Marketing for Xubuntu Lucid

Sat Dec 12 23:36:24 UTC 2009

Jim Campbell wrote:
> Hi Pasi,
>
> On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 4:10 PM, Pasi Lallinaho <open at knome.fi
> <mailto:open at knome.fi>> wrote:
>
>     Hello everybody,
>
>     I've been planning the Xubuntu Lucid marketing quite a bit and
>     here's my
>     current thoughts. The marketing would be one big entity, which would
>     consist several parts:
>
>     1) POSTERS
>     Real-life, touchable posters. Few designs. B&W also. Get people to
>     print
>     them and place them on the walls all over the world.
>
>
> I think in most cases I would feel pretty "meh" about this idea, but I
> think you'd probably come up with something that would look awesome.
The posters wouldn't really take much time to design, as we can use
artwork which is meant for the wallpaper.
>
> Personally, I had been thinking of Xubuntu tshirts.  How come there
> are no Xubuntu tshirts?  :)  Might that be more doable than posters?
>  I think we'd probably be able to get more "oomph" from shirts than
> posters, but maybe I'm wrong. 
I don't know if posters would be "the thing" either, but how can we know
without trying? The idea of having a B&W version as well was because
many people do not have a color printer, thus the color designs look
awful. On the other hand, if they could easily print out a B&W poster
which would look cool, why wouldn't they do it? It isn't a huge
contribution financially but it can bring us many users.

T-shirts would be fine as well. The shirts would definitely cost more to
the users, so the people buying those would probably be lower than the
ones printing our posters.
>
> No offense to the Ubuntu tshirt designers, but the designs haven't
> always seemed particularly attractive to me.  I bet we (our artwork
> folks?) could come up with a tshirt design that more people would want
> to wear. 
I think the shirt color needs to be blue and in top of that, something
light and maybe some patterns (maybe the three or the landscape?). My
concern is I want too much and the shirt printers can't print what I
want. So if we decided to do this, please tell me when there is enough
stuff.
>  
>
>
>     2) WIDGETS
>     Web widgets or something like that. Something a bit more than just a
>     countdown banner. We had the idea of some "special" banner frames for
>     some days, maybe use that idea?
>
>
> I'm not sure what this would entail.  What is a web widget?  When I
> think of widgets, I think of things like gdesklets or Google gadgets.
>  Would these be something like sidebar banners and buttons that people
> could place on their sites to show their Xubuntu love?
Yes, sidebar banners and stuff. Something more than just the countdown
banner. Something they can use all year around, which could *also* serve
as the countdown banners. Maybe a static address so they don't have to
worry about the hassle of changing <img> src's when there's a new
release coming?

I really liked the idea of some "special frames" we thought about doing
last year, but didn't do after all.
>  
>
>
>     3) MICROSITE – THE BIG IDEA
>     A microsite for the LTS release. Link to all the poster sources and
>     widgets. Tell about new releases and the LTS concept. Add more content
>     at least weekly (remember that this content can be ready before it's
>     published, so we don't have to rush when we are near to the release).
>     Maybe some "developer interviews"? Maybe even ask Mark to answer some
>     questions? How to get the voice of users to show? Some interactive
>     parts?
>
>
> It sounds like this idea would coincide with the developer blog (at
> least there is some overlap).
This site could aggregate the developer blog and/or the blogs of the
developers elsewhere to be part of the site.
>
> In terms of the voice of users, perhaps some user interviews would be
> good.  One person who comes to mind is Elizabeth Krumbach.  She is a
> member of the community council and a Xubuntu user.  Also, aren't
> there a few businesses that run Xubuntu?  I seem to recall a group
> that worked with dolphins (??) who sent a couple of emails to the
> xubuntu-users ML.  I think there's also a web development company in
> Montana that uses Xubuntu. 
Yes, the messages can be found from the xubuntu-devel archives [1].
These sound generally good.
> I'm not quite sure I get the focus on just the LTS portion of it, but
> I do like expanding things out a bit.  I think I could help with user
> interviews, if people thought that was a good idea.
The microsite would not be only for LTS (it could be used with all the
releases to tell about new features), but I think it would make a good
job telling about we have an LTS release now and you really should test
this if you want to try Linux.
>  
>
>     4) EVENTS?
>     Some events to lift Xubuntu to even higher level. Ubuntu Developer
>     Week?
>     Ubuntu Open Week (plan beforehand)!
>
>
> If either of them would be up for it, one thing that comes to mind is
> perhaps having Lionel or Cody (or both of them) lead a Xubuntu
> development session during developer week.  Maybe talk about the key
> components / packages of Xubuntu and how our development process
> works.  Talk about some of the development needs of Xubuntu and how
> developers can contribute.
>
> I suggest that because it would be good to get more development
> contributors, and because I don't think we've done any kind of Xubuntu
> development session before.
I agree. We have had quite many "community" sessions. They are good as
well, but we really need more developers.
>  
>
>
>     I'm trying to redesign the website for Lucid also. What are we
>     going to
>     do for the "developer blog" idea?
>
>
> I still think the developer blog is a good idea, but have no major
> opinion on how it should be configured.  
>
> As a side note, Pasi, thanks for putting up the blog note about the
> Alpha 1 release of Xubuntu.  And thanks to Charlie for testing!! 
No problem. The idea actually came from #xubuntu where random users
started talking about how alpha1 torrents need to be seeded better.
>
>
> Jim
>  
>
>

[1]
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/xubuntu-devel/2009-February/006666.html

-- 
Pasi Lallinaho
Xubuntu Marketing Lead
Web-designer, graphic artist
IRC: knome @ freenode

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