a budget for
travel which can be spent by Marketing. The next OSGeo budget is
developing now, so this is the right time to request for money.

     Identify priorities – events, material
- -> increasingly this has been taken over by the Local Chapters.
Marketing focuses more on the global perspective balancing interest and
energy spent on different events and serving as hub to mediate dates of
events to avoid overlap.

     Coordinate with volunteers
     Design and host material
     Coordinate with designers as required
     Coordinate printing, shipment, payment of material for events
- -> thanks to Tyler we have a good set of material now. Printing and
maintaing this material is increasingly a globalized thing meaning that
we think globally but act (print, ship, etc.) locally. The German local
chapter FOSSGIS for example manages trade fair brochures all on it's own
including searching for sponsors to print things.

     Maximizing OSGeo benefit from all events we are at
     Prioritising event related spending

- - Events
     Help coordinate OSGeo's presence at events
     Speak as the OSGeo rep/contact
- -> At a recent Board Meeting we decided to create a new role called
"OSGeo Ambassador". It is yet to be more clearly defined but it gives
credibility to speakers and access to events otherwise not reachable
(see also committee chair benefits). Currently Daniel Morissette and
myself manage spending of travel money required to do this. We could
transfer this responsibility to the Marketing Committee if there is
interest and commitment.

     Plan OSGeo booth – material, manpower
     Coordinate presentations for events
- -> There are lots of good presentations available, including generic
OSGeo introductions. Cleaning up and focusing will help people to find
the right one.

     Plan special meetings with stakeholders
- -> I am not sure what this exactly is. Tyler, could you expand on this
giving examples?

     Help FOSS4G chair
     Serve on FOSS4G LOC
     Drive sponsors to FOSS4G
- -> these three tasks mainly relate to the global FOSS4G conference and
belong to the conference committee.

     Get OSGeo sponsorship needs in front of many eyes
- -> Well, yes - the need is clearly seen but that did not really get us
very far. And again - I do not believe that this is a primary task for
the Marketing committee.

Best regards,
Arnulf

- -- Exploring Space, Time and Mind
http://arnulf.us
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_______________________________________________
Marketing mailing list
Marketing@lists.osgeo.org
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing

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Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Solutions Manager
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

4

Cameron summarised things nicely, so I'll just comment on a few of the
particular items I was closest to.

Please keep in
mind that all the points listed here were so far managed by a fraction
of a full time job, Tyler had lots of other things on his plate too.

It's not only a time effort issue, but also an administrative overhead one.
For example, since I was already using my personal credit cards for
all sorts of OSGeo business, it was easy for me to order more
material, or reimburse someone's shipping costs. So even if you have
enough people to help run things, keep this part in mind too. Previously
it hasn't had to involve the treasurer but will certainly have to from here
on out.

Marketing also has a budget for
travel which can be spent by Marketing. The next OSGeo budget is
developing now, so this is the right time to request for money.

I know things can change, but we haven't funded travel
subsidies through the marketing committee. We have tried, similar to
Michael's comments, to focus on supporting local chapters in their
outreach efforts, rather than moving people around.

   Coordinate printing, shipment, payment of material for events

I used hubcast.com to do local printing whenever possible, it worked
well. You just need someone with a credit card to get it moving. I
can copy my content over to someone else's account if ever needed.

   Speak as the OSGeo rep/contact
- -> At a recent Board Meeting we decided to create a new role called
"OSGeo Ambassador". It is yet to be more clearly defined ....

...manage spending of travel money

My tip: only volunteer to run an ambassador program if you
want to also be hated by everyone who doesn't get funding from you or
be looked at suspiciously as giving money to your friends.
A committee that reviews and scores ambassador proposals might
work but the scope of the program will need to be pretty clear and
decisions made as objectively as possible.

   Plan OSGeo booth – material, manpower

I don't think most people know that without the marketing committee
members (and a few others) planning for OSGeo booths there may
not have been an OSGeo booth at our own FOSS4G events. Please don't
forget about it :slight_smile:

   Plan special meetings with stakeholders
- -> I am not sure what this exactly is. Tyler, could you expand on this
giving examples?

