For it to "work", however, we will all need to be mindful of these changes and use them in our public communication consistently. This is because such messaging only works when it is repeated. In one speech training program I was in years ago, they would "grade" various aspects of speeches given and one of the metrics sometimes used was "repetition for emphasis". It really does work, and without it branding simply falls apart.
When it comes to promotional messaging in 2010, we are going to be facing a lot more than "just" words we use around our main product brands. The principles around each of these opportunities and challenges will be similar to the branding re-positioning, however:
- They will need to reflect the realities of KDE as it is today and the near future
- We will need to achieve agreement over them
- We will need to be consistent in our implementation and repetition of them
The KDE Promo group is currently extremely alive and vital, more so than it perhaps ever has been in the past. There is real coordination and organization going on, rather than just a small handful of people pulling on the ropes as hard as they can when they can. There is a Promo Wiki that is slowly filling with content and there is movement on getting our web presence more in order. These are great opportunities for those with people and/or web skills who would like to get involved with making KDE even more successful and enjoyable. (The relevant KDE Promo mailing list is here if you are interested. :)
As a result, the practice of accurately and compellingly communicating what we are doing and what we are producing as a result is going to be one of the activities that will be quite visible in 2010 for KDE. This "key quest" has great momentum already, but there everyone in KDE will want to keep an eye/ear on what is happening here so that we can help out with, at the very least, being part of the accurate transmission of these ideas to others as we go around and repeat, repeat, repeat the ideas at the core of our efforts.
I'm also personally hoping that we can come up with some really moving and fundamental "reasons for KDE" messaging in 2010 that can answer "Why should I be using KDE software, and which KDE software in particular should I be using?" Sparking new appetites for Free software will be aided immensely if we can do this.
(This article is part of the "Key Quests for KDE in 2010" series)
5 comments:
Well the big question with promo is (as I discussed in my talk at camp yesterday): will we be able to keep the momentum, AND grow it enough to start moving on to 'the big plans'. We have plans, no lack of those, but execution will be difficult. Coordination, as you said, has been improving but I believe it is not yet what it needs to be for us to be able to move to the next level.
@jospoortvliet: indeed, which is why this made my key quest list :)
what would be useful is to enumerate what the "next level" goals are and what is lacking, in concrete terms, in our coordination so that we can improve that to the point we're serving ourselves well with it.
we may also want to examine our "big plans", as you put it so well, and define/prioritize them so they meet our resource availability for 2010 nicely.
who do you think could lead such an analysis on the promo mailing list?
Once the time is right I will start doing so myself, at least that's the plan. I want to get a couple of things moving before akademy but I don't want to overstretch but make sure what we curently do is covered and durably maintained.
I might be a bit conservative but I've seen the promo efforts go stale one time to many.
Personally I'm hugely impressed by the rate and quality of new content appearing on the Dot these days. There's something new and compelling to read more or less every day, and that certainly wasn't always the case in the past. Our stories are also getting picked up / linked to from other venues much more frequently now as a result, and the vibe on the virtual streets is increasingly one of KDE being one of the liveliest FOSS communities around, with a ton of stuff going on all the time. I think if we can keep this up, a lot has been won already.
In other words, keep sending in stories, folks :).
http://wiki.kde-ir.org/?title=Release_counter_en
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