On Tue, 2015-07-28 at 14:56 -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote: > > On 07/28/2015 01:57 PM, Ankur Sinha wrote: > > <snip> > > People don't go to conferences to pick up flyers they can download at > home / read at their leisure on the web. They cost too much for that. > They go to meet people. I have manned many, many, many tech > conference > booths over the past decade. Folks are interested in talking to you > and > ask questions, to pick up swag / free items, or both. Rarely are they > interested in the flyers unless you really press them to pick up one > (eg > "get a chance to win our raffle") or if they are really good reusable > reference material they can refer to again and again (eg the cheat > cube.) > Fair enough. You are the design team representative here, and if you are convinced that flyers are unnecessary I'm more than happy to remove them from the plan. > > I really have no objections to not having flyers. I'm merely > > passing on > > information gathered from the discussion on the ambassadors list > > here. > > I read the full ambassadors-list thread. For ref > https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2015-June/02354 > 3.html > > > Some do feel tat flyers are a good idea, and if we don't want to > > produce them, we should have a better way of showing off what the > > products do and what's new and so on - an alternative that doesn't > > sacrifice on information content, basically. > > I also saw a lot of feedback on the thread saying that the flyers > were > wasteful and usually ended up in the conference trash bin. I also saw > a > lot of suggestions for alternative ways of achieving the same goal, > such > as a scripted demo or slideshow. This is the first point of the plan on the wiki page: 1. Release video/presentation - to be run at booths > > > The initial version of the plan had only one flyer - the timeless > > one > > which would provide some information on all the products. When > > Matthew > > suggested we follow an approach similar to the targeted products > > approach, I added the product specific flyers. I, frankly, have no > > other ideas on how to do this at the moment: > > > > https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/marketing/2015-July/01778 > > 2.ht > > ml > > > > https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=User%3AAnkursinha%2FMar > > keti > > ng_Collateral_Ideas&diff=418723&oldid=415777 > > I don't follow how product-specific flyers leads into needing > release-specific flyers, though? They don't, which is why the wiki page also mentions a "timeless" flyer. This is point 2 on the plan: 2. Timeless flyer giving information on the three products. This will contain an introduction to the three products, and links (QR coded?) on where to download them and look for help and so on - for new folks. Similarly, the new point I added today goes: 3. Product specific flyers - combining more info on the products and a bit about what's new in the release I envisioned this as largely timeless material with minute changes to mention what a new release brings. Given that flyers are being moved off the plan, all of this is not very applicable. > > > > I see it noted in the chart. However, *print* materials are still > > > suggested rather prominently in the actual proposal for these > > > users. > > > I > > > disagree that this is necessary. The information (which I agree > > > is of > > > value to those audiences) can be shared with them without the > > > need > > > for > > > printed materials. > > > > Great! Please add these other methods to the wiki page - gathering > > this > > information is the entire point of this RFC :) > > I am happy to provide suggestions and help with feedback but I don't > have the cycles to commit to edit the proposal. Suggestions will do well. > > > > There should probably be a 'general return on investment > > > (effort/cost)' > > > column added there too to help with evaluation. That's the reason > > > we > > > did > > > release notes flyers before and don't do it anymore! > > > > I thought that was because no one had the time - that they weren't > > high > > enough priority in the task list, not because they weren't required > > at > > all. > > They would never hit high enough priority because the return was > never > good enough compared to everything else in the queue. > Assume time is > always constrained with volunteer-based teams! It's because I am aware of time constraints that I'm working on the marketing collateral plan pretty much by myself - I know how busy the rest of the marketing team is with the magazine and other tasks. > > > > > The plan here is: > > > > > > > > - to request the design team for scribus templates (you'd > > > > suggested > > > > this yourself in the meeting where my original e-mail was > > > > discussed) > > > > > > Where are the minutes from this? > > > > https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-design/2015-06-02/fedora-d > > esig > > n.2015-06-02-16.02.log.html/ > > > > is where you'd suggested coming up a visual design and then in your > > feedback on the ML, you'd said LaTeX wasn't the best choice and > > Scribus > > would be much nicer. > > That log is regular design-team meeting minutes. This isn't what I > was > referencing (it turns out it was the design-team thread I was > thinking > of, see below.) > > When I said we should come up with a visual design and a scribus > template, that was for the 'timeless' flyer, not for release-specific > flyers. OK. Now, given how you don't think flyers are helpful at all, should we have a timeless flyer at all, or do we just skip flyers altogether? > For example: > > "one thing that came up is that the content is very release-specific > and > thus not very 'timeless' in that if a large print run was done, the > extras wouldn't be able to be used for very