Marketing/ConfCalls

What it's about
Marketing for LibreOffice and The Document Foundation (TDF) takes place on a dedicated Marketing/Mailing List. Occasionally we organise conference calls to discuss ongoing marketing topics and recent activities directly. Everyone interested is invited to join - either as observer, or as active participant.

The conference calls are meant to be a dialogue between all marketers, and not as a monologue by TDF representatives. So, feel free to raise your topics and join the discussion!

For the conferences of the Board of Directors, please see this page.

Some important notes

 * Although being public, these calls are not to be considered as official press statements for journalists. Journalists are invited to join, but for media Q&amp;A, there will be separate sessions where official statements by TDF representatives are made.
 * The call may be recorded and made available as uncut audio file to the public afterwards. If you join, you agree that you will be recorded.
 * We do not charge a fee for joining the calls. However, normal phone costs apply. Please check your provider for more details.
 * Calls will usually be limited to 60 minutes.

How to prepare yourself

 * Most topics we will discuss have been raised on our main marketing mailing list already. Please have a look at the archives or [mailto:marketing-subscribe@libreoffice.org subscribe yourself] to the list, to stay up to date on recent activities.
 * At the beginning of the call, introduce yourself briefly, i.e. in 3-5 sentences.
 * Every time you speak, mention your name again, so people know who you are.
 * When you are not speaking, remember to mute your phone's microphone, to avoid noise and echoes.
 * One member of the Marketing team will take notes (minutes) and post them to the mailing list afterwards.
 * Add your favorite agenda items below.

Next Call
The next marketing call for June is planned for Monday, June 13, at 2PM CEST (noon UTC). Join the Marketing/Mailing List to be alerted about its exact time.

17 May 2016
Marketing call 17 May 2016

Attendees


 * Mike Saunders
 * Italo Vignoli
 * Sophie Gautier
 * Franklin Weng
 * Rajesh Ranjan
 * Chandrakant Dhutadmal

Agenda

1. Announcement of LibreOffice 5.2: team brainstorming


 * Large number of features and improvements, more than in 5.1
 * Announcements and press packs in local languages for Asian markets
 * We have list of journalists and can see when they open press releases
 * Tagline or theme -- 5.2 has existing features that are now more prominent with toolbar buttons / shortcuts -- "Unleash the hidden power"?

2. Preparation of announcement materials: discussion of needs


 * Italo and Mike start working on this at end of May; will share a list for comments
 * Main press release + one technical release + "Road to LO 5.2" (highlights of previous main releases)
 * Talk about Document Liberation Project in press releases to raise awareness -- "LibreOffice 5.2 uses libraries from the Document Liberation Project..."
 * Show how Calc has improved in number of features and compatibility with Excel -- feature gap is slimming down, show with screenshots?
 * Start circulating press kit in early June for comments, and everyone to add their needs
 * We can produce press releases for single markets, on request
 * Indian press release: translate into 20 languages used in the country that are also supported by LO

3. Organization of pre-announcements for journalists


 * 1 week before: finish slides and notes so that NLPs can do media briefings in their own languages
 * 2 days before announcement: calls in different territories
 * Conference calls for media training so that other community members are at ease talking to journalists

4. Creation of specific badges/barnstars for LibreOffice 5.2


 * Barnstars haven't really taken off in May campaign

5. Launch of "Week/Month of LibreOffice 5.2" in August?


 * Easy to repeat from May campaign
 * Can be reproduced locally or for specific territory
 * Might make sense for specific time of year in other countries (eg Chinese new year?)
 * Global project, but have to be strong locally -- run local campaigns to be visible at government levels


 * Taiwan: discussion moving on from ODF to actually using LibreOffice, in same way as UK with local developer teams. Version for Taiwanese govt to be developed?
 * ODF files saved by MS Office causing issues, hence discussion about moving to LO. So promote earlier?
 * Set up "Month of LibreOffice" campaign (not just for a specific release) for Taiwanese market
 * Release pace may look too fast compared to MS Office. That's why we have "families" (5.x). It's OK to update once a year, not every six months
 * People may assume that LO file format changes with every release, like with some software -- we should stress that ODF stays the same. So you don't need to update constantly

6. LibreOffice events around the world (e.g. FUEL/GILT in India)


 * FUEL/GILT is September 30. One of the largest conferences; worth targeting Indian govt. audience; good opportunity for TDF to discuss and convince govt about ODF
 * Community in India needs to learn more about migrations -- but shouldn't be big problem getting big support in India
 * Five countries (eg UK, Netherlands) working on making ODF mandatory, so some examples to show to Indian govt

