Projects/Promo/Booth and Marketing Sprint 2009

This page is about the Booth Sprint 2009 and the Marketing Sprint 2009. We are aiming at a joint sprint location and date.

Location

Stuttgart, Germany

(decided using http://doodle.com/kugq7vizs73uvhfw)

location for the sprint has been set in stone now. The sprint itself takes place at KONSEC GmbH.

http://maps.google.de/maps?q=Leitzstrasse+45+Stuttgart

A big thank you to Martin Konold who made this possible.

For accomodation see the bottom of the page.

Date

November 13 to November 15 We will expect arrivals from Thursday 12th on and departures on Monday 16th. Of course this depends on convenience for each participant... (using http://doodle.com/w92mtg9z6zqngx7d)

How-to

Me (jos) has prepared an approach on how to accomplish all the goals for this meeting. I think it is unrealistic to expect us to finis everything so we'll have to prioritize. The morning of the first day (Friday) will in part be spend on setting realistic goals and working out a way of accomplishing them.

Booth Sprint

Agenda

In general, everything related to booths (and promo). Feel free to suggest things you'd like to do as well.

• posters and other booth artwork: how should KDE booths look like?
  • art format and font requirements for ordering large banners

• booth box: what do we have, what do we need, does the booth box fulfill its purpose, what else can be improved, ...
  • subset for when giving presentations that has wireless usb pointer/clicker

• discuss US boothbox with gary, blauzahl (alspehr on skype), or geiseri on skype
  • we have no permanent box or monitors
    • if we buy a box, we need to know if we will buy monitors or not before
  • is the hardware underpowered? or a good example that kde can run on an Atom?
  • issues with getting swag/etc from germany (not efficient use of postage!)

• KDE showcase: an installation medium which is dedicated to showcase KDE (this already started at openSUSE conference)

• documentation: make life easier by providing to-do lists and/or guidelines for booth setup, booth management, questions you have to answer, what to do when somebody is annoying about swag or in general...

• discuss whether it'd be nice to give some swag to KDE contributors, esp at events. Minimal boothbox for eg South americas, india? See mail by ann-marie on october 17th to kde-promo.

• stickers: have some that are easy to print for local groups, good for badges, kids, and laptops. The first two can be less durable stickers.

• swag policy: Is it needed that we have t-shirts/etc at events? production, storage, transit become issues. Do we sell them at cost or to make a profit?
  • • in usa, we gave some away (contributors, prospective sponsors, "partners", starving and enthusiastic users), and sold others at "suggested retail" -alex

Marketing sprint

Agenda

• Write text for a promotional booklet for FOSS.in (this is how the idea started, we need this for Praedeepto in India but these folders can/will come to Europe as well).

• Flyers: there have been some cool "get involved" flyers on the promo list lately, however, what's missing is the kind of flyer that informs about KDE, about pim, about edu, etc. Probably the booklet above.

• first content for release announcement and feature guide for 4.4 and creating a plan for the next few months to finish it properly.
  • how about adding a section on non-core apps (digikam/showfoto, amarok)?

• move on rebranding:
  • kde.org/whatiskde text rewritten
  • about dialog for KDE (which still mentions K Desktop Environment) rewritten
  • dot story about rebranding.
  • we need a document to put up somewhere for people to look at now and in the future that provides the "kde is a team, it's an umbrella project, we create products, .." etc along with example phrases to use

• preparing for the marketing around next Akademy

• plan a marketing/promo track for next Akademy:
  • Topics:
    • • a KDE booth
      • a KDE local group
      • quick talks from various people having represented KDE: focus on either the successes or the things that could get improved
      • workshop about the local agreement and practically how to start a group, link between such a group and the whole KDE
      • Marketing/promo/booth BOF's

• discuss how we can make it easier for local teams like the ones in Spain, Brazil and India to connect to the international community

• articles and procedures for the dot

• discuss the creation of a 'mean and lean release machine' (eg we start doing the release announcements for the wider KDE community, like Digikam, K3B, Amarok, KDenlive and more)

• reviving commit digest - see http://blogs.gnome.org/commitdigest/ for more minimalist commit digest example
  • incorporate into bugsquad webpage

• improving kde.org/kdeslides to make it a better resource for presentations
  • encourage projects to take regular screenshots after major changes and give svn location to commit them to?

• improving buzz.kde.org brainstorm

• discuss how to get ppl involved, how to improve the webpages we have to guide people to contributing (eg bugsquad, art, documentation, coding). Create a get involved page on techbase, linked to from kde.org page.

• discuss how to get more donations: make it easy for ppl to contribute money to a specific project they care about; set up a marketing campain, first a petition then fundraiser; play on 'I don't contribute code but I can help with money'?

Move to one location for the wiki; move all 'old' content over.

