2018 Community Leadership Summit

Owned by Tenly Snow (Deactivated)
Last updated: Dec 21, 2018 by Mary Jo Kochendorfer (Deactivated)
2 min read

Website: http://www.communityleadershipsummit.com/

Date:  -  

Location: Portland, OR. Oregon Conference Center 


Sessions

Marketing an open source initiative/tool

  • Marketing helps people understand what a tool or technology is about. Make people aware of technologies and how they can use them. 
    • Traditional thinking = marketing means "give me money in exchange for a product" 
    • In open source it's about capturing attention and resources in a crowded environment 
  • How to design code to welcome people in and get them interested in working on your project. 
  • Marketing = word does not exist in other languages. Invented in the US in the 1950s. It's a verb - bringing your product to market. 
    • Two sides:
      • Using an open source tool
      • Contributing to an open source tool 
  • What problem is the tool solving? 
    • How do you describe it in a way that the people A) using it and B) contributing to it, know what it does and care about it? 
  • Have to be delicate in using personas - it really depends on the audience 
  • Need to make sure that the product is consumer-driven 
    • Conversations with actual customers are absolutely necessary 
  • Technical papers, how tos, tutorials, videos, training, education 
  • How do you onboard someone to be a contributing member of the project? 
  • Encapsulating information in concise ways
  • If someone likes your product, how do you empower them to be able to explain that to others? 
  • Minimize effort to describe 
  • Challenges with Slack
    • No "searchable" directory of Slack projects
    • Slack doesn't make it easy for anyone to join the community/conversation 
  • Comparison 
    • Don't go it alone - strong marketing can sometimes depend on comparison 

Open questions/challenges for OpenLMIS

  • Hearing the "customer" voice
  • Having that perspective actually folded into/used to define the product 
  • How to describe features and a roadmap that constantly evolves 
  • Our mission/vision is well-defined. IMO, we don't struggle with defining a mission that matters. What we struggle with is communicating our features in a compelling way to the people who matter (clients) 
  • Suggestion → Rather than creating events (ie. OpenLMIS community meeting), look for Africa-based events to attend and set up side events. 

OpenLMIS: the global initiative for powerful LMIS software