I do have a part two to my thoughts on goals and target audience coming. (And probably a part three, to respond a bit to what Greg and Paul wrote yesterday.) In fact, I already have it written, I just need to edit it a little and actually POST it, which I’m going to do shortly.
But all this other awesomeness keeps getting in the way.
First: Marketing trac tickets! We’re trying to get in the habit of using Trac to keep track of the marketing team’s requests and deliverables. I’m sure everyone knows that John Poelstra has a totally amazing schedule built out, so I’ve taken the Marketing portion of the deliverables and created tickets for each item. (And if you haven’t seen the Master Plan before, it’s mind-bogglingly cool, so I recommend you check it out sometime!) BUT HERE IS WHERE IT GETS AWESOME. Well, if you’re me. I actually went in a built a custom query for active tickets with F13 milestones. Yes, I realize this is probably a cakewalk for some most probably everyone but me, but please indulge me in the OH YEAH I FIGURED IT OUT glory that follows. (It actually only took me a few minutes – Trac provides a bunch of pre-built queries that can be copied and edited fairly easily, even if the last coding you did was building a webpage in 1998…and your name is Robyn. 😀 Woot!)
Second: While on wikipedia today, I wandered on to one of their “come help wikipedia do xyz” banners, because it had the magic words that totally get my attention: Strategic Planning. And holy moly, the Wikimedia Strategic Planning site is chock full of goodness and things to think about and I’m only on the tip of the iceberg in terms of reading it. What it is about, in short, is (and I’m quoting directly from their page): “This is the workspace and community-gathering point for developing a five-year (2010–2015) strategic plan for the Wikimedia movement. (See background for more on this process.) The goal is to explore where we are now, where we should go, and how we should get there.” Their strategic planning process page is particularly interesting and I really encourage everyone to take a look at it. I’ll also plug Fedora’s own fabulous Strategic Working Group (yay!) and say that I hope everyone is reading about what they are discussing in their meetings since it’s mondo-important stuff. I also saw that John put together a wiki page on the importance of strategy, which is also worth your eyeball time! Kudos to all. And cookies. Or bacon, if you prefer.
And last, but not least: After Greg’s reference yesterday to the book The Starfish and The Spider in his blog, I remembered that… once upon a time… in the midst of the holiday season… Mel Chua and I once talked about having a marketing book club, since we all have our own favorite informational books we’ve read that relate to marketing, branding, business, and the like. And then, I probably had to go wrap presents, or shovel snow, or drive around to see 8 billion relatives, and the idea was lost. But only temporarily!
I’ve set up a book club wiki page – it’s not just for marketeers, but for anyone who wants to join in. I’m hoping to start with our first book in March, so if you have any ideas, please contribute to the wiki page, or keep an eye on the fedora marketing mailing list for further announcements. It’s going to be a good time!
robyn's bikeshed for yakshaving 