TWiki Marketing Minutes, 03 Sep 2007

Attendees

• ArthurClemens, ColasNahaboo, CrawfordCurrie, KennethLavrsen, KwangErnLiew, KoenMartens, LynnwoodBrown, MichaelCorbett, PeterThoeny, RodBeckstrom, SvenDowideit

Place & Time

• IRC Server chat.freenode.net, channel #twiki_marketing
  • (New to IRC? See TWikiIRC)
• or Conference Call into USA +1 712 451 6000 conference code 192170#
• 01:00 PST, 20:00 GMT, 22:00 CET, 06:00 AEST (Australia)

Agenda

Background: The idea of creating a marketing working group within the TWiki Community came up at the TWiki Community Summit in Rome. Here are some of hte notes from that meeting: TWikiCommunitySummitRome2007

KUDOS to KoenMartens for doing a good job of facilitation.

0. Recent Marketing Activities

• 2006 - TWikiOrgDocWork2006 by DocumentationFocusGroup (ArthurClemens, KennethLavrsen, PeterThoeny, SteffenPoulsen) :
  • Support web redesign for better usability: Simplified homepage, "my recent questions" page, tagging
  • TWiki web redesign for better documentation: DistributionDocument, HistoricalDocument, SupplementalDocument buckets; several supplemental documents; links from distribution documents to supplemental documents
  • Plugins web redesign for better usability: Tagging, tag cloud, simplified reports, download links in reports
  • Homepage and Codev web redesign was out of scope
• 2006 - CustomerFocusedTWikiOrg
  • Create customer focused twiki.org with a good navigation model, layout and content for the most common use cases. Target groups: Press/analysts, managers, evaluators, administrators, users, TWiki community.
• 2007-08 - NewWebHomeForSupport
  • Simplified Support homepage - initiated by CarloSchulz
  • AddOnlineIrcChatToSupportWeb
• Ongoing TWikiAdvocacy:
  • TWikiAdvocacy04x00x00 - press release, announce at Freshmeat.net, SourceForge, WikiMatrix
  • TWikiAdvocacy04x01 - press release, announce at Freshmeat.net, SourceForge, WikiMatrix
  • PeterThoenySpeakerEngagements - articles in various magazines, presentations at various venues
  • RodBeckstrom has a busy speaking schedule and will be supporting TWiki

1. Blogging

• Champion - KoenMartens
• Supporting topic - TWikiBlogAndNewsletter

• Koen has created a new TWiki blog http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Blog/WebHome
• Let's support him by contributing pieces!
• Koen - what else do you need here?
• Get linked to other blogs & RSS feeds
• Who knows what bloggers - can we each reach out to 2 or 3?
• Note - Rod has started to promote TWiki to analysts so they include it in their reports

• Rod and Peter have agreed to contribute blog posts
• Blog posts can summarize other activities at TWiki.org but should not repeat them in full
• ArthurClemens has proposed changing "categories" to "tags"
• Questions
  • Should anyone be able to post blogs? Open to all in TWikiCommunityGroup

2. Home Page Redesign

• Champion - ArthurClemens
• Co-Champion - PeterThoeny
• Supporting topic - TWikiOrgHomepageRedesign2007

• New home screen, perhaps thru PublishWebPlugin
• Possible new screens for press/analyst perspective, new prospective users, CEO/CIO, geeks
• Current homepage is designed for SEO, try to keep TWikiGoogleRanking high
• Arthur and Michael created a description of primary target audiences: WebPageAudience
  • This is duplicating CustomerFocusedTWikiOrg, better to merge those topics

3. Spinning TWiki Globe

• Decision - dropped off of priorities and next agenda

4. Testimonials

• Champion - RodBeckstrom
• Supporting topic - YouTubeDemoContest2007

• YouTube Demo Contest - "Why I Love TWiki and How I Use it In my Group!"
• Decision - Rod to put up a new TWiki topic on Codev web

• I'd suggest that we consider using YahooVideos rather than Google - Yahoo is more supportive of TWiki, and does not at this point have an impending launch of a 'competing' product. -- SD

