[GRASS-user] GRASS promotion team

[Chip Mefford]

I'd very much like to participate in this project.

I have a bit of background in marketing (not my fault)
and think I have some useful skills to bring to the
table.

That said;
Some points to consider,

Advocacy.

This is always dodgy stuff. Most advocacy is done in
opposition. Comparing a thing against another thing.
Going down this road is something that deserves some
careful consideration.

A list was given, and seeming agreed upon. That was;

(from Malte Halbey-Martin)

1. Build of an easytouse Live-CD (Ubuntu?)
2. Make a brochure
3. Newbie friendly tutorial
4. Technical data sheet for the high end user

Things that we should do later or synchronous
1. Maybe some Newbie forum (wiki or newbie maling list?)
2. build up of a contact database
3. try to send press release e. g. to papers, journals which might be
interested

I would suggest going about this exactly backwards, in
the following order

1. Compile the technical data sheet for the high-end user.
and building from that;
2. Get the newbie friendly tutorial together. Folks involved
in the general GIS education process would be invaluable in
this. They know what people are exposed to early on in GIS
education, and can help tailor this tutorial to the early
user in such a way that it makes sense.
This should also 'go live' as the wiki matures to the
point of at least having a good glossary. All the tutorial
information should be in the wiki
3. Make a brochure.
This is sales, and nothing but sales. It's effective and
difficult to do well. But it must be done if one is really
interested in expanding the impact of a 'thing'. This thing
being the whole Grass concept.
Folks with marketing experience need to sound off here.
Fortunately anyone who can run a solid Grass system can avail
themselves of Scribus trivially. Be fun to collect ideas and concepts
and have a friendly competition of Scribus brochure designs.
4. The 'Live-CD'.
This is a sticky bit of business.
grabbing a Ubuntu or Kbuntu build, shoving Grass in there, and reburning
the ISO might seem trivial enough, but maintaining a Live-CD
distribution is kinda painful.
On top of that, there is the sticky-wicket problem of finding
a live-cd distro that gpl-ish enough to make folks happy all
around. That's tricky stuff. Ubuntu, much as everyone loves it,
has done some remarkable dancing around propriety add-ins (video
drivers mostly) trying to make a working product that is also
painless. Tricky.
The Fedora Project now has a live-cd kit, and there is the
gNewSense distribution as well. There are others. But this
again, requires some careful thought and consideration.


On press releases
OSGEO is trying to wake the world up to the existence of things other
than those-other-GIS-folks. Anyone who has spent time in the
new world of the Cluetrain knows at heart the best way to handle
this kind of thing. It is genuine hard work to promote a concept.
In short, there isn't an event so small that it doesn't deserve
a news release. Someone brings up a mirror, that's big news. Grass
changes version in stable, that's big news. new subjects added
to the wiki, that's big news.

Okay, that's enough from me for now.