[Marketing] Exhibition Pack

Cameron Shorter cameron.shorter at gmail.com
Mon Dec 1 15:19:25 EST 2008


Thanks Paul, Dave, Michael, Frank for raising these questions.

Dave, re "Who are we targeting", I think that we want all, but OSGeo 
should be targeting funding sources, ie decision makers. The rest will 
follow.

I want to see more Government tenders and similar projects being 
allocated to companies which use open source components.

To reach the decision makes for large contracts, Open Source needs to be 
seen as creditable. And I think this will be achieved by showing case 
studies of successful Open Source & Standards based implementations, and 
for specific selling of these achievements through avenues used by 
decision makers for feeling the market.

I'm in agreement with Dave, LISAsoft has seen a minimal immediate ROI 
from conferences. Presenting at conferences is buying mind-share and is 
a long sales cycle. OSGeo can do conferences cheaper than others by 
using our volunteer workforce (who are often at the conference already), 
and crying poor non-profit status to get a free stand.
I think we do need to target conferences, but as Paul hints, we need to 
limit the conferences we sponsor to only the high value conferences.

Other channels that OSGeo Marketing should focus on is:
1. Our website. This doesn't doesn't target users or decision makers at 
the moment. We need to be more commercial in our approach. Jody Garnett 
has review notes on how to improve this, and this is something that I 
think is worth spending budget on.

2. Case Studies, and how to present them. (as already noted by a number 
of blogs lately). No one has mentioned a webinar channel or news feed yet.

3. Training material. And packaging this up with software. (We do have a 
separate committee for this).

4. LiveDVD. Another channel for getting our software out there which 
complements the Conferences.


Dave McIlhagga wrote:
> One other aspect to think of .. who are you primarily trying to reach. 
> I see two primary groups -- and they would probably take two different 
> strategies if you want to get to them both:
>
> 1. End Users - hard to get to in the traditional GIS space since from 
> my experience most users of open source geospatial come from the IT 
> domain.
> 2. Software Developers - especially corporate interests who embed open 
> source geo technologies into their service/product offerings -- this 
> group can sometimes be found at geo events -- but also general IT events.
>
> These two groups are very distinct and require completely different 
> messages -- but are probably both very valuable to attract as they are 
> both instrumental to the ecosystem.
>
> Dave
> www.dmsolutions.ca
>
>
> On 1-Dec-08, at 12:21 PM, Michael P. Gerlek wrote:
>
>> Good point.  At the risk of flogging dead horses...
>>
>> If the question in the floor is "what's the best way to reach people 
>> with our message?", then we should first ask "what's our message?".  
>> I could come up with different responses depending on whether we say 
>> "promoting open source as an alternative to proprietary stacks" (a 
>> general, broad mssg), "getting people to use GDAL and MapServer" (a 
>> specific mssg), etc.
>>
>> -mpg
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: marketing-bounces at lists.osgeo.org 
>> [mailto:marketing-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Dave McIlhagga
>> Sent: Monday, December 01, 2008 6:01 AM
>> To: Paul Ramsey
>> Cc: OSGeo Marketing
>> Subject: Re: [Marketing] Exhibition Pack
>>
>> It begs another question too ... is targeting geospatial events really
>> the best way to get to people? Corporately we've pretty much given up
>> on it as it just doens't translate into business. I'm not sure if the
>> same rule would apply to OSGeo since the marketing drivers are
>> different -- but it might be worth trying to do some form of basic
>> cost/benefit analysis of the best way forward.
>>
>>
>> Dave
>> www.dmsolutions.ca
>>
>>
>>
>> On 30-Nov-08, at 10:01 AM, Paul Ramsey wrote:
>>
>>> 40 is absurdly huge. Why don't you troll back and actually look at the
>>> email list for instances of people saying "we're doing this
>>> conference..." if it's 20, I'll be surprised.
>>>
>>> P.
>>>
>>> On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 3:25 AM, Cameron Shorter
>>> <cameron.shorter at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Thanks Tyler for putting numbers in.
>>>> What we need to complete the budget is a quantity column.
>>>> How many conference packs do we need to create (I reckon 1 per
>>>> local group =
>>>> 20)?
>>>> And how many conferences do we support per year. Again, I reckon 2
>>>> per local
>>>> group per year = 40. Plugging these figures into to the budget and
>>>> we don't
>>>> leave much budget for anything else.
>>>> Attached is a spreadsheet with a quick sketch at what I'm talking
>>>> about.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo) wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Following from our last meeting and earlier discussions, there'd
>>>>> been
>>>>> consensus to focus marketing efforts on getting a few primary
>>>>> pieces of
>>>>> marketing material together.  With the intent of having a "pack"
>>>>> of material
>>>>> that could sent to (or downloaded and prepared by) someone wanting
>>>>> to
>>>>> represent OSGeo at an event.  Without addressing the issues of
>>>>> who/what/where could get such a package, we've been focusing on
>>>>> what it
>>>>> might contain.
>>>>>
>>>>> Detailed thoughts were hashed through in our last meeting.  I
>>>>> threw some
>>>>> cost estimates up into a table today.  Please have a look, suggest
>>>>> revisions, etc.
>>>>>
>>>>> http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Exhibition_Pack#Cost_Summary
>>>>>
>>>>> After we a general idea of potential costs (either per component, or
>>>>> overall), then we can plug them into our 2009 budget.   Following
>>>>> that we
>>>>> start talking about preparing the components, deciding how to
>>>>> distribute
>>>>> them, searching for sources, etc.
>>>>>
>>>>> Tyler
>>>>>
>>>>> Tyler Mitchell
>>>>> Executive Director
>>>>> Open Source Geospatial Foundation
>>>>> tmitchell at osgeo.org
>>>>> P: +1-250-277-1621
>>>>> M: +1-250-303-1831
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Marketing mailing list
>>>>> Marketing at lists.osgeo.org
>>>>> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -- 
>>>> Cameron Shorter
>>>> Geospatial Systems Architect
>>>> Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
>>>> Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254
>>>>
>>>> Think Globally, Fix Locally
>>>> Geospatial Solutions enhanced with Open Standards and Open Source
>>>> http://www.lisasoft.com
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Marketing mailing list
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>>>> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
>>>>
>>>>
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>>
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>
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-- 
Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Systems Architect
Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254

Think Globally, Fix Locally
Geospatial Solutions enhanced with Open Standards and Open Source
http://www.lisasoft.com



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