long. [...] " > > https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2015-June/00718 > 5.html > > No answers to these questions: Ah, my mistake. Here goes: > "So what is the motivation to give them out at events? To make sure information about Fedora is available at events for the different target audiences. Information about Fedora can either be timeless - generic information about products and so on OR release specific which will cover things like the new features that a release brings. > What is the goal > of making them available? To ensure that community members that go to events with a Fedora presence have enough resources to be able to spread information about Fedora as explained above. > How are ambassadors using them at event > tables? Er, in different ways: - swag is given out to reinforce user loyalty, as Matthew said - flyers and other printed material are useful when someone with limited knowledge of Fedora turns up. Ambassadors can use flyers to explain the different products, for example, the workstation flyer contained information on gnome-software, dev assistant and so on. It helps showcase this information, which otherwise is only available on the Changes wiki or the release notes, neither of which are very user friendly nor "shiny". > Do we have any specific feedback from ambassadors about how > useful they were, specific feedback about how booth visitors use them > / > how the ambassadors might use them to direct a conversation / etc? Lots of feedback on the ambassadors thread. Ambassadors have never specifically discussed how anything can be used to direct a conversation - neither has the marketing team, nor has the design team. It's all very informal - chat with people, see how it goes - such detailed marketing strategies and things have not been discussed, or if they have been, I am not aware of it. > Are > there specific ambassadors we can talk to in order to get this > information? The ambassadors list is full of them, which is why I began the thread there. > Are these only meant to be given out at events or are there > other anticipated applications?" Mainly events. No other applications came up as far as I remember. > > also > > "This is definitely not a recurring item on the design team's task > list > because the design team does not (well we try very hard not to) come > up > with content and we honestly don't have the manpower to update > something > like that every single release - the cost / benefit analysis doesn't > really show a good payoff there for the effort expended vs other > projects we typically have on our plate. Providing outdated material > IMHO is worse than providing no material at all. I also strongly > believe > any material we do produce needs to have a well-defined goal and > purpose > so we can assess whether or not it is successful over time and tweak > it > to keep it useful (or drop it if it no longer is.)" Which is why this and other threads have happened - to come up with a plan before different teams are requested to carry out different tasks. > No answer to this q: > > "How would these four pieces of material (1 generic + 1 per Fedora > edition) interact though? Remember that folks at conferences are > picking > up an awful lot of stuff, and there needs to be a clear story about > the > relationship between the materials we offer. (I'm not saying there > isn't, just that I don't know what it is.)" Again, this is why the discussion is happening - to decide on what collateral will be given out. *One* way, if we do have flyers, is to have a generic flyer which covers pretty much all of Fedora - products + spins + labs; and then product specific flyers for folks that are more interested in them and so on. I'm a bit curious: how are all these questions coming up now? We've had marketing collateral for a while - were these questions not addressed in the past already? The plan isn't introducing anything new really, is it? Is the idea to revisit the entire set? > > https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2015-June/00718 > 7.html > > > Since this meeting log is being brought up, I'd like to say that > > this > > statement is incorrect: > > > > 16:59:14 <gnokii> well I told the guy last time that it is not his > > job > > to create them, he ignored it and the flyer got printed behind our > > back > > Understand that the design team is the team primarily responsible for > Fedora's visual brand identity, and when materials are produced > without > some level of collaboration or at a minimum communication with us, > it's > a challenging situation for us. We like to have a reasonable level of > input / control over the quality and design of official visual > materials > handed out in Fedora's name seeing as its our responsibility. It's > from > this context that I believe the quote above is coming from. I understand what you're saying, but in this case: this member of the design team was aware of the requirement - he attended the meeting where the flyer was discussed, he pointed out to a trac ticket filed on the design trac - the trac ticket had not seen activity in months. So, there was an attempt at collaboration, and input, and at least one member of the team was aware that Jiri really wanted a flyer for an event. Nothing happened, so I made a simple one that is *very very* similar to a past flyer. So, no, I don't see how that quote fits, and I do not think I did anything behind anyone's back. Had said contributor clearly asked me not to work on the task *because* the design team or said contributor himself would do it (instead of making snide remarks), I'd have stopped - I'm not looking to take up tasks that I needn't. I have quite enough work to do already. > > > I'm sorry if it seems like the design teams input was not > > considered. > > It was because of the feedback that I'd received from the design > > folks > > that I took a step back and went to the ambassadors for their > > input. I > > put all the info and feedback I had out to the ambassadors and > > marketing teams. There have been various views on the marketing > > collateral and I've done my best to put them on the wiki page > > there, > > which I've regularly encouraged people to view and edit. > > Your efforts are appreciated on gathering the info and documenting it > in > the wiki. > > I think what might work a little better than telling folks (who've > already indicated they are time-strapped) to view and edit the wiki > would be to organize a project team around this (since it's a > significant project), have regular meetings, assign tasks to folks, > set > milestones, etc. Because in the absence of direction, it's not likely > a > Fedora-like collaborative effort that brings about the best output is > going to happen. This may or may not work. Being a time-strapped person myself - I'm doing my PhD now, so I certainly find it difficult to keep up with Fedora tasks myself - I'd rather not ask other task-strapped people to join another mailing list, attend more meetings and I'd rather not assign tasks to anyone. The entire point of me using the different mailing lists is that interested people on these lists help out where they want to, and if this hasn't happened after all this discussion, I hardly think we'd have anyone voluntarily join a special new project team for this task. Maybe CommOps will help with this. I don't know. > > > On the other hand, if it does > > become a task that needs to be done each release, it can be added > > to > > the per release task lists that the Fedora program manager > > publishes, > > and that will hopefully imply that we'll have to do less work to > > get > > the information. > > "hopefully" is a key word there :) > > > Oh? Well, I'd done this, and it was sort of easy - probably because > > I > > didn't do any design work at all - and I left alignment and > > everything > > else to LaTeX: > > > > https://ankursinha.fedorapeople.org/fedora-flyer-workstation/fedora > > -fly > > er-workstation.pdf > > This, unfortunately but honestly, isn't a design that would pass > muster > were it filed as a design-team ticket. > There's a number of issues that > would need to be addressed before I would feel comfortable having > something like this printed up. Oh? Given how similar it is to the older flyer, I thought it'd be fine. Anyway, you're the design person - you know best. (I did take your advice and changed the font to OpenSans, for example.) > Which is perfectly understandable - > you're not a designer, this isn't based on a designed template. No denying this :D > > > > I'd really rather us point to a much more easily-managed web > > > resource > > > for this kind of content, because the end product quality is much > > > easier > > > to guarantee. > > > > This is a great idea, and zoltahn has made this suggestion already > > - > > something on the lines of Mozilla's press blog. We could just come > > up > > with QR codes and things that take people to the relevant web > > locations. > > > > Unfortunately neither zoltahn's initial suggestion nor my > > reiteration > > received any feedback and the idea didn't get anywhere: > > > > https://fedorahosted.org/marketing-team/ticket/177#comment:6 > > This is a comment on a ticket. I think it is a very good idea that > could > help solve some of the problems I've mentioned, but ideas take a bit > more work to realize than a comment on a ticket, no? Nor is this idea > listed on your wiki matrix. Well, since you've mentioned teams being time strapped, there's only so much an individual volunteer can do by himself. It isn't on the matrix because: a. it isn't exactly marketing collateral - it's a system that may replace some of the collateral and requires more than design+mktg+ambassadors - probably infra + coding and so on. b. it didn't get any feedback when I mentioned it on the mktg list, so I simply dropped it. > > > > and point 3 here: > > https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/marketing/2015-June/01754 > > 6.ht > > ml > > So how do you envision this (very good) idea to get anywhere? It'll get somewhere if/when someone with more time can work on it. That person isn't me. > When > people bring up ideas in Fedora, they unfortunately don't just > happen. > (I proposed the idea for Fedora Hubs at least a year before any > actual > development work or real mockups were created.) Just because an idea > was > posted somewhere - as fabulous as it may be - the fact that it > doesn't > automagically come into being A Thing doesn't mean people think it's > a > bad idea or not worth working on, it means it needs some direction > and > management. I know all this. Like I said, I simply haven't the time to do it myself. > > > > > We're (the design team) trying to up the bar on the > > > materials we produce and associate with the Fedora brand. I think > > > achieving that involves more design team input than us spitting > > > out a > > > scribus template one-time and dusting off our hands. > > > > That's good to know. The goal of this thread is to improve the > > collateral plan until we have stuff that meets everyone's standards > > at > > least: > > - design wise > > - content and information wise > > - work load wise > > - ?? > > > > So, all input is welcome. Please edit the wiki page directly when > > you > > need to. > > See above on telling time-strapped folks to edit wikis. Well, the wiki is what we have for the time being, so it'll have to do. They can reply to the mailing list thread if they have the time, but I'm afraid there isn't anything more that can be done to encourage busy volunteers to volunteer their time. > I hope this makes sense and is fair, I hope the same about my reply. -- Thanks, Regards, Ankur Sinha "FranciscoD" http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ankursinha
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