Forum OpenACS Q&A: Marketing Team

At the Vienna Conference I chaired a workshop on "Pimping the Platform" on how we could improve marketing/adoption etc. for OpenACS/.LRN

We took a broad view of the goals then split into groups to brainstorm solutions. A wide variety of ideas were collected and the notes are in the wiki https://openacs.org/xowiki/Vienna_Conference_-_Marketing_Discussion

A number of things had very broad support including creating a Marketing Team to implement and coordinate a wide variety of projects to increase adoption and recognition of OpenACS and .LRN. The concept is the team should be roughly comparable to the .LRN Leadership team which has enjoyed considerable success in recent months.

Broadly the goals are:
• Empower interested individuals and small groups to take action on many fronts
• High level oversight/Veto power by the OCT, but not the necessity to get explicit permission for daily actions.
• Create synergy between .LRN and OpenACS marketing recognizing that they are related, but different.

There was some debate as to whether the Marketing Team should be elected directly by the community or whether it should get it should be overseen by the elected OCT. There were many pluses and minus on both sides and it was decided to run it for a year under the oversight of the OCT and where appropriate the .LRN Board, and then revisit the issue.

Similarly we discussed having two separate teams for .LRN and OpenACS or one combined team. Again there were valid arguments on both sides and we decided to start with a simpler one team approach and revisit the issue in a year when we have more data on what works.

I volunteered to work on getting the Team started. Sorry I haven't posted yet on the many great threads that were going this week. I came back to jet lag and a big client deadline.

The goal here to create a structure that will support and empower people in doing many of the good ideas that are being discussed, and also to create a governance structure that can prevent or reverse things that turn out to be not such good ideas.

The process:

1. Community discussion on this thread
2. Creation/discussion of a wiki page describing the team and how it will interact with the OpenACS community, the OCT, the .LRN Board, the .LRN Leadership Team and our existing governance structures.
3. Submission of a TIP to the OCT to approve the creation of the Team

Thank you to everyone who came to the session and also the enthusiastic discussions on the board since the conference.

Hello Caroline,
I am intersted in come with ideas. We have a lot of good things but we need more organization to increase the adoption. We just need a strategy.

greetings

Count me in as well. We do have quite some material in German which we will definitely share with the German crowd and hopefully can provide this as input for the rest.

One thing which would be helpful is to communicate activities e.g. around conferences and congresses, state where people are attending to talk about OpenACS and their solutions based on it.

Hi Caroline,
Thanks for your effort on this. Yes, we need those teams, I suggest to have two separate teams, although it could be the same members for both, if they want and they are elected. For .LRN, due the recent organization of the consortium, will be good to define the general role of the team, how will interact with the Board and other teams, etc. and then have the .LRN Consortium members to vote among candidates. For OpenACS is appropriately to have the discussion here.

hiya Caroline -

I think the OCT meetings are 1600GMT right now due to daylight savings time. 😊

Avni