Looking at your friends at OpenSUSE, it appears their marketing team has been inactive for a long time (based on wiki page history).

Their mission statement (though not explicitly called that) reads:

The marketing leads all promotional activities around openSUSE aimed to increase the presence and visibility on the web and in as many places around the world as possible.

I still like my draft from the IRC log as a starting point:

To promote the use of and contribution to Fedora by publicizing work done by the community

Hi, there was some discussion in IRC today. I'm relaying some of the discussion we had about defining a Marketing mission and also considering how an in-person event could benefit this team for setting vision and focus. There might be missing context from the conversation:

Three to four years ago, I felt Marketing struggled because it was volunteer-staffed and the tasks we took responsibility for required deeper knowledge of the Fedora community (e.g. release announcements and talking points). It's hard to be a newcomer and help with this team (I always struggled to point newcomers to tasks other than writing Fedora Magazine articles).

An in-person hackfest allocates a fixed amount of time where core contributors can build on thoughts/ideas floated over the years and also make changes to enable others to get involved. Advance planning for the hackfest defines bounds for expected work and desired outcomes, and the time in-person can fill in the space within those bounds. The primary goal I hope an in-person event would accomplish is to figure out the mission and come up with a sustainable workflow that makes remote work easier after. I would also hope for better identification of newcomer tasks that are small enough for a new contributor to get involved with.

Technically an in-person event is not required for this. But since most people working on this team don't have the privilege to work on this part of Fedora as part of a paid employment work, it makes it harder to find that precious time to plan and set the vision. My hope is an in-person event provides structure to enable success after the event.

These are some of my 2¢.

But since most people working on this team don't have the privilege to work on this part of Fedora as part of a paid employment work, it makes it harder to find that precious time to plan and set the vision.

Counterpoint: because most people working on this team aren't doing it as their day job, asking them to go somewhere for an in-person meeting is a huge request. I don't think an in-person meeting would yield results that merit what we we're asking of them.

@bcotton Fair point.

BTW, while going through old bookmarks I found this detailed thread from @mattdm in 2015 about his vision for the future of Fedora Marketing. I thought it might be a helpful reference:

https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/council-discuss/2015-October/013788.html

@bcotton Fair point.
BTW, while going through old bookmarks I found this detailed thread from @mattdm in 2015 about his vision for the future of Fedora Marketing. I thought it might be a helpful reference:
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/council-discuss/2015-October/013788.html

Reading it now

We had several discussions about this, and TBH I think we are going nowhere with this. Maybe we need some guidance. Is it ok to you if we ask either Council or Mindsahre or both what they expect from the Marketing team, so we can define what we should work on?

I think it is fine to ask Mindshare. I am just worried they don't have an answer right now. Given the situation, I wonder if we could start with a different question. What do we have the possibility to actually do given our current contributors and their availability. Lets take that list and pick the best thing we can do from it and go from there. WDYT?

I don''t want to narrow down marketing team focus but is it possible to use marketing team potential for several Fedora events marketing.

This can be one of their tasks.
They can have a marketing pagure ticket format which should have questions for the event owner who needs help from marketing team for their event marketing.

It can be event owner of fedora women's day who wants to have some posters, tweets, blog post and marketing team can help that event owner by helping with all this. As event owner have many things to handle while organizing the event, marketing team's help can surely share some load here.

Thoughts?

@amsharma I like where you are going, but I don't think we can get there from here. What you've described feels like a checklist. For example, posters go through the design team. Making someone ask marketing to find someone to proxy a ticket request to design is inefficient and wasteful of contributor time.

I suggest we expand on the conversation going on in https://pagure.io/mindshare/issue/138 to cover more of these details. Then let's pair that list with what marketing can really do, not just what we wish they could do. WDYT?

@bex yeah the idea is open to discussion and rough at this stage.
There can be some meaningful stuff like , I believe Fedora marketing team has the ownership of all Fedora official social accounts and that can used as a platform to market the events etc,

@amsharma please read the ticket I referenced, mindshare/138 - your comment about social media is not accurate today and is under discussion.

Oh.. so the ownership is scattered, that is bit tricky and I guess bigger problem to address.
IMHO, it is should be with marketing team because that is the purpose of having the team in place.

Anyways, that was just a small example how marketing team can help for events, something like you described in your last comment in mindshare#138, I think this should be handled by marketing team.

