[Marketing] seeking a mandate

[Jody Garnett]

> A few thougths, in no particular order:
> 1. I suggest this question is not just about the MarkCom's mandate (the
> rights) but also about the MarkCom's responsibilities (the duties).
>

Yeah that is where we are starting the conversation; without a clear
mandate from the board we do not have a useful committee.


> 2. Marketing, PR and communication are 3 terms that are related closely.
> To my idea marketing could be about defining a message and an audience), PR
> is about sending the message to the audience and communication is about
> handling the messages you get back from the audience.
> That's just my interpretation, my main point is that too often anything
> related to communication is handed over to the marketing & PR department.
> Thus, in the smallest sense MarkCom is the abbreviation for
> MarketingCommittee,
> and in the broadest sense it should be MarkComCom (Marketing and
> Communications Committee). ;-)
>

Nice definition, and I see your point.  So far Marc is doing a great job of
keeping us focused establishing message/audience ....

3. I see a close relationship between MarkCom & Planet.OSgeo.org


Not sure I see it. But then again we have to establish audience/message
first.


> 4. Although MarkCom probably relies on the website as one of its channels,
> it seems odd to me to make MarkCom responsible for the website from a
> technical/infrastructural point of view. MarkCom should define what it
> needs are (easy ways for blogging, sending uit press releases) and be
> responsible for the content and probably the styling&design, although
> that's more a communications aspect.
>

Sorry if I gave that impression :)

Marketing committee is not being asked to take responsibility for the
technical/infrastructure; we are being asked to run a RFP/RFQ. If we double
back to the audience/message first we can see what content meets our needs.

Perhaps SAC should be responsible for translation the functional needs of
> MarkCom into a technical solution, either self-hosted or in the cloud. (My
> prediction: in this functional-centered approach changes are high to end up
> with WordPress instead of the more tech-based Drupal ;-)  ).
>

Sure? No idea ...

Of course this can be done by an external party in a project, as long as
> you know which committee is responsible for maintenance after delivering
> the projects results.
>

And this is the tricky part; while I expect SAC can run the resulting
website; responsibility for the content is something to consider. The
website committee had too broad a "do everything" mandate to be successful
/ attract volunteers. Perhaps an outreach "user focused" website will do a
better job of attracting volunteers.


> 5. Find out what the outreach committees, projects, local & regional
> chapters and events need and expect from MarkCom.
>

I expect those interested in marketing/message are already present on this
list; perhaps we can do a call for volunteers when we have a mandate?

6. For OSGeo outreach, start with thinking of which domains are
> high-potentials for outreach.
> Broadcasting to 8 billion Earthlings isn't useful, narrowcasting to
> specific groups (open source but not-yet geospatial developers & users,
> open data owners and users) makes more sense.
>

I was thinking more geospatial not yet open source potential users makes
sense :)

Thanks for the thoughtful discussion Gert-Jan
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/marketing/attachments/20161202/d3f9dc27/attachment.html>