[Marketing] Marketing meeting summary

[Alex Mandel]

On 04/20/2012 08:12 PM, nicolas bozon wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> Many thanks for including me in the Marketing comitee.
> i am very glad to join, and i hope i can help and contribute soon.
> 
> I am sorry i missed the last meeting, but it was really early here, JST
> time (05:30 AM, huuu!)
> Thanks for the summary Arnulf.
> 
> Cameron, yes i've mentionned my interest about the OSGeo website possible
> improvements.
> I think the Foundation would need a better webdesign and web presence, in
> order to attract even more users, developers and sponsors.
> I think that some other software foundations have great websites and use of
> social networks, and OSGeo should put more energy on this.
> 
> My first ideas are as follow:
> 
> - I can may be propose a new design for the website in near future, based
> on a more modern and visual UI.

A redesign has been done, we need someone to actually implement it and
do the drupal upgrade in the process. I'll see if I can find where we
stuck the mockups.

> - I'd also like to see more advertizing about Projects themselves, right
> from the home page (not only links, but may be projects logos...)

We should look into how to best represent the projects...

> - Because there is a lot of content from many sources, i think we should
> organize it better (News from Projetcs, OSGeo journal, Blogs, Pictures...)

I'm reading a design book right now, and based on that the feeds etc
should not be the main focus of the page. I think the redesign moves
most of that to page 2.

> - As OSGeo is using Trac massively, and because some partners and I are
> using a modified version of Trac as a full-featured and multi-language CMS,
> i'd like to suggest to use it for OSGeo too.

We are planning a trac upgrade to 0.12 which supports multi-language but
once again need someone to step in and actually do it (infrastructure is
in place). That's an intriguing idea to move the whole site to Trac if I
understand correctly. I'm not sure trac is the best platform though for
a CMS (not that it can't work, but that it might be more work).

> 
> Anyway, please tell me if the comitee would be interested in such a new
> design test, and i would be happy to work on this during my free time soon.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> 
> Nick
> 

So the interesting part here is that the website is supposed to be the
role of the webcom committee (Is it active) and the software stuff is
all handled by the System Admin Committee (Of which I'm current chair).
Historical that has meant that marketing focused on tangible real world
materials, public representation, and development of materials (case
studies, project overviews, etc...).

Great to have you excited about this though and we should continue the
conversation about how to get some of this done.


Thanks,
Alex