[Board] Re: Defining an OSGeo Ambassador role

[Seven (aka Arnulf)]

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Brian,
thanks for your input. Did you read the follow-up messages and do you
feel that your thoughts have been addressed in the current proposal at:
http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/discuss/2012-May/010296.html

The board might agree to the current proposal tomorrow so if you think
this is all wrong now is a good time to say so. Even if we do approve
to the general direction we can still continue to refine it in the
Marketing committee over the next weeks, so feel free to join us there
too.

Best regards,
Arnulf

On 21.04.2012 18:40, maplabs at light42.com wrote:
> All -
> 
> I speak out bluntly with the best intentions, so please take my
> comments with a bit of healthy sceptiscism.. this discussion is
> naive, and has a lot of wishful thinking in it.. Charter Members of
> OSGeo are by and large coders.. coders are an odd lot and certainly
> not always gregarious and outgoing.. Moreover, after 20+
> professional years here in Silicon Valley and Bay Area, I can tell
> you that the relationship between marketing (yes the M word) and 
> engineering has always been one of strange bedfellows at the least,
> and filled with mutual distrust and antagonism at worst. OSGeo is a
> volunteer corps of to-the-bone engineers, really. Marketing the M
> word, leaves a bad taste in the mouth of many techies, for some
> good reasons.. You can easily characterize the marketers as 
> superficial, flighty and opportunistic, lacking loyalty, lacking
> depth of knowledge, manipulative, etc.. Yet lets talk about the
> real qualities of the substrata of marketing, then back to the
> question at hand.. We live in an age of insane abundance.. First
> the industrial system started producing more widgets than anyone
> could use, so modern marketing was invented to "create demand" for
> the huge volumes of industrial products available..  The green
> revolution doubled and doubled again agricultural output in many
> parts of the world. So packaging and branding of processed foods
> became a big business with marketing brands along with it.. Now
> software.. do I have to describe the insane abundance's associated
> with modern sfwr ? Probably not.. SO how do people "choose" among
> all this insane abundance? They develop a brand impression, and
> then brand trust. Related goods and services come out under a
> brand, and a user/consumer can make a better, smaller incremental
> decision instead of a huge decision, to try, then perhaps adopt, a
> good or service.. Another marketing function - to faciliate
> delivery ... In the world at large, it takes a chain of
> responsibility and actions, and usually money, to pass along goods
> (somewhat services) from origin to destination. Marketing builds
> these channels as well.. the people who are making a decision to
> invest in this brand as a facilitator of business.. a middleman, a
> banker, a local govt, etc all have to decide that this brand is ok
> and worth committing to some process, and then see it pass through,
> to users of the good and service.. usually for a profit, too
> 
> - So what is an OSGeo Ambassador ?  Someone who in the middle of 
> the new circumstances of a software on the Internet, builds the
> brand, develops relationships and facilitates delivery. "All OSGeo
> Charter Members should be doing this" Well sure, to some extent.
> but it is naive to believe that the functions could be done *well*,
> and *as much as they are needed* by an ad hoc group of engineers. I
> think I have laid out the basis of the argument here... I will
> throw in one more thing.. That is, that at the end of the day, an
> Ambassador has to be able to build BRAND AWARENESS, TRUST and
> CONFIDENCE. It is trust and confidence that make the content of the
> OSGeo branded engineering carry through individuals, to their
> organizations. All those three-ring binders, color glossies,
> "commercials", coffee mugs and pens, white papers, awards, events,
> news articles etc etc are part of building awareness then trust and
> confidence. It takes concerted effort, planning and execution to do
> these things well.. I have heard some say at times that OSGeo
> should do none of these.. well thats one opinion. There are other
> opinions.. /missive
> 
> -- Brian Hamlin GeoCal OSGeo California Chapter 415-717-4462 cell
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________ Board mailing list 
> Board at lists.osgeo.org 
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/board


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