[Kde-pim] Marketing, KDE PIM and You

[Sebastian Kügler]

[CC:ing kde-promo]

Good to see this topic discussed during the meeting. :)
As you might have expected, I have some further input on some of the topics, mostly 
from experience with promoting other KDE components, and KDE itself.

On Tuesday 12 January 2010 22:01:19 Stephen Kelly wrote:
> One of the topics of the recent Osnabrueck meeting (dot article on the way)
> was on marketing KDE PIM, how KDE PIM fits into the rebranded kde, what we
> can do about the image and perception of the community and the applications
> around KDE PIM.

It's also very important to think about positioning of KDE PIM, and what it is that 
you want to promote. I think there are two main "products"

- KDE PIM applications (KMail, Kontact, etc.)
- KDE PIM as development platform (Akonadi, kdepimlibs)

>From here you get to important target groups:

- developers (both community and companies)
- users

That's pretty trivial so far. Where it gets interesting is I think the "new 
platforms" (Windows, Mac) and the mobile space. There are some interesting questions 
to be answered here:

- What are the expectations of {developers,users} on these platforms?
  - Can KDE PIM as it currently stands cater to them?
  - Does it make sense to focus on a certain group?
- How will the move to Akonadi (a.k.a. "The Promised Land") affect the user 
  experience of existing users?
  - Should we be careful ("this is the first akonadi-based KMail, it's going to be a 
    bumpy ride, be prepared") or bold ("This is the best thing since sliced bread was 
    invented, it rocks."). Probably some middle ground needs to be found 
  - What are the long term advantages?
  - What might be short-term regressions?

>From a re-branding point of view, it's rather simple. Some usage guidelines:

- "Kontact (KMail, Akregator, ...) is powered by KDE"
- Kontact is part of the KDE Software Compilation
- KDE Kontact, or KDE KMail as "product" names, short "Kontact"

So KDE is the overarching brand, KDE SC is the whole package, Kontact falls under the 
KDE umbrella brand, and Kontact is an application powered by KDE (meaning "builds on 
the KDE development platform").

> http://community.kde.org/KDE_PIM/Meetings/Osnabrueck_8#Marketing_Meeting
> 
> Some of the action items on the list are
> 
> * Get some social networking groups like facebook, twitter and linkedIn
> started. We need to figure out how to string them together and update them
> with interesting stuff. I'll write a blog asking for an interested user to
> take responsibility for the accounts so that we can feed them snippets and
> I don't have to learn how it all works :).

Lydia and Alexandra can probably give you very good tips for this.

> * People of KDE PIM series. It's been a while since I've seen a People of
> KDE PIM article. Assuming the problem is lack of articles to publish, we're
> going to put together a few of them and send them to blauzahl. The
> questions are always the same, so I'll post the question list and poke
> people to answer them.

The problem is usually response time of people. Believe it or not, many people don't 
easily find the time to answer interviews. Assuming people are motivated, you get 
much more interesting interviews with personalized questions, and poking a bit behind 
the answers.

Articles can be posted to the Dot. Something that strikes me is that there are a lot 
of very high quality blog entries coming along on Planet KDE. The Planet has a really 
good coverage (80K hits / day). Much of the content is definitely also Dot quality 
(in fact I asked myself some times why a certain blog post wasn't just promoted to a 
Dot article).
If you consider that, the process of getting it up on the Dot is quite easy. You can 
submit the stories via the content management system on dot.kde.org (it's running 
Drupal) and drop a note to dot-editors at kde.org. The story will then be reviewed 
(usually within two or three days), language streamlined, webmonkey'd and it goes up. 
Good and interested in-depth stories on the Dot get often picked up by journalists 
from bigger news sites.
As to print, there are also some magazines that are eager to get first-hand articles 
into their hands. If anyone is interested in writing an article for a magazine, I can 
provide contacts who will probably be very interested.

> * Getting videos onto youtube. There is already information on techbase on
> how to create videos. I'll try to poke people a bit to make them. Open
> question is whether to use the kde youtube account or set up a kde pim one.
> I'm for the former. I could probably get some of the videos I've made
> before onto youtube if I had an answer to some of the mysteries of this
> one.

People often also ask for an .ogv version, good to make that available as well.

> * Contact journalists with links to information about the cool stuff we're
> doing. Martin Feilner was receptive of the links we've already given, and
> we can keep that up, and can consider making more paths to users in that
> kind of direction.

We have the KDE press channel, a mailing list with about 60 assorted journalists. We 
keep that one low-traffic, and only post pointers to make it really quick to read. 
It's a very effective way of getting timely coverage. There are also regular requests 
for more information and people write follow-up articles.
This can of course also be used for promoting KDE PIM better.

> * Make sure the kde marketing people have information about what is going
> into releases. tokoe to check the existing content of the release
> announcement and feature guide in re kde pim and particularly kaddressbook
> and help updating it if necessary.

That's critical, yes. Release notes are widely spread, so you get a lot of bang for 
the effort put into that. Actually, for the 4.4 release due at the beginning of 
February (relnotes should be done late this month to give translators time to 
translate it into as many languages as possible). Here it would really help to have a 
piece of text contributed to the visual guide that explains the new KAddressbook, 
given that it debutes Akonadi in a released KDE PIM.

> * Make sure packagers can easily discover how to correctly configure their
> platform so that kdepim/akonadi can work flawlessly. Configuration errors
> are often the first contact users have with kde pim and that reflects badly
> on what we are creating. tokoe to create a README.packagers and toma to
> point kde-packagers to it.
> 
> * KDE PIM welcome dude. When we have a new contributor to the mailing lists
> we should have someone who will serve as a sort of "mentor" to guide the
> new contributor around the bewildering amount of stuff going on, tools
> etc. The wiki says tom, but I thought that was to be Thorsten. *shrug*.
> 
> Another item which was not on the list is "get feedback/pointers/ideas from
> the kde promo folks". So, any thoughts?

There you go :)
-- 
sebas

http://www.kde.org | http://vizZzion.org | GPG Key ID: 9119 0EF9
_______________________________________________
KDE PIM mailing list kde-pim at kde.org
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-pim
KDE PIM home page at http://pim.kde.org/