Yet, no proof of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but I have photographic evidence that the Flying Garage exists:
Yes, and the flying truck also exists:
Actually, the wonder did not happen unexpectedly, we ordered and paid for it. We also had the entrance to our house paved:
Now we can easily access and leave our house with the pram, which is still silently waiting in the corner of our corridor for the baby to arrive within the next days … let the real wonder begin!
Still, many Open Source projects think they will rule the world without marketing, simply because their software is hyper-fantastic-mega-great. In the early days of Open Source, that might have worked out, at least within the growing group of aficionados.
Today, there is a growing amount of often competing Open Source products and most importantly, the companies or organizations behind the software want to sell to end users who are sometimes not geeks (to say the least).
Hence, it is time to spread the word about your great Open Source product in a way that your focus group(s) understand(s) – and that’s what marketing is about. Some people call it “evangelism”, because the term “marketing” seems to have a bitter taste in the Open Source domain.
Nevertheless, in the end, what you will do, is marketing, and most likely, you will use traditional as well as new fancy means to gain visibility. So, let’s call it what it is.
The main reason why I avoid the term “evangelism” is that Open Source companies are usually technology-driven because they have been founded by software developers. The key for success lies in becoming market-driven and there’s nothing holy about it, it’s rather down-to-earth customer-oriented work.
There is indeed something special about Open Source marketing and that’s the aspect of community relations. It’s got a lot to do with social media marketing and building personal networks, in essence an ecosystem of mutual coaching and support.
I started to compile an Open Source Marketing Checklist in my Wiki and will keep extending it over time. This checklist is supposed to help Open Source companies and organizations to start or sanity-check their marketing. All hints come without any warranty, of course, but they always worked for me.
Stefan Kausch, CEO of Lieblinx approached me to help them: They are working on a fancy Web 2.0 site based on Drupal and urgently need one more Drupal developer in their team – starting yesterday. That specific job would last roughly until end of December and can be done remotely.
If you feel like becoming a hero, please write Stefan an email: s (dot) kausch (at) lieblinx (dot) net.
Stefan furthermore told me that they are also looking for Drupal/PHP devs in the long run working in their Berlin office. Hence, feel free to write to him if you are looking for a long-term engagement.
Since roughly 5 years I work remotely, from my home office. I did so self-employed as well as employed, being a programmer, consultant, pre-sales, marketing guy and in management positions. I was engaged, now being married, rich and poor, rented a flat and now own a house. Work was pleasant, nerve-wracking, boring, amazing.
Monty and Zak formulated a set of principles and rules for running a Free Software/Open Source business. One rule they proclaim is:
The Employee works in distributed company and may work from anywhere.
In fact, while employed, I was often the only one working remotely from home – quite opposite to Monty’s MySQL, where most people work remotely. Hence, I could clearly see what’s different between me working from home and my colleagues sitting together in an office building.
I realized that it is necessary to visit office(s) regularly, to avoid being cut off from group dynamics and being left without influence. While the company is on track, being there once per month sufficed. The more strategic decisions needed to be made, the more often I showed up on the spot, because nothing beats face-to-face meetings in times of change.
The more people work remotely, the more a company needs to be disciplined and discuss important issues at a given time, either via conf calls or in meetings on the spot, because you cannot easily gather colleagues in one room. It needs discipline to avoid the pitfall of “out of site, out of mind”. A corporate culture not being used to colleagues working remotely quickly “forgets” about colleagues working at home.
The big advantage of working remotely is that you can avoid the traps of group dynamics. To put it bluntly: Put a bunch of people in one room and they will make each other believe what they want to believe. This can end in fatal business decisions. It is good for software companies to have some insiders working from outside, because they can much clearer see what’s going wrong.
Then again, if something goes wrong badly, you cannot change a company’s course from your home office, you’ll need to gather people in face-to-face meetings to build trust, fight for the cause, commit to new goals.
Once, when starting in a new company which was not used to remote work, I had my boss call me several days in a row at 9:00 to see whether I really started work just like the others did. Managers not used to virtual teams, only believe what they see and unfortunately relapse to patriarch surveillance measures of early industrial times instead of trust-based relationships between knowledge workers.
In fact, working at home requires you to be a lot more disciplined and result-oriented and also to be more conscious about your work rhythm and that of your colleagues. At home, you cannot trick your boss into believing that you work simply by staring into a computer monitor.
Although I feel sad that Mindquarry did not work out the way it was meant to be, I am also excited about some great opportunities which came up lately.
First of all, I’d like to thank all my former colleagues at Mindquarry who proved once more that they are real sports especially during the rough times that lay behind us. You can tell their commitment and proudness from the fact that they kept working on the now available Mindquarry 1.2beta release until the last day of the company’s existence.
I very much welcome that the three Mindquarry founders now help Day Software to add collaborative tools to their Enterprise Content Management System. This is an extremely smart move by Day, because each one of the founders are superb developers with an entrepreneurial attitude. Plus, the founders already gained a lot of experience and insights in the collaboration market space – something of high value for Day’s business, because it accelerates time-to-market.
So, what will I be doing? In fact, I am yet undecided whether I will enter employment again or start my own business with a very good friend of mine. Either way, I plan to continue working in the domain of Open Source marketing, be it as part of a firm’s management or as a consultant.
Up-to-now, I have four job opportunities, most of them would also be interested in working with me as an external consultant. What do you think would be the best choice?
Sandro Groganz 