On a more strategical level, there are:

• entrenching and expanding the Be Free slogan as an umbrella concept that we continue to invest in and grow even further

• decide how to merge the main topics we have: social, contextual, online services, etc.. into a single coherent set of thoughts that we can create messaging around

• figure out our communication strategy / goal for 4.4 and 4.5

• figure out if gnome 3 will meet their release deadline - and how we should be positioning ourselves as gnome goes through their turn of growing pains (ie: encouraging users to stay positive - our target is not gnome, it's the guy with 90% market share...) (we should congratulate the gnomies on 3 on the dot when it comes out)

• we have to figure out how to stand out in our marketing and communication, see http://www.ted.com/talks/seth_godin_on_sliced_bread.html and his other talks.

www sprint

Agenda

• reworking the navigation structure of www.kde.org

• improving the contents of www.kde.org (see rebranding above). Think about kde.org/whatiskde and www.kde.org/info/. This will be a lot of work!

• moving pages from www.kde.org and *.kde.org to wikis

• working on a new start page for www.kde.org

• final content for spread.kde.org based on the content from the booklet mentioned earlier.

Accommodation

Hotel is the Etap Hotel, Stuttgart:

http://maps.google.de/?q=Siemensstrasse+28+Stuttgart

We have reserved rooms for everybody listed on the TechBase page. The hotel has free wifi, breakfast included.

Distance between hotel and sprint location is ~350 metres.

Travel

As soon as we know the costs for each person, we will apply for reimbursement from the e.V. Each of the participants books their flight/tickets etc and sends a reimbursement form to the e.V. (kde.org/ev)

It is usually cheaper, when flying trans-Atlantic to fly to London or Paris first and then use Ryanair or another low cost carrier to get to the final destination. The English language wikipedia page suggests that there is a direct flight Atlanta to Stuttgart via Delta Airlines if anyone is looking that route.

There is an international airport in Stuttgart. However, it doesn't look like they have direct transatlantic flights. Luckily, there is a direct train connection going from right underneath the Frankfurt airport terminal to Stuttgart main station, which is most likely the easier and cheaper route.

You can check train connections on the website of Deutsche Bahn, the German railway company, at http://www.bahn.de/international/view/en/index.shtml If you are arriving at Frankfurt Airport, you can use a direct connection to Stuttgart Main station. Enter "Frankfurt(Main)Flugh" and "Stuttgart Hbf" for start and end of your journey.

Public local transport

In Stuttgart, you pay by zone. The inner city is in zone 10, surrounded by zone 20.

• Stuttgart main station is in zone 10
• The hotel is near underground station "Maybachstraße" (zone 20)
• The sprint location is near "Maybachstraße" (zone 20) or "Pragsattel" (both zones 10 and 20)

Main station to Maybachstraße therefore are two zones, main station to Pragsattel is one zone.

Tickets and prices can be found here: http://vvs.de/en/service_firststeps_fahrausweise.php

Interested in participating

Please add your name, whether you need accomodation and what your approximate travel costs are.

Name	Acc. needed	Arrival	Departure	Travel costs
Eckhart Wörner	no	always there		EUR 0
Frank Karlitschek	no			EUR 0
Frederik Gladhorn	no	always there, except Saturday		EUR 0
Lydia Pintscher	yes	Thursday evening	Monday morning	~40 Euro
Valerie Hoh	no			EUR 0
Jörg Hoh	no			EUR 0
Jos Poortvliet	Yes	Thursday 12:08	Monday 16:51	EUR 104
Stuart Jarvis	Yes	Thurs 2030	Monday 1550	EUR142
Justin Kirby	Yes	Fri 10:40am	Mon 11:20am	EUR 413
Kenny Duffus	Yes (will arrange own for wed night)	Wednesday 1420	Monday 1825	227.59 GBP
Cornelius Schumacher	Yes	Friday evening	Sunday evening	~ 50 EUR
Claudia Rauch	Yes	Thursday 15:00	Sunday 14:00	~ 130 EUR
Rainer Endres	Yes	Friday 11:00	Monday	~ 50 EUR
Troy	Yes	Frankfurt, 1320h on Thursday	Frankfurt, 1435h on Monday	537 EUR (flight only)
Ingo Malchow	Yes	Thursday	Monday morning	~ 80 EUR
Daniel Laidig	no	always there		EUR 0
Alex Spehr	no - skype alspehr for discussion about USA booth box	no	no	none
Luca Beltrame	Yes	Friday (around afternoon)	Sunday evening	~ 180 EUR

Local team

• Eckhart Wörner (+49 173 8026512)
• Frank Karlitschek (+49 176 20196101)
• Frederik Gladhorn

Program

Thursday

Meeting at the hotel for dinner/drinks at 19:00, location undecided.

Friday

Meeting in the morning at the hotel at 8:45, at the sprint location at 9:00.

Leaving for Schlesinger at 19:00.