Introduction

Community Marketing Session during UDS Lucid, in Dallas (USA).

Time: Day, 2009-11-19
Place: #ubuntu-uds-presidente @ irc.freenode.net
Meeting Chair: PaoloSammicheli
Meeting Minutes by: Ruben Romero

Agenda Items

• We must decide on regular activities for the Marketing Team to perform (probably focusing on release cycle aligned campaigns)

  • All LoCos should have a Marketing/Press contact following a strategic Marketing plan for the next 2 releases (?) - I mean marketing communication, not only materials.

• Make the community more accessible to newcomers and volunteers who don't have a lot of time or energy to spare looking for things to do.
• Begin the process of creating easy to obtain packets for meetings, new evangelists, etc. who want to promote Ubuntu.

  • How to make this easy to create: Wiki, SpreadUbuntu or a combination?

  • Make Marketing kits available in SpreadUbuntu/Wiki/Any-other-way: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarketingTeam/Projects/SpreadUbuntu/IdeaPool#Making%20SpreadUbuntu%20more%20accesible%20in%20the%20FrontPage

• Work directly with the current mailing list discussion about reorganization
  • to incorporate the ideas currently proposed to make the team stronger.
• A big, huge, gigantic event all around the world for Lucid Lynx release. Have in place the following:

  • A world map of the type we had for Karmic: http://houseparty.cx/

  • A Marketing kit that can be translated to as many languages as possible and can be downloaded in one file (both things are easy to achieve through S.U.)

  • LoCos should have access to the Ubuntu 10.04 press release from Canonical in advance of the press (I did and it really made journalists get excited to have the news just before they arrived)

    • In hardy it was done half-way, ie. Canonical did not use the translations but LoCos got the possibility of having the localized version on time - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarketingTeam/Campaigns/HardyRelease (Fedora is extremely good at using their Marketing community to such things in part because they are funded by Red Hat, but we could make this better if we get a bit more organized

Present

The following were present during this meeting:

• PaoloSammicheli [xdatap]

• Rubén Romero [huayra]
• Evan Boldt [echowarp]
• Jussi Schultink (jussi01)
• Gord Allott
• Ben Rubin [Pici]
• Grant Bowman [Grantbow]
• Alan Pope (popey)
• Chris Crisafulli (itnet7)
• Amber Graner (akgraner)
• Timo Jyrinki (Mirv)
• Martin Owens (doctormo)
• Laura Czajkowski (czajkowski)
• Ralph Janke (txwikinger)

Proposal

ReleaseParty2.0: a Big, Huge, Gigantic event for Lucid Lynx's release.

What:

• Thousands of release parties all around the world. At least 10 parties per LoCo, also in small cities.

• Big countries can organize 100 or even more parties (ie: Italy has an event called Linuxday in about 120 cities each year, and it's a conference format, not easy to organize).
• New format: easy to organize (users must do that not just loco members) and cool to attend. Not a meeting for geeks, a meeting for everythings. It must catch the interest of media like a unique social happening.

Let's organize the biggest free software happening ever: the Woodstock of free software

How:

• Easy - party format, in a pub or public space
• People come in, drink and see some laptops running lucid

• (ToDo: we need slide show or rolling video which advertise Lucid features and news)

• Pub owner gain for lot of customers drinking so he wouldn't any money for making the pub available for the party. Think some ideas, ie: extra discount beer for who wear the word Ubuntu in a cloth.

• Documenting in all languages the LucidPartyHowTo months in advance

Cool - prepare materials to be printed and a started kit provided in advance by canonical (any budget for it?)

CDs problem:

Canonical can't afford to sell CD's to every party and there isn't the time to deliver. And also, Branded CDs doesn't delivery well the message about Free Software's freedoms. Solution: creating a branded, not release specific, Writable CDs. CDs Packs should be also available in the store for retail from anybody anytime. Canonical could send some free CDs to party's organizers and who want more can buy it. We need reduced price: it shouldn't cost more than normal writables CDs. Writing CDs on demand reduces costs and waste of CDs and deliver better the message of freedom of the software. We can provide all Ubuntu flavours, not just Ubuntu

Another idea from the California Team: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CaliforniaTeam/Projects/CDSleeves This is a printed 8.5x11 or A4 sized paper folded around a CD. Next version is in progress. Flannel is working on licensing and will be posting to spreadubuntu.neomenlo.org

• -- We're also working on a cheap/easy way to "print" a label type thing on burned CDs

Advertising: smart web site, with great look, where to list all parties with full details.

• Potentially will be added to spreadubuntu with the "Organic Groups" feature in the future.

  https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarketingTeam/Projects/SpreadUbuntu/IdeaPool#Organic%20Groups

  • Use the Houseparty map implementation in addition? http://houseparty.cx/

Proceedings

• Quite a bit of discussion about release party sizes, centralized vs. distributed, helping new organizers get started, etc.
• Brilliant marketing materials are needed and some are available on spreadubuntu.
• Get the spread.ubuntu.com and/or spreadubuntu.com/org domains to point to the current (spreadubuntu.neomenlo.org) site.