Re: Inspiration

On Tuesday 14 September 2010 22:29:43 Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
> Very inspiring talk:
> http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_act
> ion.html

Interesting, as they normally are. There's been a bit of a trend recently in 
companies marketing themselves in this way (in UK, BMW, Ben & Jerry's, Co-
operative, Toyota) so either his ideas are catching on or he's noticed what 
everyone else is up to ;-)

> What's the why of KDE?

That's probably rhetorical, but I'll offer some thoughts anyway:

My initial thought (before watching video) was "to provide the best free 
software computing experience"

My second thought was why only the best *free software* experience?

After watching the video: my sense of our why (long before I got involved) was 
to take the suck out of free computing - i.e. deliver in free software 
something as good as Windows 95 and not CDE.

Now: our why is to make you free . At least, it is for me. KDE is by us, for 
us (where 'us' can include everyone). That's what sets us apart from Microsoft 
and Apple - maybe even Gnome. In terms of user experience, we lead in some 
areas, trail in others but all the solutions are 'good enough' for most 
people. Being equally good or even better is not enough.

On a more practical note, I've been thinking for a while that our about KDE 
text (http://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/) doesn't quite cut it, even 
though we spent a lot of time working on that together. If you agree with the 
point the guy was making in the video then the initial paragraph has a strong 
emphasis on the 'what'. The difficulty is that a 'why' message can easily sound 
like vacuous marketing speak and maybe "KDE exists to make you free" falls in 
to that. Something to think about.

Essay over :-)

Stu
 
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