[openbeos] Re: Communication and you
- From: "Urias McCullough" <umccullough@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2006 19:12:54 -0700
On 8/15/06, Michael Phipps <mphipps1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Michael, I am happy you are well enough to post :)
I just have some thoughts regarding a few of your statements:
...
We don't need an official site and a wiki and forums and mailing lists.
The question is, what do you cut? I tend toward cutting the wiki and the
forums. Self host the mailing lists and post the archives. Maybe
"someday" we can build in a secure posting gateway.
Forums are great places to "chit-chat" amongst community members in a
very abstract way. The one thing I would definitely clarify here is
that the forums should be nothing official. They can serve as an
informal area to meet and discuss with other haiku community members -
but not a place to make any decisions or official announcements. If
that was made clear, I think they could still be useful in the future
as an "extra" that the community gets if they desire it.
The wiki is harder to define. I personally LOVE the
dynamic/collaborative nature of it. Haiku's wiki is the first one
I've ever really contributed to, and I now see why this is quickly
becoming such a common knowledge-management tool. The wiki allows many
people to refine a single source of networked content easily and with
extremely powerful features.
Waldemar tells me that Drupal also has a "revision" tracking system
that is still buggy, and if this can be used in the future, maybe the
wiki will be unnecessary. One of the positive features of the wiki is
that it is open by default. Anyone can contribute collaboratively
until they are determined to be a hindrance. I think the new site
needs to have a section similar like this where small self-formed
groups of 2+ people can work on articles and content to assist the
rest of the community.
...
We need to focus on developers right now. We need more of them, both for
apps and for OS development. What we don't really need is a big flood of
people who want to play with the next Linux distro. If marcom can help
us get the right people, I am more than interested. If not, then this is
not the right time for it.
It seems that we need to some "campaigns" to go after more technical
people. We need to "shop where they shop" and "eat where they eat"
all the while providing information that will attract them. This is
most definitely a marketing effort - but with a different target
audience than most people might think of.
Developers buy into a lot of the same stuff as the average user. They
love screenshots, they love hands-on toys (bootable images that
actually run)... Once they see what is possible and what has been
done, there's a good possibility that one foot is in the door and they
may just need an well-defined path to help them start contributing and
push them through.
I think many of these marketing materials are available now - and just
need to be used (even abused) more heavily to generate buzz. We
should at all times make a very clear statement that Haiku is NOT YET
ready for end-users - while at the same time showing that it has made
great progress and has overcome many hurdles and desires more
developers to assist in completing and improving it.
Anyhow, I don't want to ramble either - so I'll stop here.
- Urias
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