[VisCom] Update on brochures

[Tyler Mitchell]

On 6-Jun-06, at 2:14 PM, Jason Birch wrote:

> One of the downfalls of the balkanized open source geospatial  
> community is that it has been seen as just a set of tools.  In  
> order to "sell" OSGeo to potential users, they will need to see  
> solutions.  The most effective case studies for this task would be  
> cross-project rather than project-specific, and the community  
> biographies I had in mind would be of users who are successfully  
> using or contributing to (and getting value from) multiple projects  
> as well.

After Where 2.0 is past, this would be worth viscom discussing and  
putting together some thoughts on.  I am interested in seeing what  
can be done here.

> As to site layout, I really doubt (but could be wrong) that all of  
> the existing strong communities will want to modify their existing  
> sites to conform to an arbitrary OSGeo layout.  I certainly don't  
> want to duplicate content from the project sites or limit their  
> autonomy, but I think that we need to sell the OSGeo solution up  
> front and in a consistant manner before the users navigate to the  
> (often dense and technically-oriented) project pages for more  
> detailed information.  Of course, different users have different  
> needs; developers would likely just be presented with a list of  
> links to various projects and resources.

Way back in Chicago, we had a 'community' sub-group do some  
brainstorming.  One of the unanimous (at least within the sub-group)  
ideas was that we should start to move toward common branding,  
styling, etc.  The ultimate goal being one set of web services  
catering to all projects, but the interim goal would be to at least  
help all OSGeo project sites agree on a standard look 'n feel for  
their portals.  That way, they can at least adopt some OSGeo branding  
concepts to their local sites, even if they never move to a common  
portal.

Obviously some good overlap between WebCom and VisCom on these  
ideas.  I doubt many projects are so hung up on 'their' web design,  
from the look of many of the project web sites they could probably  
enjoy the help.  We'll see how the brochures go over, it will be a  
good start.

Tyler