@bex, @jflory7, @bcotton, @bt0dotninja
My list of stuff that should be done by mktg is:

• Create, based on ChangeSet, a list of comprehensive, easy to share and explain, points of what's new in each editions. Something like the TPs but shorter and documented.
  • To make this possible, we still need the coop of the teams that makes fedora (Editions, Spins and Labs)
• Create (or engage people to create) content for different media. This content should be:
  • Current: Based in the latest editions of the thing we are promoting
  • Accurate: The content needs to be align with the thing we want to promote, e.g.: if we are promoting a "quick tips to CLI", the commands needs to be able to run in a fresh install
  • Correctly targeted: we need to differentiate the targets of the content that is created. e.g.: It's not the same to target Instagram, that Twitter, or Facebook, or YouTube
• Create campaigns to focus the work: Aligned with the previous point, if we don't have a plan, it's not worthy to create content. An idea that I think it can work is the "editorial topics" that was proposed once to the magazine: We can work on a topic monthly, or bi-monthly and focus the content on that topic. In our case, I think my current work is kind of directed that way:
  • Podcast: Focus work-time in editing and publishing;
  • Infographics, have several infographics done, and have tickets with the people that can work on create and curate the infographics content;
  • YouTube: I'm planning to use the channel to publish several tutorials/screencast, based on the most viewed articles in the magazine.
• Create SOPs to help teams to organize marketing tasks: Based on @amsharma comment, while we don't have enough manpower to help people on a per-event basis, we can work in create a workflow (SOP) that people can use to simplify their work.

WDYT?

Thanks @x3mboy for taking the time to write this up.

@x3mboy:
Create, based on ChangeSet, a list of comprehensive, easy to share and explain, points of what's new in each editions. Something like the TPs but shorter and documented.

I see this as useful. It can build off the work already done by @bcotton in his FPgM weekly reports and change announcements.

When I was most active as an Ambassador, I read the talking points so I knew what is new in Fedora. It is hard to keep up with everything. A quick guide that explains new and exciting changes at a high level was useful to me. I would not study everything closely depending on what event I was going to. For a student hackathon at a university, I would pay close attention to something like the Python Classroom Lab and the Fedora IoT Edition (since many student hackathon projects are IoT projects). I might not look as closely at the newest Modularity changes because that was not my audience.

I think if the Marketing Team could instead filter the content already produced by @bcotton into audiences, this could be useful. Years ago, we talked about identifying audiences and gathering content each release related to these audiences. If I remember, we wanted Council feedback on who those audiences should be, but it fizzled out somewhere.

@x3mboy:
Create campaigns to focus the work

I see sharing existing content to various teams in Fedora as useful.

Campaigns give focus to gather/create content around a set of goals. Several teams / SIGs in Fedora do their work with audience-specific goals in mind. The Fedora Magazine example is an excellent idea of gathering content and making it accessible to the Magazine folks. When I was editor-in-chief, on slower weeks, we would search for something, anything, to write about. This would be a great way for the Marketing Team to help the Magazine team find ideas for full articles or finding new writers.

Perhaps collaborating with the Design Team to create content for Advocates is another way this idea could be extended.

However, I am cautious on the Marketing Team taking on responsibility of creating content, explained below.

@x3mboy:
Create (or engage people to create) content for different media.

Creating content is the most difficult challenge the Marketing Team has faced over the last five years (at a minimum). The Marketing Team is a small group of people working on a large variety of tasks. It is easy to get burnt out, exhausted, and overwhelmed by the pace of Fedora and the limited number of people helping.

I see value in engaging other people to create content. We could connect user communities into the wider Fedora community this way too. There is a lot of content already generated by various user communities, whether it is Telegram, Reddit, Discord, YouTube, etc. Combining campaigns with a strategy to collect content created by folks in user communities would reduce the pressure on the Marketing Team to constantly create new content. The campaigns provide guidance to people in the user community (who create content whether we ask or not) about what content can be included and reused by the wider Fedora community.

When I was a community staff member in the SpigotMC community, we had a community of ~300,000 people with a staff team of about 20 people. We would exhibit a booth at a convention once a year and crowd-sourced content from our user community for our events. We would provide some guidance about what we wanted or were looking for (e.g. brochures, flyers, promo videos, etc.). We got a lot of content. Not all of it was great. But some of it was exactly what we wanted. We used it at our events. People on our user forums were excited their content was useful and the staff team was relieved we could focus on other tasks to prepare for the event.

@x3mboy:
Create SOPs to help teams to organize marketing tasks

I like this too. I attended a talk recently with speakers from the Python Software Foundation. One talk was from the PSF Director of Infrastructure. He mentioned how the PSF supports local communities running regional PyCon events. The PSF builds "cookie-cutter" resources to make it easier to run a local PyCon and promote it. Resources like a "fork-able" website, template posters and images, and other resources make it easier for regional organizers to spend less time bootstrapping their event and more time doing the cool and awesome work of actually organizing and running it.

While this is not directly applicable to Fedora Marketing, I see value in creating "fork-able" resources that an Advocate could borrow to promote a Fedora presence at an event or do some outreach for bringing more people to a local event by Fedora.

@x3mboy given your list and @jflory7 's comments, can you comment on what is actually possible for our marketing team to do today? Let's see if we can get aspiration to intersect reality and see where we are.

