Project description¶

Communication and Marketing plan¶

High level communication/marketing/engagement plan
Marketing actions

• Kickoff meeting & article
  • Explain project, goals and time line, ask for input
  • Usual social media promotion
  • Make sure to have a pretty logo, a site to link to and at least a basic thingy to download/look at/demo.
  • in case of ‘big deal’ project pre-seed press with information
• Provide updates
  • Short (bi)weekly update mail to devel@ and project@
  • in case of ‘big deal’ project
  • Status updates for news.o.o
  • Interviews/articles during milestones
• Final/concluding meeting & article
  • Celebrate success and contribution (if any)
  • Usual social media promotion
  • in case of ‘big deal’ project
  • pre-seed press with information on final release and possibly initial announcement
  • create countdown to 1.0 release
  • attempt to get articles on other websites

Note: the vast majority of the writing above needs to start with the developers. They have to provide either a draft or have a conf call with someone who can write and then be available for review.

community engagement actions

• Write article about how to get the hands dirty
  • how-to, tips & tricks, walk-through...
• create (recorded) hangout explaining how to do X, Y, Z
  • 2 min intro of project, goals and timeline
  • 2-4 min intro of current state & how to use it
  • 2 min where to start hacking
  • Q&A
  • Keep first one short!<>! If there is demand, do more in-depth hangouts later.
• Give conference workshop(s)/talks
  • Hands-on with the resulting project. Only if ready for end users
  • hacking session. Only if a community around the project exists\
  • short talk on progress/plans\
  • quickly present project, goals, timeline. If project is small, maybe just a lightning session.

Note: only engage people if this is an intrinsic part of the project or you risk just creating disappointment and failure. You can’t do engagement just by talking or writing: you need to make it part of the development process. Have meetings in the open , make sure the software is VERY easy to deploy and easy to use , be there for questions, have a FAQ on the website etc. And yes, this ALSO goes for technical people. Being a ‘technical’ person merely means you happen to be good at something. It does not mean you’re willing to fight a build system, work through a terrible UI or read terse documentation. ‘engaging technical people only’ is an excuse for not admitting that you don’t want to put effort in.

If you want engagement:

• Be honest. Put effort in, otherwise, don’t promise stuff you won’t do.
  • Make clear what channels developers will be available and when.
  • Make sure external documentation is up to snuff
  • Have usability/ease of use as high priority during development