Arnulf, you'll remember the OSGIS Nottingham event, this is similar.
Whenever we get a foot in the door to speak, or have a booth, we
also try to get meeting rooms for local groups to meet each other or
to have meetings with sponsors and other influencers to get their
input and help them get connected. Give us an inch... :slight_smile:

Back to the OSGIS Nottingham event as an example,
(and GITA Dallas event in a way too) Suchith and I coordinated hands-on
workshops, lined up a set of talks, had marketing material available, was
able to give an OSGeo keynote and also had a couple follow up meetings
with stakeholders and also with an academic breakout group. It worked
out really well and brought together people who just needed an excuse
to talk to each other.

   Help FOSS4G chair
   Serve on FOSS4G LOC
   Drive sponsors to FOSS4G
- -> these three tasks mainly relate to the global FOSS4G conference and
belong to the conference committee.

The conference committee definitely needs a rep on the
local committee, but they would not be expected to be focused on the
marketing aspect of FOSS4G for OSGeo generally. You wouldn't expect
the conf committee chair to be the liaison to the LOC for all marketing
material and planning for marketing related initiatives :slight_smile:

I also think there isn't clear enough connection between marketing and
the conference committee. FOSS4G is our biggest marketing and
outreach event every year, yet the connection is really loose. Is it the
conference committee's responsibility to do effective outreach in the
same way that the marketing committee is responsible for it? It's a bit
of a hole in my opinion.

   Get OSGeo sponsorship needs in front of many eyes
- -> Well, yes - the need is clearly seen but that did not really get us
very far. And again - I do not believe that this is a primary task for
the Marketing committee.

It was on my list.. hoping it will be on someone else's too. Inserting
sponsorship requests/needs and thanks to existing ones is easy
to do as part of marketing initiatives - e.g. having sponsorship info
available for handout makes a lot of sense to me, as we have done.
Volunteers helping at booths and with talks often wonder what sponsor
opportunities there are too - so they can share the info correctly.

Anyway, some of that is personal opinion, others simply observations.
Hope it helps.
Tyler

5

Folks,
how do you feel about this committee? Straight forward answers are
appreciated.

It feels like the conference committee :slight_smile:

We have a couple big fishes to fry (website, whitepapers) that are continually not addressed. We know what needs to be done; but cannot attract (or motivate) volunteers to put in the effort.

6

Jody:

What do you think is the barrier to attracting/motivating people to this?

To put it another way: do you think the volunteer people we need are out there and we’re just not reaching them somehow, or do you think this is not a task OSGeo-type folks are likely to volunteer for?

-mpg

From: marketing-bounces@lists.osgeo.org [mailto:marketing-bounces@lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Jody Garnett
Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2011 4:39 PM
To: Seven (aka Arnulf)
Cc: OSGeo-Marketing; board@lists.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: [Marketing] Status of the Marketing Committee

Folks,

how do you feel about this committee? Straight forward answers are

appreciated.

It feels like the conference committee :slight_smile:

We have a couple big fishes to fry (website, whitepapers) that are continually not addressed. We know what needs to be done; but cannot attract (or motivate) volunteers to put in the effort.

7

My two cents on the Marketing Committee, from the perspective of the local chapter…

(1) I think much of this can be pushed down to the local chapters (LCs), with the only things staying at the “central node” of the hive would be things like maintaining a library of current collateral; this should be volunteer driven. Is there any need for dealing with physical objects, e.g. I don’t see shipping of booth materials listed below?

Local chapters do need someone or some people that they can go to for help with marketing- be that getting the keys to the svn to download the marketing material, or finding out about the hubcast account. Sure, we can then actually sort everything else out ourselves, but we need guidelines and someone to liaise with. However… in the UK- our contact has pretty much always been Tyler rather than the committee, so there’s definitely room for change in how things work.

(2) I’d like to see a set of guidelines put together for LCs to use to request funds (similar to what I did for code sprints), and delegate a small team to review & approve such requests. (Such a team would likely have one board member and two volunteers.)

I don’t think that this should be in the remit of the marketing committee.

(3) In my slowly-clarifying view of how OSGeo could operate, I’d like to see the Marketing Committee be able to simply go away.

See above- I disagree

(4) If we as a board decide to take on paid staff for strategic issues (as opposed to admin stuff), then those people would own marketing functions.

