A Few Proposed Changes

Hi all,

I want to use this email to bring up a few subjects with you. First of all
congratulations to the nbmarketing team in helping us reach the milestone
of 10 000 subscribers to [email protected], GREAT JOB! We have gained
over 8 000 in the past year!

Due to the size of the NetBeans announce mailing list and the profile of
the subscribers I think we need to tweak a few things.

1) The name of our monthly newsletter "Sprout" means in one definition - to
   grow, give off shoots or buds (like on a flower). This was sufficient in
   the past but I think we need to reflect a more serious attitude and one
   that would be recognizable to all of our readers and not just the native
   English speakers. I think a more understood name such as the "NetBeans
   Developer Journal" would be better for the growth of our list, the 
project
   and to better our Open Source image.

2) As I stated earlier the profile of the people on the nbannounce mailing
   list has changed. In order to maintain the list growth and keep people
   informed of NetBeans activities and developments we need to keep the
   traffic on nbannounce to a minimum; maybe one or two messages a month.
   Sprout is the proper messaging tool for this audience. However the 
weekly
   newsletter is not. I think we need to move the weekly newsletter to 
nbusers@
   and nbdev@. I would suggest to inform the subscribers of nbannounce 
of the
   changes in an upcoming issue and point them to appropriate lists in 
addition
   to announcing these changes through our monthly newsletter, or the 
NetBeans
   Developer Journal ;-)

So these are my proposed changes. I would like to hear your opinions so 
if you
can share them with the nbmarketing list I would appreciate it.

Cheers,

- Rob -

PS - We have made great strides bringing value to our monthly newsletter 
as a
team and I say congratulations to all of you who have made this 
possible. Let's
continue to provide great content and work together to make the 
newsletter of
the highest value we can to the NetBeans.org project.