Reading this thread Im a bit overwhelmed. The biggest challenge I am having learning about fedora and getting involved in volunteering is the sheer amount of information coming from all directions and the sheer amount of directions to go with my volunteering.

It seems to me that its way bigger than the team a half-dozen to dozen people, working on a volunteer basis with a couple of f/t paid staff. That brings me to Fedora Magazine. What I especially like about Fedora Magazine (as opposed to vast amounts of forum posts/wiki/documentation) is that it is compact, clear and focused. Its an art form, nay, a veritable expertise, to be able to hide all the chaos going on behind the scenes and present a serene informative, yet undeniably friendly face, to the public.

I know I have just arrived, so I'm sure my words and opinion have less weight than others, but my first question would be is this list of active contributors accurate [1]? Because I only see about 6 voices on this marked "critical" due last week issue. Any non-actives should be moved to an "Cherished Past Contributors" category, so that is (1) clear how big the group really is and how much of a work load it can handle. (2) who has a voice in what is going on (or does everybody, even outsiders have a say in internal marketing group workings?)

My second question would be who is the leader of the group, or is it run by peers with equal voting rights?

It seems to me there's a difference in the scope of the work that different team members view can be done by the group and its brought the group to fork in the road. And it seems that there's some hope that somebody higher up might pick a side/show the way, but that doesn't seem to be quickly coming.

So, perhaps, the way is to figure out who's on the team, figure out the most basic tasks that need to be done for new fedora users like myself:

• Talking points/new features on the current/next release for release to social media, press.
• reviewing/collecting/archiving in one location everything already created
• continue work on fedora magazine.

These are like bare essentials that need to be done.

Then there's all the great ideas @x3mboy, amazing and organized, but if the working group is the 5 or six people here, part-time, you need more help. To get more help, you those 3 first things working smoothly for people to say, hey this group has got it together and I won't be overwhelmed if I volunteer.

I just think nobody wants to volunteer for a group they know will swamp them with work and unreachable expectations. We all just want to give a little back, not our souls.

[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Contributors_to_the_marketing_group#Active_Contributors

After further research, I believe the Marketing Team Purpose should revolve around building talking points in the wiki. The last semi-complete talking point wiki was fedora 28. Both the wiki talking points for 29 and 30 are bare.

To get to a complete set of talking points, it would require a lot of legwork to get input from other groups about what changed. So a lot of effort would need to go to people connections and building relationships with other active members of the development/QA group to know whats changing. Also, a lot of relationship-building with the writers/contributors to the magazine who are researching their own interesting areas of fedora.

As the talking points are being built, screenshots/infographics/videos/things to share on social media would all develop naturally from there, but the core task would need to be working on the talking points.

Since the talking points are only available for 6 months before their release, it has to be a consistent and scheduled/metered effort. Otherwise that information will be lost, because devs/QA are not going to stop working on their current project to look up what happened in the last release.

@dan1mal:
I know I have just arrived, so I'm sure my words and opinion have less weight than others

@dan1mal Thanks for weighing in on this thread. I think you are asking great questions that may be more obvious from someone looking in from the outside.

I know a lot of folks are traveling this week for Flock to Fedora annual conference, so it might be a slow response to get back to your feedback. For now, I am thinking about the points you bring up and will keep this in mind this week at Flock. I will personally try to get back with a reply here later in August.

@bcotton Counterpoint: because most people working on this team aren't doing it as their day job, asking them to go somewhere for an in-person meeting is a huge request.

Not if there's not a clear purpose.

@x3mboy My list of stuff that should be done by mktg is:
Create Engage content * Target content to each media * Campaigns Podcast Infographics Videos (YouTube)

Marketing tasks should be to spread what the community do. Marketing should be a link between content creation, graphics, videos, educational resources (written and podcasts), and more to help visualize the amazing work contributors are doing.

@bex -> @amsharma I like where you are going, but I don't think we can get there from here. What you've described feels like a checklist. For example, posters go through the design team....
I see Bex point, but Amita has a point as well. Both are right.

From my point of view working with marketing is about having a -flexible- checklist on how the Marketing team could help speaking outloud of things done within fedora, helping give recognition to those who do the hard work and hopefully, recruiting more contributors to continue supporting the community. Marketing should be the link (or manager if you want it more clear) to coordinate efforts from different teams and get products that can reach social networks. Indeed Design team will do the slides and posts, indeed l10n would help with spreading into a wider audience... so it's not about a single role to fill, but a connection role to help unifying everything.

@jflory7 Creating content is the most difficult challenge the Marketing Team has faced over the last five years (at a minimum).

