Re: [Communications] bastille day followup | plone.org/plone.com

I know that when you're at a sprint, it can seem like the whole rest of the
world is moving in slow motion. That's the exciting thing! By getting the
right people in the room, you can get more done in a day than in six months
of emails.

But, we do have a large community venture to organize. If folks at a sprint
decided to abandon Plone 4 and start Plone 5 as a blank slate, they'd need
to explain themselves to the larger community and justify the change to the
framework team.

I'm not saying anything so radical has happened here! Just making a point
about process.

I'm very excited about the ideas we're hearing from the Bastille Day
sprint. Great stuff! However, I thought that the place we were at in our
release process was that a plone.com site based on existing materials was
being immediately deployed as a first iteration. (In development terms, I
thought we were expecting RC1 within a month.) Meanwhile, new and great
ideas would become part of the next iteration. No "it could be done better"
idea was to interfere with getting the first iteration out.

I completely understand the SEO point, and can understand why it might look
like a blocker. However, my gray-haired head also reminds me that about
three years ago the blocker was that it was impossible to reach agreement
on a homepage that would satisfy both community and marketing teams. (E.G.,
the community needed a homepage that showed security updates, minor release
changes, diverse events and eclectic, community-driven news; marketing
wanted a homepage that showed no security alerts, and only approved press
releases and events. meanwhile, the board wanted a high-profile place to
show sponsor logos.)

Old battles can make us needlessly afraid and unwilling to see that
circumstances have changed. I *really am* excited about the energy and
thinking we're seeing. But, I'd also like to hear more to assure me that
we're not awakening old trolls and getting ready to renew old battles —
with the possible consequence that yet another year may pass without good
web marketing.

Marketing folks, please keep your energy up. Be assured that what you're
hearing back is a sign of an engaged community that cares about your work.

All the best!

Steve




On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 9:39 PM, Dylan Jay <djay-n0pU0XVUApFWk0Htik3J/[email protected]> wrote:

> On 19/07/2013, at 5:26 AM, Elizabeth Leddy <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> > For those that missed the excellent report, the Bastille day sprint
> report is up at:
> http://plone.org/news/bastille-day-day-sprint-2013-results
> >
> > There are a couple major issues I think we need to discuss as a
> community and since people on the marketing/coms team aren't communicating
> with each other and commenting for plone.org is turned off, I'll start
> the discussion here. Weird? maybe, But I don't know where else to go.
>
> I wasn't aware there was a marketing sprint at PSM until you mentioned it.
> Pretty much the way sprints work is that hopefully there is groundwork to
> collect the input of everyone up until that point (doesn't happen as much
> as it should) but then people get in a room and make decisions. It's not
> perfect but given nature of our community and the georgraphy there isn't a
> better way.
> At the end of the day, those that volenteer to sprint on actually
> implemnting plone.org or plone.com are going to be the ones that decide.
>
>
> >
> > ISSUE 1: plone.org and plone.com under 1 domain
> >
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Please, please, please don't do this. plone.org has to be so much more
> fluid than plone.com. We need to maintain it at a much higher level
> (read: restarting constantly) and as a developer I am tired of the content
> I post being under the rule of any marketing team. plone.org should
> eventually showcase developers and what we do, not who we are selling to.
> >
> > Ramon - have you done a blog post about the work you are doing with
> plone.org yet? Maybe talk with the sprinters at Basitlle day? Did anyone
> outside of the in crowd know that there is a beautiful design just sitting
> there waiting for help?
>
> As someone involved in the marketing sprint in NL last year and giving
> feedback on the plone.com designs last year, I was also dismayed in the
> sudden change in direction and especially the decisive manner it was
> delivered instead of acknowledging the work that had gone on previously and
> writing with and expectation that change would be upsetting.
>
> However I thought about it and I actually agree with a single domain.
> Other than the SEO reason given I'd give the other reasons.
> - Effort. We have so much to do and limited volunteer resources to do it.
> 2 sites = 1.5 times the effort. If coming up with a new design and getting
> someone to create and mainatain it were easy then we'd have plone.com by
> now. Maybe a single domain will make it less effort and more likely to
> happen
> - Confusion: It would be good for me to give tell people to search for
> plone and be assured they get a good impression. Having the marketting bit
> to replace plone.org frontpage allows that to happen. I get that plone.comallows us to a have a decision maker focused website with a different
> target market to the developer focus of plone.org. But if I was a
> business that had plone as my product I'd probably have one site with the
> low attention span decision makers targeted on the front page, and the more
> commited developers targeted with a big contribute/community/develop button
> up in the top right. This is how vender open source does it (
> http://www.alfresco.com/). I'd say the reason drupal doesn't is that in
> all likelihood acquia sponsors drupal.com so it would be a conflict of
> interest for them to take over drupal.org. We don't have that problem.
> Silverstripe have both .org. and .com. So I guess there are arguments
> either way.
> - I think idea of bringing in ploneedu and plonegov into plone.org a good
> idea. Again it saves on effort, letting people worry about content only not
> design/maintainance. It gives these efforts more "blessing". Compare it to
> say drupalcommons which is a seperate site and it's unclear who is behind
> it in comparison to the main drupal community.
>
>
> >
> >
> > ISSUE 2: we are completely defunct in marketing. bankrupt.
> >
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > I am at a loss here. I see in the post all of these marketing techniques
> like target users and blah blah which have been done at more than 2 sprints
> now. What do we as a community need to do to get marketing to work with
> each other in the same way that the developers do?
> >
> > How many revamps of plone.com are we going to go through until we
> actually push it? Can we just hire a marketing group that is external and
> pass the buck? At least plone.com would go live and we wouldn't have to
> worry about it.  I'm sincerely disappointed in our inability to get our
> shit together on the marketing front, especially with regards to our
> domains.
>
> I think you are being a bit harsh. Plone has the same problem with code as
> it does with marketing. If the problem isn't low hanging fruit then it's
> hard to get momentum and keep it going. Even with the toolbar code at the
> sprint, some previous work was ignored. I can't blame them for that. They
> were at the sprint and they produced code and at least now we have
> something working-ish that can be improved on.
> I think plone marketing is hard. We all don't agree on how plone should be
> presented. I personally don't like the summing up of plone as the ultimate
> open source "enterprise" CMS but I understand thats the best summary based
> on our current userbase. I'd prefer we looked more to who we "want" to get
> to use Plone, rather who currently does. To me "enterprise" means feature
> rich but hard/expensive to install and configure and you probably need a
> company behind it to even consider it. In reality Plone is now the most
> expressive and easiest to customise CMS on the market. We beat
> expressionengine at it's own game. We just haven't realised it yet as a
> community.
> I think in part because of such disagreements it makes it hard to
> progress. If we hire someone external it doesn't make the problem easier,
> it just means they will know less about plone. Someone just needs to sprint
> on implementing "a" design with "a" slogan on an actual website and then we
> can reevaluate it in 6months. I don't think the messages and that the last
> sprint came up with are too bad all things considered.
>
> >
> > I'm not Linus, so I won't threaten anyone but I promise you this: If
> plone.com isn't up by the end of this year I'm teaching a cat to juggle
> plone balls and just putting a giant animated gif up cause that's the most
> accurate representation of what we are doing right now.
> >
> > Opinions, help, leadership: all welcome.
> >
> > Liz
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Elizabeth Leddy
> > Sent with Sparrow
> >
> >
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