lundi 7 mars 2005

Open source marketing Barry R puts together some commentary and links about how open source is becoming a values system in communications. I particularly liked What is Open Source Marketing?, a PDF that discusses how "mainstream consumers are falling for the values that drive Open Source". Principle #5 echos what Barry said earlier about the standard pablum at LinuxWorld being totally ineffective. "Corporate speak and PR flak is just ignored." It's nice how, so long after the Cluetrain Manifesto came out, that its core message is now spreading into some mainstream marketing thinking. However, it is sad that many startups view "growing up" and "getting out of the garage" as requiring corporatespeak and vanillacide. I was once told by someone that our old company, Digital Creations, "was founded in a garage and the founders still act like it". At the time I took issue, but now I think of it as a badge of honor. Our employees had passion for what they did and worked on weekends. We had hundreds of companies worldwide that cheered for us and marketed our software. Tons of sharp developers thought working at our company would be the bee's knees. We were pretty good at the eight principles outlined in this marketing piece. What's not to like about that? 5:47:56 PM   comment []

My talk at Calibre in Paris this past Thursday My presentation at the second Calibre conference in Paris, Mar 2005. This presentation revisits the business decision to open source Zope in 1998, then looks forward to discuss the definition of "open source business". It was fun to go back to 1998 and re-read the diary I kept right around the time of the decision to go open source. Hard to believe it has been so many years. I realized just before this talk that I've been doing speeches on open source business for six years. Gotta find something new to talk about. [wink] During this conference I also got a chance to meet some interesting people, including the folks at Linagora. Let's see, my next talks are in Rome early April and Ireland in mid April. 11:13:01 AM   comment []

Eric Barroca on Z3 ECMS Very good writeup by Eric on his hopes for "achieving this alliance" for content management in Zope 3. Eric adds some important points: the competition is strong, and we aren't really each others' competition. For example, I think Florent rocks, both technically and personally. I trust his opinion far more than I trust my own. [wink] I'd love some of his architect-class skills to have a broader impact. Ditto for Martijn. One thing I'd like to add to the sprint agenda, though. Can you guys spend 30 minutes talking about separation of content production and content delivery, then finish with some kind of vote? Regarding the specifics on my point of view, Alan and I have talked at length and I agree with what he says. 10:32:32 AM   comment []

Open source, myths, realities, tipping Paul Murphy gives a great reminder, interpreting Linux via "The Tipping Point" book, on the relationship between technical excellence and more human factors: "Technology advantages don't lead to social revolutions." We are all occassionally guilty of thinking that it's just about the code. It isn't. In fact, it frequently isn't much about the code at all. Did Plone take off because it was supremely well designed and implemented software? Probably not. The Plone Foundation is working on a publicity strategy for the 2.1 release. Is there something untoward about this, like an encroachment on the magic garden? According to a NewsForge article on "timing release schedules to maximize publicity", there are steps you can take to improve the effectiveness of your storytelling. Of course, this NewsForge article sparked a follow-up comment of "you don't have to waste money on marketing - the product speaks for itself." There is a high road and a low road to take on reaching success. The low road has shortcuts, usually (falsely) associated with marketing or publicity, or even worse, lawsuits and patents. Choosing an effective storytelling strategy doesn't have to be the low road. 9:39:44 AM   comment []