[Marketing] Marketing plan part 3

[Dave McIlhagga]

One quick thought -- certainly the merits of spending the $$$  
allocated to marketing in one area or another are important to  
discuss and I'll leave that one to the committee to decide what makes  
sense.

Re. some of the other items however:

1. Money has been budgeted to keep the infrastructure up, so this  
should not be an issue.

2. Re. funding technical efforts - I think this is generally where we  
see most success from volunteer work. If a set of volunteers see a  
specific need for money to help "get over the hump" in special cases  
- perhaps it's worth looking at. But apart from that, I'm not sure  
it's the best thing for the foundation to be meddling with.  
Contracting, determining who to contract with, etc. etc.. may end up  
costing more than the 5-10k that would be spent in these areas.  
Technical work in particular doesn't just have to be built -- it has  
to be sustained. If funding is required to build it ... I really have  
to question whether the ability for it be sustained in the long run  
truly exists.

Personally -- I think putting a solid professional face on the  
organization always adds credibility and gives potential adopters of  
these technologies the confidence that this is for real and not a  
"risk" to be associated with.

Dave




On 19-Nov-07, at 11:53 AM, Michael P. Gerlek wrote:

> I'm sorry I haven't been to any of the ex-VisCom mtgs lately, nor  
> was I
> around for the Victoria discussions, but I'll just offer two  
> points, in
> case no one else has already, based on my previous VisCom experience:
>
> First, we are looking to spend a sizable chunk of the Foundation's
> (limited) money on this; what are the opportunity costs, and will we
> have enough money to do follow-on activities afterwards?  I'm  
> concerned
> that if we spend this money up front, we may not have sufficient funds
> to later attend shows and what-not.
>
> Second, or more fundamentally, is this really a worthwhile  
> expense?  My
> view on OSGeo marketing has evolved a lot over the past two years, and
> I'm more generally of the opinion that monies should be spent on  
> things
> of direct value to the members.  That is, keeping our  
> infrastructure up,
> getting better one-click installs, giving money to projects with
> worthwhile efforts that need additional funding, etc.  More  
> succinctly,
> what is it that the Marketing team is now intending to "market" to the
> world, with exactly what expected results, and how important is that
> activity?
>
> Sorry to rain on anyone's parade, and if this has already been  
> discussed
> I'll shut up and go away, but I fear this group may be repeating  
> what I
> now view as some of the mistakes I made when I was trying to direct
> VisCom.  I think OSGeo is now sufficiently well-known, at least for  
> the
> moment, that getting our name "out there" isn't as important as it was
> ~12 months ago.
>
> -mpg
>
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: marketing-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
>> [mailto:marketing-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Tyler
>> Mitchell (OSGeo)
>> Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2007 10:48 PM
>> To: marketing at lists.osgeo.org
>> Subject: Re: [Marketing] Marketing plan part 3
>>
>> Maybe you can propose a max budget (USD$) to be spent on this and
>> then make a motion to continue?
>>
>> Arnulf - have any particular ways you want it handled?
>>
>> Tyler
>>
>> On 17-Nov-07, at 3:17 PM, Jeroen Ticheler wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks Jo,
>>> I hope we can get a vote going on this so we could proceed if
>>> others are positive to. Should I put forward a motion for this to
>>> proceed? Birgit indicated that it would be good for them to start
>>> this year since they have more work upcoming next year and
>> that she
>>> wanted to be sure they could give the project the attention it
>>> deserved.
>>> Looking forward to feedback. Cheers,
>>> Jeroen
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