Re: Arabeyes Marketing/PR Project Proposal

[Kamal Dalal <kamal+arabeyes at banoora dot net>]

On ????, 2003-08-19 at 10:45, Isam Bayazidi wrote:
> Salam All..
>   Below is a new project proposal, that need alot of polishing/definition and 
> so by all those who can help:
> 
> Arabeyes Marketing/Public Relations Team/Project
> 
> Introduction
> It is well known that the most important element of Arabeyes projects is the 
> presense of the developers and volunteers who work on it, without those 
> volunteers, any project is doomed. So far, Arabeyes Core team had been doing 
> a good job with bringing up new people, and getting Arabeyes into the Media. 
> Nevertheless, with the creation of new projects in Arabeyes, the core team 
> got more responsbilities and things to follow up, having less and less time 
> for Public Relation and spreading the word about Arabeyes and it's projects. 
> And so comes the proposal of having a Marketing/PR team or project. 
> 
> Goals:
> - Helping to support Arabeyes project by spreading the word about it
> - Attracting Volunteers to different Arabeyes Sub-projects
> - Spreading Linux/OSS awarness in the Arab world through corperation with 
> different entities (LUGs, Universities, Companies, LMOs, etc..)
> 
> (LMO: Like Minded Org.)
> 
> Dutes:
> - Take care of the Media presense of Arabeyes, making sure that Arabeyes 
> project news and events are known to all interested media parties (News 
> WebSites/Newspapers/ Interested people or organizations/Magazines/etc..)
> - Follow up with communication with non-technical parties (Universities, 
> organizations, doners, media, etc.. )
> - help technical parties reach Arabeyes developers (guide them in)
> - follow up with new commers, making sure that thier quesions are answered, 
> and trouble they face are overcomed.
> - make sure of Arabeyes presense in events of interest (OpenSource/Linux 
> related events in the Arab World)
> - get donations/sponsorships for Arabeyes project in general, and for Arabeyes 
> attendance in events of interest.
> 
> Communication with Core:
> - the PR Team should appoint someone who will act as a maintainer for the 
> project, and who will serve as a link with the Core team.
> - PR/Marketing project/Team should provide a bi-monthly writen report about 
> latest updates, and what have been happening recently.
> 
> ----------------------------------
> I showed the above thoughts to Kamal Dallal who had some interesting 
> addition/notes/comments/random thoughts. I hope that he will post his notes 
> here.
> 
> As for you, please provide us with your thoughts and ideas about such 
> project/team, is it really needed ? will you be interested to work in it ? 
> and so..
> 
> I hope that we will hear from you all soon.
> 
> Yours
> Isam Bayazidi
> 

Here is the email I sent to Isam earlier on:

Isam,

This is a very good start. Here are my $0.02 , naturally it may
include what you've specified above. I may have stepped out of line
here and gone off topic. Consider the following as a draft of randomly
thrown thoughts put together by an external consultant ;)

Arabeyes Mission

Obviously Arabeyes is here to promote arabic in linux applications.

Describe what is the problem for people ? Are they programmers
(vim/emacs) are they word processor users ? what are the typical
applications that they use.

How would you measure the mission success ? media coverage ? number of
arabic related bugs reported weekly ? number of external project
"hot-threads" that are discussing arabic-related issues ?

What is the (detailed) plan to achieve the goals. Trnaslate & Hack ?


Tools that arabeyes has : Website , Email lists, IRC.

Website:

Profile of visitors and see whether website meets expectation.

Why did they come in the first place ? Where are they coming from ?
What do we want them to look at ?

Define what arabeyes wants visitors to do with the website.


Email Lists:

Readers Writers ratio.

Not clear what is considered on topic and what not. Take developer
list for example. what do people on the lists expect ? do newbie
developers expect to learn new things ? again, profile and see
expectations.

other resources:

money . is raising money a goal? what will the money be used for.
identify organizations, companies that have a stake in arabeyes. Find
ways to make them want to pay or else they will loose money. If
arabeyes is not attractive enough, or still not mature enough in their
eyes, find out why and what will it take to make it such.

Of course arabeyes is not a commercial company, and one should
remember that working with volunteers is like herding cats ;)

I think I definitely went off topic.

Best Regards,
Kamal