[Marketing] Re: [Board] Marketing Costs/Budget in 2009

[Ari Jolma]

Chris,

Very good observations. This should be brought to the attention of the 
marketing committee, from which we are eagerly waiting for a marketing 
plan with associated costs (i.e., how to spend the money we're expecting 
to have). (I just did that by cc'ing to the marketing list)

Tyler wrote somewhere that some say "Your Open Source Compass" is lame. 
"We support the software that supports your geospatial operations" 
sounds very good although it's a bit long for the logo.

Regards,

Ari

Christopher Schmidt kirjoitti:
> To Whom it May Concern,
>
> Recently, I was reviewing the Board's budget discussions for the Budget
> in 2009 in the mailing list archives, especially as they relate to
> possible expenditures for Marketing in 2009.
>
> I'll admit that I feel slightly confused as to what the goal of the
> marketing budget is. From what I'm reading, there is an expectation that
> marketing funding would be a significant portion of the spending from
> the foundation as a whole, and I'd like to understand how that money is
> or might be spent.
>
> Currently, I see evidence that some significant portion of the marketing
> budget in previous years was used for "Event support" -- buying booth
> space, primarily, or other similar events. Although I see the
> importance, in some cases, of attending events, I wonder if there might
> not be a more efficient way of marketing OSGeo with funds that may or
> may not be available. To me, it's not clear that event support really
> has the highest return on investment for OSGeo, even within the
> marketing world. 
>
> Specifically, I think that one of the areas that OSGeo is doing poorest
> in marketing is in simply presenting a unified view targeted towards
> potential sponsors. OSGeo -- as a community -- has grown organically in
> a way that is both healthy and encouraging. However, OSGeo as a movement
> towards a well-known name is not doing particularly well. The key
> message/purpose of OSGeo -- "We support the software that supports your
> geospatial operations" -- is one that we have not put nearly enought
> effort into selling, in my opinion.
>
> One example of an organization which has taken the lead -- especially
> recently -- in rebranding itself, is the OpenGeo group (the Geospatial
> division of the Open Planning Project). The web presence of OpenGeo --
> http://opengeo.org/ -- is in a style that corporations feel immediatley
> at home with, and has much more 'gut appeal' to the types of
> organizations that OSGeo seems to be seeking as sponsors than the
> current OSGeo website does.
>
> This wasn't accomplished by creating a lot of booth materials --
> OpenGeo's total booth materials cost for FOSS4G must have been very
> minimal compared to even OSGeo's this year. 
>
> The current OSGeo website is not a completely inadequate community site.
> It has some success in that regard. But OSGeo -- as an entity seeking
> sponsorship -- can't only be about building the community. It really
> needs to be seen as an organization which is supporting these Open
> Source projects to be truly successful.
>
> With that in mind, I would like to propose for your consideration the
> following:
>
>   In order to accomplish its goals of supporting the Open Source
>   projects that make up OSGeo, OSGeo should take on the task of
>   improving their brand by creating a strong web presence targeted
>   towards potential sponsors. Specifically, this web presence should be
>   seeking to identify other organizations with similar potential
>   targets, and mimic the successes of those organizations in
>   presentation of materials.
>
>   The materials being presented should include:
>     * A high level overview of OSGeo and what it is
>     * A high level overview of the projects that are currently supported
>       by OSGeo, targeted towards executive -- rather than
>       developer-oriented -- summary
>     * A high level overview of how OSGeo achieves its goals in
>       supporting these projects
>     * How organizations can help support OSGeo in the above task.
>
>   This web presence should exist in *addition* to the resources which
>   are currently used by the community.
>
> It's not clear to me if this effort should be pursued within the
> existing marketing community in OSGeo, or pursued by some other group
> already existing within OSGeo. It is clear to me that there has not been
> a lot of thought put into the current website from the perspective of
> someone with experience in marketing. This isn't a bad thing,
> neccesarily, but I think in order for OSGeo to continue to grow, this is
> going to become more and more of a problem.
>
> Clearly, this is not the sole marketing task for OSGeo: materials to be
> used at conferences should continue to be pursued. However, I think to
> some extent, OSGeo needs to help projects which help themselves beyond a
> certain point. OSgeo's job is to act as the starting point for people to
> get *to* the information they need about a project -- not a place to
> provide that information. Right now, probably due in part to the level
> of participation by the projects themselves in the OSGeo community,
> there is a blurry line here, and I think that's one of the things that
> should be changed. 
>
> It's not entirely clear to me whether the OSGeo drupal website that
> currently exists is important to the community. It's possible it is, and
> that it could continue to exist in some form. However, I think that it
> is not sufficient as an executive overview of what OSGeo is, what it
> does, and what each of its proejcts does from the marketing perspective.
> It is clear to me that some projects are better at internal marketing
> that others -- OSGeo should take the first step for each of these
> projects within its own realm, and encourage projects to do their own
> work outside of that. 
>
> We've built a great community. The explosion of local chapters is
> evidence of that. The desire to become an OSGeo project from projects
> currently not in incubation is also evidence of that. In order to
> continue to grow and succeed in supporting our projects, I think it's
> really time to seriously look at how to market OSGeo as an organization
> to executives with checkbooks, and I think an improved web presence is a
> key part of that task.
>
> Thank you for your consideration.
>
> Best Regards,
>   


-- 
Prof. Ari Jolma
Environmental Management Information Technology
Teknillinen Korkeakoulu / Helsinki University of Technology
tel: +358 9 4511 address: POBox 5300, 02015 TKK, Finland
Email: ari.jolma at tkk.fi URL: http://geoinformatics.tkk.fi