Re: Marketing/PR cont'd

[Ra'id Al-Jamali <rjamali at omantel dot net dot om>]

Responses...

On Tue, 2003-09-30 at 03:57, Nadim Shaikli wrote:
> Agreed.  You want to show those contacts something, so you better have
> content to start with.

You're reading my mind like an open book...

I'm craving to start a local canvassing campaign: presentations and
demos in various non-profit organisation forums, articles in popular
media, key decision makers in various sectors we mentioned .. but I'd
like to get all the defences up before the "offensive". My entry
criteria are quite simple: You either get people's attention for good,
or stay put wait for the right moment. First impressions are quite
important; a considerable amount of our mental "filters" are based on
little more than initial judgements. If it's good we become more
receptive to more of that information. If it isn't up to scratch, we
"mentally" block it. I have a colleague who is now convinced - based on
little other than a 10 min discussion we had - that FLOSS is the right
way. He anticipates the day when he's able to dual boot into Linux. Yet
I hesitate.. because he needs to read and write in Arabic in all his
applications.. and the reality is that what I tolerably - perhaps
affectionately - label as a "feature in active development" will be
nothing more than a blatant bug to him.


> How about the following as concrete steps forward (more below),
> 
>  1. Furnish Anmar with his list of documents that he wants included (and
>     translated) for inclusion into Arabbix 1.0 ASAP.
>  2. Suggest to Anmar other content for inclusion ASAP.

Agreed, and first steps have already been made.

I've previously contacted Anmar several times off-list along exactly the
same lines. I look forward to his detailed response. I will certainly
attempt to get hold of the early alpha as soon as it's available to test
it and to judge what we can be fine-tuned or added to it (in terms of
docs, that is)

>  3. Suggest concrete/detailed content for the newbie presentations.
>     Ossama.K, you have had content with newbies about linux and had
>     taught/presented on the topic; could you lend a hand in terms of
>     content and what sort of areas people gravitated towards and what
>     they wanted to know more about.

Agreed. But I shall defer this for now.. Ossama, it looks like you have
some good learning points...

> You're RIGHT (I think we touched on all of this before).  Now let's list
> out what we like to include (number of docs, outline, content, etc) and
> get cranking on writing them and preparing them for review.
> 
>  4. Segment docs/presentations into expertise levels.
>     a. For Newbie
>     b. For University people
>        i. students
>       ii. profs/lecturers/deans
>     c. For Governments and their agencies
>     d. For Companies

This should take precedence...

> > Ok so what do we do next?
> > Each Arabeyes project should have an expanded page which is
> > user-oriented (read more newbie than developer).
> 
> This is more difficult esp. since we are having major commit problems from
> our website admin - until such a time that he snaps out of his comma :-)
> we'll need to shelf this idea (I'll keep it in mind - its good).

That's a pity. One of the things I was going to propose was a top-level
'high-profile' link to an Arabbix USER page throughout the site. The
LiveCD is not only a project, it is a project to showcase all other
projects and as such it deserves a higher place in the navigation
hierarchy. By all means, the Arabbix PROJECT page should remain more or
less as-is and where it is. But having an arabbix.arabeyes.org as a or
www.arabeyes.org/arabbix would be more conducive to repeat visits,
especially if the content was regularly updated or blogged somehow. Do
we have a mechanism to for feedback/interaction like the forums of
morphix, knoppix, gentoo? Ideally the LiveCD will point to these links
via desktop shortcuts, links on a browser start page, etc...

> Alot of
> what you mention is already there btw (so maybe we need to revamp how we
> present the data).

Some of it. There is a page for each project, but as mentioned earlier
the messages need to be fine-tuned for PR leverage.


> Ra'id, I will mail you a list of 9 people who have registered with
> Arabeyes.org with "PR" as their area of interest (off-list).  Do please
> contact them all and see if they are interested in helping.  If they
> are assign them a task and track 'em if you can please.  I think we've
> done enough of "help us" begging and its time now to simply farm out
> the work, assign it to people and track it.

Received with thanks! I'll need to sort out all the action points we
talked about first, though. Hopefully within the next few days.

> We also need to finish/create the PR Guide document so I'll tag you with
> that as well.
> 
>  6. Complete the PR HOWTO/Guide document (similar to the 'developer'
>     and 'translator' guides) so that newbies interested in this area
>     that are wanting to help, can pick-up and contribute without any
>     loss or confusion.  Within we ought to have our goals/mandates,
>     plan and anything else that might be of interest to future
>     contributors in this area.
> 
>       http://cvs.arabeyes.org/viewcvs/doc/guide/

This is assuming I know DocBook..

In fact, I went through a crash course in DocBook and its extended
toolchain throughout August in anticipation of such a thing! After your
email it also looks like I'll need to dig into (X)HTML & CSS :)

Agreed. That was my intention anyway..

Right... Looks like I have more than a full plate and need to start
getting busy..

Regards,
Ra'id