2008-06-07

Time: Day, 2008-06-07 - 21:00 UTC
Place: #ubuntu-meeting @ irc.freenode.net
Meeting Chair: owh
Meeting Minutes by: bbyeaver, owh, Flannel
Meeting Log: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarketingTeam/Meetings/IRCLogs/2008-06-06

Summary

Outcomes

Mission Statement

  • The Marketing Team strives to create the building blocks needed by the Ubuntu Community to spread Ubuntu throughout the world.

Marketing Team Objectives

  • The Ubuntu Marketing Team will act as a central marketing resource for the Ubuntu Community.
  • Provide resources to assist and encourage LoCos in marketing their activities to the wider community.

  • Gather the hard work that LoCo teams are already doing.

Assorted Ideas

  • Proposing a guide, regrouping different techniques of marketing and arguments, Preparing the community to speak the technical level appropriate to the audience when talking about Ubuntu.
  • The mailing list should be used to discuss new marketing ideas as well as current projects, and to collaborate with others on the Marketing Team goals.

Actions

  • hubuntu and pep to investigate spreadubuntu.com and report to the list.
  • owh to update wiki to include gmain search link.
  • dsas to report on LP OpenID for the wiki using appropriate method.
  • hubuntu to schedule the ubuntu-meeting room for the first Saturday of the month at 21:00 UTC
  • Flannel to send message to the list to announce that we will defer discussion to the mailing lists, and defer the topic and vote itself to the next meeting

Details

Introduction

Meeting to set in motion a plan to manage the Ubuntu Marketing Team.

Present in the meeting

bbyever, BHSPitLappy, candtalan, dsas, Flannel, hubuntu, John_B, john-vilsack, nhaines, okko7, ompaul, owh, pep, sbc

Define what we want to accomplish in the long term – goals

pep suggested that the Marketing Team should act as a central database of marketing resources so that no double efforts are made. It was then discussed by the rest of the attendants and the purpose of the MT was defined: The Ubuntu Marketing Team should act as a central database of marketing resources to be used by the Ubuntu Comunity in order to solve Bug #1

After discussion about the nature of LoCo teams, which varies in structure and organisation as well as legal entity it was resolved that the UMT would be a repository/information exchange.

Outcome: The Ubuntu Marketing Team will act as a central marketing resource for the Ubuntu Community.

Define the steps needed to achieve each goal – objectives

Discussion about marketing towards the general community, that is "outside" Ubuntu. Concerns were raised about inwards looking efforts, "marketing towards those who already have Ubuntu".

pep suggested that we could help Ubunteros speak to specific categories of people about Ubuntu, tailor the message to the audience.

hubuntu and pep raised the idea of spreadubuntu to act as a repository of tools.

Outcome: Provide resources to assist and encourage LoCos in marketing their activities to the wider community.

Outcome: Gather the hard work that LoCo teams are already doing.

Outcome: Proposing a guide, regrouping different techniques of marketing and arguments, Preparing the community to speak the technical level appropriate to the audience when talking about Ubuntu.

Action: hubuntu and pep to investigate spreadubuntu.com and report to the list.

Define a concrete mission statement for the team that reflects the goals and objectives of the team

Discussion about how the team relates to the environment in which it operates included discussions about the voluntary nature of the team and the LoCo's, the unifying force that the UMT could represent.

john-vilsack gave the first draft of our new Mission Statement. After a lengthy discussion with opinions from everyone about what the Marketing Team should do and the role of the LoCos in the marketing process, a Mission Statement was decided.

Outcome: Mission Statement: The Marketing Team strives to create the building blocks needed by the Ubuntu Community to spread Ubuntu throughout the world.

Define our relationship to the Canonical marketing department

It was identified that the UMT and Canonical are two separate entities working towards a common goal. Initially our interaction with Canonical will likely be informational, but as the team stabilises, there will be further interaction in the form of comparison papers, etc.

john-vilsack identified that he has an existing email relationship with Gerry in Canonical Marketing who has been following our progress.

Develop a better system of internal communications

Currently our resources are in several locations. Some concern was raised about the nature of existing sites, in the form that wiki's were difficult to edit but there are web design and developers within the team.

john-vilsack suggested the wiki should be used to for internal discussion and drafting of ideas, while Spread Ubuntu should be used for the "final product" of the Marketing Team. John_B said he could help with the Spread Ubuntu website.

Discuss possible guideline for the mailing list to better organize the threads

Discussion about the use of the various outlets was had. Concerns were raised about the unstructured nature of the list. It was identified that the current list traffic is probably not representative of traffic as it will settle down once we pass this initial period.

nhaines proposed the mailing list should be used to discuss new marketing ideas as well as current projects, and to collaborate with others on the Marketing Team goals.

It was identified that decentralisation of discussion into sub-lists and forums was going to hinder discussion.

IRC would be used for immediate discussions.

Outcome: The mailing list should be used to discuss new marketing ideas as well as current projects, and to collaborate with others on the Marketing Team goals.

Discuss setting up a team forum for discussion of topics that need a more structured record of the conversation

It was agreed that a forum would only splinter the discussion.

hubuntu suggested that the list should be for discussion, the wiki for action.

Discuss ways to improve the team wiki

hubuntu advised that OpenID support needed to be implemented using Launchpad as the provider. dsas pointed out that the wiki will shortly be upgraded to implement this.

Action: owh to update wiki to include gmain search link.

  • done - owh

Action: dsas to report on LP OpenID for the wiki using appropriate method.

  • done - dsas

Establish guideline for new content

It was agreed that we cannot address this just yet.

pep suggested that once spreadubuntu exists, we should be able to leverage content from LoCos. Flannel raised licensing issues and suggested that we'd need to seek permission from LoCos before publishing their content.

hubuntu is very keen on the notion of spreadubuntu. It was pointed out that the current wiki will do the job until such time as spreadubuntu exists or is needed.

Discuss and possibly revise the team meeting schedule

After discussion about the required frequency of the meeting, varying from once a week to once a fortnight, it was agreed to keep the meeting at once a month.

Action: hubuntu to schedule the ubuntu-meeting room for the first Saturday of the month at 21:00 UTC

Team Structure

Robust discussion was had about the nature of groups and their interaction. There were discussions about the need for a "board" or "council", but several team members suggested that this was not required and that many large and successful teams operated completely without any such structure.

There was some disagreement about the need to "vote" for a team leadership during this meeting.

It was agreed that we should use the mailing list to make proposals about the structure and that discussions should be had about the merits of each proposal. A final vote on each proposal will be made during the next UMT meeting.

Action: Flannel to send message to the list to announce that we will defer discussion to the mailing lists, and defer the topic and vote itself to the next meeting

MarketingTeam/Meetings/Minutes/2008-06-07 (last edited 2008-08-06 17:00:02 by localhost)