7. Other topics suggested by participants


 * Some big migration documents in Italian; may be worth showing to governments in other territories, and then look at translations if there's interest
 * Trainer certification: some great trainers in Taiwan, but many are only familiar with one part of the software (eg just Writer), whereas LO training requires knowledge of most/all components
 * Franklin can help with finding and certifying more people in Taiwan

25-Oct-2010

 * download voice recording (MP3): [[File:Talkyoo-537138-2010-10-25-1161788.mp3]]

11-Nov-2010
Topics


 * 1) Update on infrastructure and tools (Florian)
 * 2) Report on OOo Business and Administration Congress (Florian)
 * 3) Discussion at Munich University (Florian)
 * 4) LibreOffice at LinuxDay Dornbirn (Florian)
 * 5) Professional presentation templates (Florian)
 * 6) LibreOffice on WeTab (Florian)
 * 7) Release preparations for LibreOffice 3.3 (Florian)
 * 8) FOSDEM DevRoom (Florian)
 * 9) Contact, liaison and collaboration with Linux distributions (David Nelson)
 * 10) Offer of organized assistance and involvement from Ubuntu Artwork project(David Nelson)
 * 11) Report about hackfest in Hamburg (Florian)
 * 12) oooES open letter http://oooes.org/carta-tdf.html (Alexandro)
 * 13) Server for surveys within LibreOffice / The Document Foundation, infrastructure preparations (Christoph) --&gt; will be discussed in the next call
 * 14) Work on a slogan for the first LibreOffice release (proposed on the lists) Slogan Wiki page (Christoph) --&gt; will be discussed in the next call

Voice Recording


 * download voice recording (MP3): [[File:Talkyoo-537138-2010-11-11-1192112.mp3]]

17-Nov-2010
ON Call: Christoph N, Christian L, Drew J, Marc P, David N, Alexandro C, Michalel W, Stephan W
 * download voice recording (MP3): [[File:Talkyoo-537138-2010-11-17-1202286.mp3]]

Christoph N. chaired meeting.

Agenda

Release preperations
Action Items:
 * Discussed Release Party ideas
 * Add ability to conduct survey to the website
 * Christoph mentioned Lime survey for future use
 * Christian - the silverstripe instance already has the forms package...
 * current agreement was to use the forms module in silverstripe for now, look to lime later
 * LibreOffice release party (un)official drink
 * Discussed need for considerations to alcoholic vs non-alcholic
 * Marc - Start contact list page on wiki, coordinate with Sophie and Italo. See wiki page: Marketing/LibOReleaseEvents/LOPressKit
 * Marc to start collecting ideas for LibreOffice Libations
 * Marc - Start feature list page on wiki, coordinate with Sophie and Italo

Slogan
Action Items:
 * Marc - after hearing people talking, started wiki page. Currently 26 slogans are suggested.
 * discussed opening the discussion up to other mailing lists
 * Chris - would like Italo's opinion here - Fears, that if we advertise for slogans and later we don't use it, hurt feelings.
 * Marc to follow up with Italo direct email, cc Sophie on email.

Artwork - Branding
Action Items:
 * Christoph - added link to current blog entry regarding art work - asked for opinions on using this as basis for moving forward.
 * No objections were put forward on call or IRC
 * Christoph continues to work hard

website
Action Items:
 * discussed the current state of the LibreOffice test web site.
 * Drew offered opinion that there was good progress on many NL sites, poor progress so far on the main pages
 * Christian expected more people to have added content to these front pages, already parked on the test site
 * Dave suggested to bring content from existing TDF web site to LibO test site to start
 * Christoph and Drew felt this was wrong way to start
 * Christoph offered: we should first, explicitly, look at answering the questions: Who are we expecting, What do we want to present to them.
 * Graham L, offered a number of reference links to information regarding these questions (found in IRC log below)
 * Drew - draft an email to the WebSite (other) lists for tomorrow, in order to focus attention to the specific task of filling these front pages. Starting by taking some time to address the two questions posed by Christoph.