Most true. However, content creation is just a section of what Marketing should coordinate, not do. Best people to write content is who is making it. Would it be too crazy to think on get one or two contributors on each team from Fedora to help us developing content about what's new at their teams and having Marketing just polishing this content instead having to create it from scratch? If we can gather a single monthly article of each team, we would have enough articles for almost a year... that sounds fantastic to me.

@dan1mal The biggest challenge I am having learning about fedora and getting involved in volunteering is the sheer amount of information coming from all directions and the sheer amount of directions to go with my volunteering.

Reason why at the beginning, Marketing and Ambassadors used to work so close. Marketing could focus on linking teams into creating campaigns to not just get more people involved, but also showing how easy processes are to be part of this big family. Content production is hard, I know it first hand, but having a team like Marketing providing a road-map of what we should aim form would help us clarify what needs to be done in each team that would be involved.

• having a small (and big) events calendar
• coordinating periodic gatherings, talks and posts
• creating a yearly schedule of important celebrations and coordinate efforts with design for having campaigns built in advance
• help gathering articles from contributors at different teams
• preparing content for releases, new features (and not only when big releases are coming, but also when updates are ahead)
• Gather quality content from conferences, events and meetings and provide a unified source of content for further articles, videos, campaigns, etc.
• coordinate with social managers when and how content will go out... and cover ALL social networks.
• resume: Plan ahead what they want to spread and coordinate with several teams how to make it possible.

List is huge... scope is huge... work is not that huge once you organize it. Divide and conquer. I've seen a lot issues like this about "defining specifics" from several teams, but I don't see the necessary links between teams being mention to make things work. Remember folks, this is a community... connections between contributors are what holds everything up.

@tatica
If you could name just one thing that marketing group should be doing right now, what would that be?

@dan1mal Marketing primary task is to coordinate with Design, Websites and Ambassadors all the strategies and efforts for spreading what the community is and does. This allows to have a wider audience, attract new contributors and showcasing what our current members are doing.

There are some fantastic things that Marketing team is already doing such as the periodicity of articles at the Magazine, and Twitter's quick answers. But there are awesome initiatives like the Infographics that were stalled for almost 7 months, and it would be great if Marketing team could spread what we do outside our own networks. Contributions with other projects? Going bigger?

Our current way to promote our small events right now are tickets and contributors blogs (except flock), and I'm sure that something could be done to improve that. Planet has daily articles worth reading (some days more than one) who could make a great impact on our social networks, but currently we only promote Magazine's ones.

No, I don't have all the answers, but I'm sure a bit of planning and collaboration between groups will set everything in the right direction. Let me just grab Cate's solid proverb at Flock "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together."

@tatica

There are some fantastic things that Marketing team is already doing such as the periodicity of articles at the Magazine, and Twitter's quick answers. But there are awesome initiatives like the Infographics that were stalled for almost 7 months, and it would be great if Marketing team could spread what we do outside our own networks. Contributions with other projects? Going bigger?

As a newcomer/outsider, and with a quick review of the tickets/conversations and other material available to me, it seems the biggest issue marketing has is: too many ideas, too few people.

I have long experience working with non-profits and volunteers as a volunteer and as a coordinator and my humble opinion is your org needs to be faithful in the small things, to be able to build to capacity to take on the big things. I believe that the faithful production of magazines with clock-like periodicity and activity on twitter, and the occasional work of creating materials for launches and events, may be all that's possible for now.

There seems to be a long list of people whose names are attached to marketing, but who haven't been active on these threads/issues for a long time. Also, there's a clearly visible rift between the group members, some who want to "restart" the group and have huge ideas and others who seem war-weary and tired from maintaining.

I know very well the feeling of trying to be passionate and throwing everything into rebuilding a organization. And I dont throw everything in because I like to waste my time on any old thing, its because I see its huge potential and i believe in it. I also know what its like to hit the barrier of established leaders who wont let go of control, but don't really help and are more interested in just keeping their title/honor that goes with it. And finally, I also know the tired and sad feeling of being a leader and trying to maintain an organization on its last legs, and hearing people give tons of suggestions and just knowing they are bound to fail or those people will promise huge things and then disappear when the work needs to be done.

And so I return to my tried and true behavior, faithfulness in small things. Do the little things faithfully and keep maintaining until help arrives. So, I'm sorry I was unclear with my original question, it was not 'what is marketings primary task?' it was "what little job is there, that marketing needs to do, that I can do, today, and tomorrow, and the next day?" I'm not here to change fedora, or the marketing group, or design or anything else--I am only here to do a little job, faithfully.

If you know of a small task, please let me know. Thank you! 🥰

@dan1mal this ticket is for the discussion of big ideas and pushing further the group. (or at least I think so)

If you're looking for specific tasks, feel free to reach any open ticket at the Marketing pagure

@tatica These tickets all look dead, they just haven't been closed yet. I guess maybe marketing SIG may not be for me. Thanks for your thoughts and ideas! Maybe I'll see you in another SIG.