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

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

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

• 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).

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

Accommodation will be taken care off, the below is only for planning purposes.

There is a service for bed&breakfasts and appartments in and around Stuttgart at http://www.night-and-day.de/nightandday/en/OurRegions/Stuttgart/ The largest appartments they offer accomodate 8 people - though it seems the larger, the further outside of Stuttgart (but with decent public transportation).

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.

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	Thurs evening	Sunday afternoon	~ 130 EUR
Rainer Endres	Yes	Friday	Sunday/Monday morning	~ 50 EUR
Aaron Seigo	Yes	Friday	Probably Monday	~7-800 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