Again, I think there are two entirely separate issues here. Marketing is not necessarily strategic and people who are good at one are not necessarily good at the other. Marketing can be volunteer driven imho.

Jo

–

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Astun Technology Ltd, The Coach House, 17 West Street, Epsom, Surrey, KT18 7RL, UK
t:+44 750 095 8167

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8

Jody:

What do you think is the barrier to attracting/motivating people to this?

There is a simple gap - neither committee wants it :slight_smile: So there is no place to volunteer… If we start talking what we want to communicate on welcome list I am sent to the marketing committee. If we start talking about changing template we are sent to the webcom committee.

I would like to make it so marketting committee is deciding what needs to be communicated; and webcom decides how. Perhaps that has a better chance of success? Example: direction about the branding - we sorted our branding for conference presence (yay conference committee) and need to package that up for the web comm committee (say use these visual elements - choice of technology does not matter just make or presence consistent)

To put it another way: do you think the volunteer people we need are out there and we’re just not reaching them somehow, or do you think this is not a task OSGeo-type folks are likely to volunteer for?

The question is wrong; there needs to be something to volunteer for that is rewarding and has benefit. It is our job as the marketing committee to think about what is needed; and then sort out a good motivational tactic to reach that goal.

In short we are responsible for “likely”.

To pick on myself for a moment compare the motivation differences between (http://www.osgeo.org/geotools) vs (http://live.osgeo.org/en/overview/geotools_overview.html).

I have lots of ideas on the motivation side of things; however each involves a compromise. I will choose just one example for now - we need to have some content in the form of white papers. Whenever I sit at the OSGeo booth it is one of the questions asked at the end of each conversation; basically do you have a bit of paper with a pretty diagram that I can take home to my boss.

It is a fair request - and something the technology industry expects.

How could we motivate the provision of white papers? Well any case of motivation involves having something to trade. In the following examples we could trade exclusivity for content. It is way easier to ask for content for a prominent and promoted page; then it is to ask people to submit white papers to a wiki.

  1. Collect a round of white papers from sponsors; maybe give each sponsor a page to talk about how much they love OSGeo (and list some of their white papers at the bottom of the page)
  2. Let that sit for 6 months; let the complaints stack up as that is a good thing. Answer any question about participation with join the marketing committee
  3. Invite incubated projects to submit a couple white papers to their project page; ask the project officers to handle the communication on this one (but make sure they have support in rolling out the initial content)

Importantly we should try and collect the white papers for our website; this is not an excuse for sponsors or projects to link people away from OSGeo.

Thanks for the discussion :slight_smile:

Jody

9

My 0.02$ is that we do have a need for a Marketing committee, even if a large part of its mandate would be just to coordinate efforts of local chapters and ensure OSGeo is represented in a consistent way around the world.

However we seem to have had trouble attracting the right people on the committee to keep it alive over the years. Maybe we just need to go after some marketing-oriented members and actively encourage them to join the committee?

On 11-11-10 07:41 PM, Michael P. Gerlek wrote:

Jody:

What do you think is the barrier to attracting/motivating people to this?

To put it another way: do you think the volunteer people we need are out
there and we’re just not reaching them somehow, or do you think this is
not a task OSGeo-type folks are likely to volunteer for?

-mpg

*From:*marketing-bounces@lists.osgeo.org
[mailto:marketing-bounces@lists.osgeo.org] *On Behalf Of *Jody Garnett
*Sent:* Thursday, November 10, 2011 4:39 PM
*To:* Seven (aka Arnulf)
*Cc:* OSGeo-Marketing; board@lists.osgeo.org
*Subject:* Re: [Marketing] Status of the Marketing Committee

    Folks,

    how do you feel about this committee? Straight forward answers are

    appreciated.

It feels like the conference committee :slight_smile:

We have a couple big fishes to fry (website, whitepapers) that are
continually not addressed. We know what needs to be done; but cannot
attract (or motivate) volunteers to put in the effort.

_______________________________________________
Marketing mailing list
Marketing@lists.osgeo.org
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing

--
Daniel Morissette
http://www.mapgears.com/
Provider of Professional MapServer Support since 2000