[libreoffice-marketing] Marketing call minutes: 17 May 2016

For those who had trouble connecting, Italo will organise a follow-up
call using an alternative system (eg Jitsi) in another two or three weeks.

Feel free to add any thoughts below!

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 kid 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

In the NDC's original plan, they only talk about ODF instead of LibreOffice
to prevent resistances from users. However recently they seemed to change
their mind. Just before the meeting NDC called me to ask about how UK did
and their current status. They may consider to follow UK's example to
create a version for government use.

And if we can push them to move to Libreoffice earlier, I consider to hold
"Month of LibreOffice" campaign in Taiwan.

Regards,
Franklin

Hi,

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

Hmmm, why in August?

We will have 5.2.0 to be released in the first week of August[1], so:

- lots of folks in all parts of the project will be in firefighting mode, not
  being able to mentor or onboard newcomers
- we will have enough stories to tell from the release itself (hopefully)

Wouldnt it make sense to make that November (6 months shifted from May -- aka
roughly the same time in the release cycle as May)?

Also May to August is just 2 months pause, so we might see some fatigue from
interested parties there. Esp. if we do it again every 3 months. After all, May
was explicitly selected because it is an otherwise rather slow month -- August
(and February) are exactly the opposite.

Just wondering ...

Best,

Bjoern

[1] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleasePlan/5.2#5.2.0_release

Hi,

Wouldnt it make sense to make that November (6 months shifted from May -- aka
roughly the same time in the release cycle as May)?

Yes, for the next Month of LibreOffice campaign I agree that November would be a better option. One of the reasons we chose to run the current one in May is that it's a fairly quiet month for the project, right between two releases.

I imagine November will be similar, so building on lessons learnt from this one, we can really promote activity in the project throughout November when it would otherwise be rather quiet.

Mike

We should try to involve native language communities, and doing it by
running the campaign every six months is not enough, at least until the
"month of LibreOffice" concept will become popular enough to be a trend
(and the fact that the campaign runs every May and November is known).
In August, we should try to get native language communities running the
project in their geography, based on the follow up activity of the 5.2
launch.