Re: KDE PIM marketing

On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 4:47 AM, Stuart Jarvis <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hey,
>
> On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 9:31 PM, Jos Poortvliet <[email protected]> wrote:
>> As you might have read in the dot story, the KDE PIM team has discussed
>> marketing at the Osnabrück meeting.
>>
>> A few of the results are relevant for -promo so I promised to mail you ;-)
>>
>> Please see
>> http://community.kde.org/KDE_PIM/Meetings/Osnabrueck_10 under the marketing
>> header.
>>
>> In short, KDE PIM 4.7 was the first real release of the 'new' KDE PIM since
>> the KDE 3 times. It took a long time to get it out, indeed longer than
>> expected. The stop-gap measures were not exactly great and resulted in many
>> complaints. Meanwhile, the marketing team tried to keep the spirit up - being
>> a tad too positive, perhaps... The result was that the 4.7 release, which
>> would have needed some patience and understanding, instead resulted in many
>> people giving up on KDE PIM.
>
> Well we communicated what the kdepim peeps told us to communicate, my
> kde pim was somewhat broken at the time so I couldn't draw any of my
> own (positive) conclusions ;-)

Full disclosure...I never stopped using KDE PIM. Worked through what
it took to get it going. And really like the way it works now.

In the beginning, I understood that it was not the final product and
that there might be issues. We also had a culture--similar to
Slashdot--where people seem to relate to snark as the highest form of
humor. In my view, this contributed (contributes) to the impression
that things are badly broken.

>
>> That is sad, as in the 6 months after that release, a HUGE number of issues
>> has been fixed. The KDE PIM team now actually needs quality bug reports - but
>> is unfortunately flooded with lots of complaints. What needs to happen is that
>> we need our KDE Community to start using and testing KDE PIM again; AND we
>> need help bug triaging.
>>
>> Last but not least, we need to change our communication, make clear that 4.7
>> was our FIRST release and the hurt of the huge re-factoring is behind us: it's
>> upwards from now on.

We have what we have _now_. Not sure we can do retrospective damage
control. I just looked for what we've written before. I agree with Stu
and then some. We didn't generate anything...we edited what we were
given. But in what I can find, there's not a lot of hype. It's more
like only part of the story was being told.

But then people were given the opportunity to "upgrade" to KMail2 and
it was messy. I found a set of explicit instructions for Kubuntu. I
followed them exactly and everything worked right (except one thing
that I had to research about some resource not being available.
Changed the location of that resource and success).

I think that it would be a mistake to say that 4.7 was our FIRST
release. It feels a little like rewriting history. Why don't we just
say what happened? A decision was made by smart, caring people to move
from KMail to KMail2, because ____________. It was ambitious and hard,
but it eventually would have been required. We tried to keep
everything running okay, but that didn't work for some people. In
retrospect, there was a lot of learning. We apologize.

Write something similar to words in the sprint story about needing to
clean house and concentrate on the current system. We understand that
people might be turned off, but [insert Jos sermon about the nature of
open source, goodness and light].

I agree with what Anne has written in another message in this thread.
The thing that saved me was that explicit Kubuntu page. Good, explicit
instructions written for everyday users of email, not assuming
advanced fix-it knowledge. A special topic in forum.kde.org that is
tracked by KDE PIM experts who can provide quick help.


>>
>> The plan is:
>> 1. We should stop pushing technical terms like "Akonadi" and "Nepomuk" to
>> users. Work has already been put in to eradicate those terms from the UI but
>> we need to do the same in our communication. These terms have not only gotten
>> a very bad rep but are confusing too. Lets keep it simple: we have the KDE PIM
>> UI's like Kontact Mail and Kontact Address book and the KDE PIM backend.

The terms are unnecessary. However what they do is amazing. The KDE
PIM people should know what the amazing stuff is, and that's what we
should talk about.

Example: Zanshin...alt-F2 "todo: [whatever]" and it shows up in
Zanshin (a quick, simple, useful todo manager from ervin, et al), even
though Zanshin isn't open. Oh look, it's also in my Kontact todo list.

This is just one thing I've found. There must be others.

>
> Ok. But if we are going to do news about KDE PIM that doesn't use the
> backend buzzwords then we need some actual new visible features to
> talk about :-) Will there be some?

+1

What should we talk about? Why should people use KDE PIM instead of
Thunderbird or other app?

>
>> 2. We need to communicate that KDE PIM has finally started fresh and is ready
>> for testing; and needs help bug triaging!
>
> Sounds similar to the story for 4.7 - 'this is the start of something
> great'. Don't get me wrong, I believe it is, but I don't think making
> the same points again - particularly if there are still a lot of bugs
> to be triaged - will necessarily give us the desired results. We need
> some specifics about how good/bad things are, such as, for those who
> didn't switch yet, does automatic migration to KMail 2 work now,
> fairly often?

I agree with Stu here. "finally started fresh" sounds weak. What's the
real story?

>
>> 3. And we need to tell the big story, the how and what of what we did. For
>> that, see the graphic here:
>> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/29347181/KDE%20PIM.svg
>> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/29347181/KDE%20PIM%20big.png
>> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/29347181/KDE%20PIM_small.png
>
> Ok, those are fairly cool. We'll probably still need some kind of
> name/description for the blobs though, even if we don't use 'Akonadi'.
> Also details on why the right hand side figure is better than the one
> on the left would be good.
>
>> The plan is:
>> 1. Change the wiki pages to reflect 1 (done)
>> 2. Let you guys & girls know (hereby done)
>> 3. find a good time to do a big 'call for help' for 2 and do it
>> 4. write articles to address myths around KDE PIM (eg about memory usage,
>> speed, stability, mail loss etc)
>
> Point 3 needs very careful timing - there might be a chance to get
> people back, but getting them back and giving them a bad experience
> will only keep them away longer.
>
> Point 4 would also be useful, particularly if some advantages of the
> changes can be demonstrated at this point. From my personal
> experience, they are not apparent yet, but I do believe they will
> come. People will try the software and they need to experience the
> good things we write about.
>
> Cheers,
> Stu
>

There are probably myths as you describe, but there were also comments
and specific complaints that were real and damaging to people's email
systems. For many people--especially who rely on email--there was a
breach of trust. We're gonna have to earn that back...Anne has good
suggestions. I'd add that there should be some intensive testing of
the migration and the migration instructions.

I also think that we are missing a bet by not including Kolab stuff. I
don't know diddly about it, but I hear from small businesses that
groupware is an important capability. And that's what they do.

I'm definitely up for doing something. Kontact and its parts are
useful (essential) to my daily work.

Carl

_______________________________________________
This message is from the kde-promo mailing list.

Visit https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-promo to unsubscribe, set digest on or temporarily stop your subscription.