Dienstag August 30, 2005

Please help to promote the OpenOffice.org Conference!
Now that the schedule for the OpenOffice.org Conference is online, please help to promote the conference. For example, you can use the following logo or banner:





More logos and banners can be found here.
( Aug 30 2005, 07:51:31 AM CEST ) Permalink Kommentare [2]

Montag August 29, 2005

New survey of the week
Here is a new OpenOffice.org/StarOffice survey. I'm curious to see what you have to say!
( Aug 29 2005, 08:01:49 PM CEST ) Permalink

OpenOffice.org 2.0 Beta 2 has been released
OpenOffice.org 2.0 Beta 2 can be downloaded from this location, and the community announcement can be found here.
( Aug 29 2005, 07:06:09 PM CEST ) Permalink Kommentare [1]

Preliminary OpenOffice.org Conference schedule online
The preliminary (almost final) OpenOffice.org Conference schedule can be found here. Thus, register for the OpenOffice.org Conference today!!!
( Aug 29 2005, 08:35:55 AM CEST ) Permalink

Samstag August 27, 2005

The OpenOffice.org Bibliographic Project
Over the next few weeks I want to introduce various OpenOffice.org projects. In order to keep this simple and easy for both me and the project leads, I will just ask three relatively simple questions and post the answers here in my blog. Today I want to talk about the Bibliographic project led by David Wilson and Bruce D'Arcus. Here are the questions:

1.) What is the goal or focus of your project?

"The goal of the bibliographic project is to provide bibliographic support for Openoffice equivalent in function to commercial packages such as Endnotes, Reference Manager etc. But unlike the commercial bibliographic products we will utilise industry standards such as MODS, XML, XSLT and SRU/W. Both the bibliographic engine and style definitions will be open-source and usable by other open-source applications."

2.) What documents or web pages should people read first when they join (or want to join) your project in order to make themselves familiar with the project and contribution opportunities?

* The project Welcome page
* The Developers page
* Bruce's Blog

3.) What are the top three areas where volunteers could help, and what skills would be needed for that?

"GUI application design. XML/XSLT coding skills for the bibliographic formating engine (we have a working example but need some skilled people to perfect it). Programming skills to work with the Openoffice API."
( Aug 27 2005, 02:44:33 PM CEST ) Permalink Kommentare [1]

Intel and Sun are Premium Sponsors of the OpenOffice.org Conference
As you can see here, Intel and Sun are Premium Sponsors of this year's OpenOffice.org Conference. The agenda should get published any day now. Stay tuned!
( Aug 27 2005, 02:02:57 PM CEST ) Permalink

OpenOffice.org distributed at state conference of lawyers
I just found this on the OpenOffice.org marketing project mailing list:
"About 350 lawyers and Law students we expected, but, in fact, over 750 came. It was a tremendous success. We distributed 750 CD´s with OpenOffice.org, and some other free softwares, and we demonstrated it in a datashow (projector)along with some information about its use. People got astonished and surprised."
( Aug 27 2005, 02:00:04 PM CEST ) Permalink

SpreadOpenDocument.org
FYI, here is a private little fun project to promote the OASIS OpenDocument file format which is used by OpenOffice.org and StarOffice.
( Aug 27 2005, 01:20:33 AM CEST ) Permalink Kommentare [1]

Freitag August 26, 2005

StarOffice 7 Software, Product Update 5
"Sun has again updated its Office Suite StarOffice 7 with numerous bug fixes. For the Windows and Linux versions the manufacturer has put on the Net a cumulative Product Update 5 comprising 30 and 38 Mbytes respectively."
The full article can be found here.
( Aug 26 2005, 03:56:42 PM CEST ) Permalink

Donnerstag August 25, 2005

OSS vs. traditional marketing
I just came across this entry in Laura Ramsey's weblog. Pretty interesting!

I'm currently also thinking about what open source marketing is and what it should try to achieve. If I look at "my" project OpenOffice.org, I'm wondering if I should "promote" the application or the project. Since the OpenOffice.org application is already well known and broadly used, I more and more come to the conclusion that it's time to focus much more on the project again in order to "recruit" more contributors.

Based on my experience with OpenOffice.org, I tend to believe that (at least) the folowing eight things are required to attract new contributors:

1.) Success (who wants to contribute to a project that nobody cares about)
2.) Visibility (i.e. make people aware of different sub-projects and contribution opportunities)
3.) Mentoring (i.e. help people to get started)
4.) Leadership (by helping with the tedious work without excluding volunteers)
5.) Project management (i.e. helping to coordinate/synchronize different efforts)
6.) Excitement (i.e. keep people informed about progress and successes)
7.) Friendship (i.e. get to know and care about the people you are dealing with)
8.) Fun (nobody wants to fight and argue in his spare time)

I'm sure I'm missing important items here, I definitely have to think more about this important issue! Actually, I already had to increase the number several times until I had my list of eight items.

Looking at the list, it's pretty obvious that attracting people to open source projects (= open source marketing) is different to traditional marketing. However, there is one exception. The first item, success, is from my point of view critical for attracting people. Therefore, some "traditional" marketing is still required to make the "product" of the open source project successful. However, those marketing activities are most times guerilla marketing activities since most open source projects don't have multi-million advertising budgets.
( Aug 25 2005, 07:55:09 PM CEST ) Permalink Kommentare [1]

The OpenOffice.org marketing lists explained
Here Jacqueline McNally, the OpenOffice.org marketing project lead, explains the purpose of the various mailing lists that belong to the OpenOffice.org marketing project. The full email thread can be found here.
( Aug 25 2005, 11:25:15 AM CEST ) Permalink

Mittwoch August 24, 2005

"FOSS word processors compared"
"Conclusion

Given the history and resources behind OpenOffice.org Writer, its victory in a review of features is not surprising. Neither AbiWord nor KWord should be the first choice for long documents, like manuals or doctoral theses."

The full comparison can be found here.
( Aug 24 2005, 11:55:13 AM CEST ) Permalink

Dienstag August 23, 2005

PC Magazine: 4 "Stars" for OpenOffice.org
"Unlike the slow, clunky original version, version 2.0 of this free productivity suite is surprisingly slick and highly compatible with Microsoft Office file formats. It even offers features not found in its expensive Microsoft counterpart."
The full review can be found here.
( Aug 23 2005, 06:59:27 PM CEST ) Permalink Kommentare [1]

Survey Results
Here are the results for last week's survey (38 people participated):


( Aug 23 2005, 09:25:54 AM CEST ) Permalink

OpenOffice.org in Australia
"Microsoft knows if they tried to sell Office at full price nowadays in most Australian market segments, the uptake will be dismal. Demand is bad enough already. I understand that only 20% of users are on Office 2003, two years after that version of the application was released. By now, even Windows users know just how much functionality they can get with OpenOffice.org, for zero cost. Dropping a few hundred bucks just to run a legit copy of Microsoft Office no longer carries real appeal for families or also small business."
The full article can be found here.
( Aug 23 2005, 08:21:25 AM CEST ) Permalink