Taking KDE Promo & Marketing to the Next Level
No, I didn't drop off the Planet. I just haven't blogged since... hmm, since when? Well, since a while. There's been plenty of stuff deserving a blog, but due to several lousy and less-lousy reasons they never ended up here.
This time I can't remain silent though. Somehow I managed to get myself volunteered for the KDE Marketing Working Group. That of course requires an explanation...
KDE is maturing. Rapidly. And with maturing come the last growing pains. Not all our established ways of going about things scaled with the project. During aKademy 2005 in Málaga (Spain) the KDE e.V. membership decided to form working groups to address and streamline the bottlenecks.
The rest of the week several BoF sessions took place to give shape to this decision. We decided that the three areas in need for more guidance were Technical, HCI (Usability, Accessibility, Artwork) and Marketing & Promo. These three working groups are in various stages of formation and with Tuesday's announcement the "MWG" as we call ourselves is now official. Expect announcements of the other working groups over the coming months or perhaps even weeks, when the charters for their modus operandi are sorted out.
The MWG is strictly speaking the entire community of active KDE promoters. This includes the existing kde-promo mailing list, but also all the people who are not active there and still promote KDE. It also includes the three idio^H^H^H^Hvolunteers who do the coordination work and the reporting to and from the KDE e.V. membership. (That's me, Wade Olson and Sebastian Kügler.)
Whenever we speak of the MWG in the future we're referring to those three brave souls. The Real Men (and Women) who do the grunt work will be described as the Marketing Community or similar. So don't feel left out when you're not part of the l33t MWG. Instead, be glad that you can do what you're good at instead: writing articles, showing off KDE during fairs and events, creating artwork, sponsoring advertisements or just showing everyone the greatness of KDE.
KDE 1 was the fulfillment of Matthias Ettrich's vision of a Free Software desktop for Unix. KDE 2 saw our core libraries rise to great height and KDE 3 brought the rise of dozens of killer applications. KDE 4 will bring the Free Software desktop to the masses, both technically, by supporting more platforms than any other Free Software desktop, next to our existing Unix and Linux offerings, but also because we will get our marketing act together and start spreading the message.
We've got quite a few ideas to streamline the entire marketing and promo process and by the time KDE 4 is out our marketing machine will kick more ass than the release itself. Hmm, given the exciting stuff going on for KDE 4 that's too ambitious. And maybe that's for the better anyway, because some well-known companies are famous for promising stuff they can't deliver. KDE is going to make history by not only promising, but even delivering, how's that for a slogan?
Anyway, we've got ambitious plans, and lots of ideas, now it's up to the community to turn them into reality. Yes, that's YOU. People who can present KDE at LUGs, trade shows and OSDW workshops. People who can create artwork, flyers, brochures and other promo material. People who can talk to the press. You know you always wanted to make KDE Konquer the world, so why not start thinking today? When we launch SpreakKDE in the not-so-distant future you can showcase ideas to the community at large.
Be there and help us kick ass!