IRC log Marketing/ConfCalls/17-Nov-2010-irclog

1-Dec-2010

 * download voice recording (MP3): [[File:Talkyoo-537138-2010-12-01-1226682.mp3]]

20-Jan-2011

 * download voice recording (MP3): [[File:Talkyoo-537138-2011-01-20-1304977.mp3]]

16-Feb-2011

 * download voice recording (MP3): [[File:Talkyoo-537138-2011-02-16-1355150.mp3]]

29-Mar-2011

 * download voice recording (MP3): [[File:Talkyoo-537138-2011-03-29-1425241.mp3]]

10-May-2011

 * download voice recording (MP3): [[File:Talkyoo-537138-2011-05-10-1488666.mp3]]

June 22, 2011 (Time: 1500 UTC)
Meeting has to be repeated due to technical difficulties. The recording is.

Members Present:

Drew Jensen, Charles H. Schulz, Italo Vignoli

IRC Channel: 

Agenda Items:


 * minutes: Marc (written); voice: whoever is in charge of the Talkyou recording services (mp3 to be posted here at bottom "logs" section)
 * TDF Certification: comments and suggestions
 * LibreOffice Conference: the marketing track
 * TDF Media Pre-Briefings will start in July
 * LibreOffice Magazine International and LibreOffice Magazine [Language] -- report Marc
 * ES mailing list has no traffic -- report Marc
 * Use of Mumble or OpenMeetings for concalls rather than Talkyoo -- Marc

Logs:

July 4, 2011 (Time: 1600UTC)
'Members Present: Charles, Drew, Florian, Italo, Marc

IRC Channel: 


 * download voice recording (MP3): [[File:Talkyoo-537138-2011-07-04-1567671.mp3]]

Agenda Items:


 * review action items from PREVIOUS meeting
 * actions focused on increasing the awareness amongst Windows users (1. improve our list of Windows editors and product reviewers, and ping them regularly; 2. build a list of Windows magazines with covermount CDs, and pitch LibreOffice to editors; 3. put together some specific messaging for Windows users in order to have them try LibreOffice; 4. produce and use Windows screenshots whenever possible)

Discussed:


 * Foundation items -- statutes have been formed and will be made public maybe next week
 * SC -- vote casting, should we have 6 times or planned dates; Drew: missing members for marketing calls; email will be sent out re: pollings;
 * Florian: need participation from localized marketing groups; maybe need some marketing contacts for different communities;
 * Conference: who is attending? Italo, Florian?; talk of proposals
 * Italo: Windows users: get better list of editors for reviews and cover mount CD's; convince Windows users to use LibreOffice (v.3.4.2 will have an automatic "update" feature that will help them keep up-to-date); maybe have a "Windows" wiki page as working page with list of contacts (no emails on this page due to privacy concerns) and progess notes; we need to gauge the response of Windows viewers through "buzz" of product and increase in downloads. Drew -> should we concentrate on Mac? -- Italo ->we can concentrate on both.
 * Drew: NA Windows only disc is available on Tim's server and later on LibreOfficeBox, also could go to other non-Linux conferences; we could work on international Windows version.
 * Drew: how to go about setting up for sponsorship? Need some way to accept donations for US. Work through SPI for donations in US  and.
 * Drew: writing articles for different agencies/magazines -- OpenSource.com is interested with LibreOffice
 * Events: promote LibreOffice conference; CFP -- not many papers yet, but more should come in as the date comes near (Deadline July 22nd) -- may have a Marketing workshop; banner will be set up for website advertisement; adding a registeration process -- mostly to see how many people will be attending different events during the conference; small registration fee?
 *  Marc -- keep an eye out on Spanish mailing lists for traffic. Traffic seems to be minimal for some reason.

Action Items:

Logs:

17-Feb-2012

 * download voice recording (MP3): [[File:Talkyoo-537138-2012-02-16-1890901.mp3]]


 * Participants: Florian, Charles, Craig, Italo, Drew, Cor. Marc


 * Florian
 * thanks for 3.5 / CeBit March 6-10
 * Booth welcomes any TDF members
 * Create stronger marketing network
 * modify community logo (for later) (next call)


 * Charles
 * not totally a marketing question


 * Italo
 * Increasing number of people contributing
 * Marketing/Work Items use as basic project management tool
 * Now that 3.5 is out will focus on Cert. program


 * Cor
 * want to agree that selecting a few items is a good idea


 * Craig
 * looking at the list of work items, appears that market research is high priority


 * Italo
 * thinks we should be aware of strengths and weaknesses
 * need to improve self awareness


 * Cor
 * additional pluses
 * find people with right skills


 * Craig
 * the work items page, would be that to scope work for swat and pet for NA.. with scope via email on the 23rd


 * Cor
 * more lead time for press releases


 * Florian
 * can we get final copy text 1 or 2 day early