5. TWiki.org Performance

• Champion - PeterThoeny
• Supporting topic - NewTWikiOrgServer2007

• Thanks to SUN, we have new servers coming!
• Thanks to Plug and Play and TWIKI.NET, they will be hosted with free high speed bandwidth!
  • Cisco load balancer
  • 2 x web server: 4 GB RAM, AMD, Solaris
  • Storage server: 2 GB RAM, AMD, Solaris, RAID 1, mirrored, 250GB each
  • will support sponsors with logos

6. Press Releases

• Champion - PeterThoeny
• Co-champion- MichaelCorbett
• Supporting topic - TWikiAdvocacy04x02

• Some ideas
  • do globally and locally
  • do in multiple languages
  • build list of TWiki bloggers

7. Usability

• Champion - CarloSchulz
• Supporting topic - UsabilityIdeas

• Carlo was not on today's call
• Naming of terms:
  • Should "topic" be called "page"?
    • Implication on renaming variables and prefs? (TOPIC, ALLOWTOPICCHANGE, HOMETOPIC, INCLUDINGTOPIC, etc.)
    • We have decided to do this in Rome- what are the implications?
  • Should "web" be called "wiki"?
    • Implication on renaming variables and prefs? (WEB, ALLOWWEBCHANGE, INCLUDINGWEB, etc.)

8. Merchandise

• Champion - KoenMartens is happy to champion it, with a little help
• Supporting topic - TWikiMerchandise

• Design:
  • Our current logo does not have the t-shirt-coolness factor
  • Sell it at cost-price or make some money for the project with it (and if the latter, need an entity to collect / distribute the money)
• Kinds of goodies:
  • T-Shirts
  • Mugs
  • USB-sticks with personal TWiki on it?
  • ...

9. Miscellaneous

• Idea was also floated to explore creating a TWiki Open Source Community Foundation
  • Some thought it should be handled in a different forum
  • Some thought it should be based in EU given heavy community weighting there
• Next meeting Sept 17 same IRC channel, possibly another phone location

IRC Log

• TWikiMarketingLog2007x09x03.txt: TWiki Marketing IRC Log 2007-09-03

Back to:

-- RodBeckstrom - 27 Aug 2007

Discussion

Quite an agenda

-- KoenMartens - 28 Aug 2007

Shirt & Mug

-- FranzJosefGigler - 28 Aug 2007

Where can i order ?

-- KoenMartens - 29 Aug 2007

As a relative newcomer to TWiki I am struck by the fact that one's perception of the power of TWiki increases as one learns more about it. For example, formatted Search is pretty amazing really when you figure out just what it can do. I think that we may need to start thinking about PowerPointEngineering here.

-- MichaelCorbett - 29 Aug 2007

I agree about PowerPointEngineering - without using this term, I have been doing a lot of this for at least a decade, as a product manager and consultant, and it can make a huge difference to how saleable a product or concept is.

In some cases it's even possible to do PPE on an existing software product to create a new product with different positioning, sold in an entirely different situation. Marketeers would also call this re-positioning or developing a different 'story' for the various different scenarios, usually tied to different market segments (whether type of company/individual, industry, usage scenario, or whatever).

-- RichardDonkin - 31 Aug 2007

I am a bit of a newcomer to this TWiki community but I do come from a marketing background and thought I would create two topics that may be of use in guiding subsequent marketing discussions. I apologise in advance if I turn out to be teaching my grandmother to suck eggs but I thought I would follow the wiki paradigm of “be bold”. One page is called WebPageAudience and I thought it might be a useful focus for discussion of who our new TWiki.org frontpage should appeal to. The other, CrossingTheChasm, is slightly more general and it seeks to elicit feedback from the community about what type of customers have adopted TWiki to date and why they did so. I hope they will be of use to you.

-- MichaelCorbett - 03 Sep 2007

Excellent to get you on board Michael! I felt like a lone ranger on the marketing front for a long time. We are looking forward to working together with you on the marking front!

May I suggest to merge the WebPageAudience content into the existing CustomerFocusedTWikiOrg topic?

-- PeterThoeny - 04 Sep 2007

Peter, I'd like to keep WebPageAudience and ensure that it remains a free standing document relating to the people who we are aiming our website at. This enables us to quote it elsewhere eg "Are we keeping the "WebPageAudience in mind with this proposal".

I also think it should be included in the CustomerFocusedTWikiOrg page - but can't we do this by using the Include command (or whatever its called)?

-- MichaelCorbett - 04 Sep 2007