[Live-demo] Name Change

Alex Mandel tech_dev at wildintellect.com
Sat Jan 16 15:13:18 EST 2010


Jody,

I think your suggestions could work well. A few clarifications.

By naming the disc, I was thinking code names - some people just like
have a code name for each iteration, and if we did something animal
related it could help us be creative with the desktop art. (Maybe we
should do endangered species, to start championing like Linus and System
76 lately)

As for quantities there are 2 separate "Conference" things mentioned in
the conversations.
1. FOSS4G - Conference organizers determine how many and if to stick
them in bags. We just want to make sure and org committee puts the idea
into the budget and discusses it.
2. Non FOSS4G conferences that local chapters/OSGeo go to for PR and
outreach. At these conferences we often have a booth, help organize a
session or maybe run a workshop. It would be good to have a few
Discs/Sticks on hand that could be given away to interested folks we
meet. This quantity would need to come out of Marketing's budget or
maybe a specific sponsor for the Live project. This is the number we're
trying to figure out so that we have enough to effectively reach some
markets but not too many that we're wasting money and having trouble
giving them away.
(Conferences I'm thinking of are AAG, AGU, AGM Sigspatial, URISA, NACIS,
etc - I wasn't necessarily thinking of the FOSS specific conferences in
Germany, Italy, UK, etc as you point out they might want to print discs
for their attendees)

Thanks,
Alex

PS: By all means I think that LisaSoft is welcome under the license(I
wonder if the disc collection needs some sort of creative commons
license?) to repackage the product under Arramagong for their market if
they want to. Hopefully this means they will still contribute to the
main project and then value add a few things specific for their needs
for an Australian local version. I see easy to make local versions a big
goal down the road.

Jody Garnett wrote:
> I don't think anyone can spell aramaggog the same way twice let alone pronoune it - so we really do need a better name if we are building a brand.
> With respect to names ... I don't think we need "OSGeo" in the name (it is a acronym  which would only need to be explained).  
> 
> My suggestion is "Open Source Spatial" we can have a subtile "Live DVD contents provided by OSGeo Foundation". 
> 
> By not mentioning DVD we are not tiring down our brand to a concept which is already going away (I ran a Live DVD course at foss4g this year and 10% of the class did not have DVD drives).
> 
> For version number the time based system would be perfect; especially if we are rolling out the image as a starting point for conference organisers.
> 
> So although I do not think a yearly brand is a good idea (it would confuse the developer teams we are contacting) there is a related idea came up in the OSGeo marketing meeting this week...
> 
> There is an inherent risk in involved in estimating the number of DVD that need to be produced for the the conference schedule each quarter and going about placing the DVD with any conference materials. I floated the idea (possibly a bad idea) of setting up the Live DVD project as a base ISO image which organisers could add their conference material to and press out the DVD for the number of delegates they expect to attend.  The thinking is that conference organisers and not OSGeo would be taking on the risk of printing; they are also in a much better position to estimate the number of attendees (and are probably putting out their own DVD anyways).
> 
> This scenario would change the nature/branding of the project somewhat - but it would really emphasis the promotion of open source spatial.
> 
> Thanks for starting the discussion, we do need to tread a little softly for Cameron who has his own sponsors to answer to. Don't worry too much about setting up a new brand in terms of discussion - it was the major thing we were worried about when setting up OSGeo - and when it came down to it agreement was reached quickly once the suggestions were on the table.
> 
> Jody
> 
> On 16/01/2010, at 4:30 AM, Alex Mandel wrote:
> 
>> I'd like to discuss the name briefly. I realize Cameron is on vacation
>> and probably won't respond for a week, but I don't think that should
>> hold back at least a discussion. Hopefully we can make a decision by the
>> Feature Freeze date.
>>
>> Based on previous conversations I'd like to suggest that we move to
>> calling the disc/project:
>> OSGeo-LiveGIS or OSGeo-LiveGeospatial
>> I think this is fairly important as we need to properly attribute that
>> OSGeo/FOSS4G is a main driver of this effort and provides infrastructure
>> for the production(We've been discussing a whole other plan for how to
>> properly give credit to sponsors and contributors) I realize it's hard
>> to come up with a name that adequately describes that we have DVD,VM and
>> USB based distribution methods, but to me those are distribution methods
>> and we're not focusing on any one so it seems good to just leave that out.
>>
>> An acceptable alternative would be to come up with a new brand, to
>> permanently fly under, but this might be very hard to come to agreement
>> on considering the wide variety of contributors. If we decided to build
>> a new brand name I think we would also want to move towards becoming a
>> real project with a PSC, dedicated website, etc.
>>
>> Version Naming:
>> Each version(or maybe each year) getting it's own mascot/personalized
>> name as given by the conference organizers of Foss4G. So Last year's was
>> Arramagong, and that could carry until the next Foss4G, or the mid
>> year(between conferences) could just not have one?
>>
>> Version Numbering, I see several options
>> By year with counter 2010.1 or 1.2010
>> By year and month 2010.3
>> By counter 3.0
>> I actually like the 1st 2 because it's more clear when the disc was made
>> and that gives you some idea of what version of software you'll find on
>> them and how recent the build was, a straight counter while letting you
>> know how many have been built is going to increment quite quickly and to
>> mean doesn't really convey much to the end user, it means much more to
>> the developers.
>>
>> I welcome your thoughts,
>> Alex




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