While at LinuxTag 2008, I met with Jure Kodzoman of Interchange fame. Interchange is a well established Open Source e-commerce platform, existing for over 12 years, and very popular in the USA.

We sat down to discuss from a marketing perspective the Interchange website and a brochure they created for distribution at their LinuxTag booth.

These are the issues I identified and some changes I proposed to Jure (which would still need some more consideration before being implemented):

1. The current domain name of the website (icdevgroup.org) is extremely hard to remember because it does not relate to the Interchange brand. The domain needs to be in sync with the project name, hence they should move the website to a domain that includes “interchange” in its name. It need not be a .com TLD, .org or .net suffice for a community-driven OSS project.
2. Today’s tagline ” Powering web-based applications since 1995″ does not tell that Interchange is an e-commerce platform nor that it is Open Source. Better taglines would be “The most flexible Open Source E-commerce Platform” or “The first Open Source E-commerce Platform” or “The Open Source Platform Powering E-commerce world-wide since 1995″. It’s a great selling point that Interchange exists since 1995 and it might be a valid claim that they are - yet another potential tagline - “The first Open Source Alternative for E-commerce”.
3. The Interchange website lacks a concise welcome blurb on the front page. This makes it very hard to visitors new to Interchange understand what it is about. A sample welcome blurb: “Interchange is powering e-commerce since 1995. Its proven and highly flexible open source platform provides the building blocks to assemble individual online shop solutions. Interchange can be easily configured to grow with your business.”
4. It is better to communicate only one major news on the front page through a banner especially to guide new visitors. For example, don’t advertise LinuxTag in one banner plus a general banner plus a banner about the Interchange 5.6 release in the same space. Instead, highlight the 5.6 release in a banner, provide a link to a landing page and at that landing page, say: “Come to LinuxTag and get a hands-on demo”.

My talk entitled Marketing Open Source Software at LinuxTag in Berlin, Germany was very well attended and the audience asked some great questions.

Find below the slides. I have added three more graphs related to Open Source business models to the slides deck I had used at previous presentations.

I have also uploaded the German slides of my presentation Marketing von Open-Source-Software at Webinale in Karlsruhe, Germany.

I am happy to present again at LinuxTag in Berlin, Germany after skipping last year’s event. Come and see and hear me talk about Marketing Open Source Software in room “Berlin 2″ at Saturday, March 31st, 12:00-13:00.

If you would like to meet me in Berlin, I’ll be there Friday afternoon until Saturday afternoon - just drop me a line.

I will be presenting at Webinale in Karlsruhe, Germany. My talk is entitled Marketing von Open-Source-Software and will take place May 28th, 15:20-16:20. Let me know if you are around at that day and I’d be happy to meet with you.

It would not be too far fetched to talk about some of Microsoft’s PR talk related to Open Source as driven by a burned lands strategy in the past years.

Let’s leave the past behind. Let’s assume that Microsoft is seriously concerned about interoperability and openness. Let’s assume they are trying to understand how the Open Source business works and want to engage with Open Source companies in a friendly manner. Let’s not discuss whether Microsoft opens their APIs due to a self-decided business strategy or whether the EU made them make the decision.

Let’s give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt.

To understand the position Microsoft is in from a marketing communications perspective, take a look at the following analogy: Imagine a country that invaded a foreign land and actually burned the lands to defeat its inhabitants, but without military success. The invaded country was able to defend itself and won the war. Imagine business men of the aggressor country coming back one year after the war trying to establish business relationships.

As a citizen of the invaded country - would you trust those business men?

I can imagine that those Microsoft employees who by their corporate role and conviction sincerely want to establish mutually beneficial relationships with Open Source companies and communities face mistrust. They are often being accused of the “old crimes” and are being seen as the enemy.

As of today, Microsoft is in the middle of constant crisis management with Open Source. To get out of it, it seems Microsoft is rightly entering an era of diplomacy and friendly (naturally somewhat unclear) statements which are supposed to help grow trust between Microsoft and the Open Source community. This effort of small and large steps will have to balance naysayers as well as yaysayers to produce realistic results. Hence, it will be important for Microsoft to stay focused and committed.

While at the Microsoft Open Source ISV Forum and OSBC, one could witness Microsoft’s diplomacy at work:

• “Open Source is here to stay”, said Sam Ramji at the OSS ISV forum and Brad Smith mentioned during his keynote at OSBC: “We at Microsoft appreciate the important role that Open Source plays.”

• During his OSBC keynote, Brad Smith eloquently apologized for Bill Gates and Steve Balmer once calling Open Source communism and cancer: “Ultimately, people are not caricatures. They get up in the morning. They get smarter. The industry evolves. And you want that. You don’t want people to have to live with the caricatures and stay with those caricatures.”

Even to Microsoft, Open Source has proven to be a viable and lucrative business – why else would they partner with Open Source vendors? From there, it is just one more step for Microsoft to adopt Open Source business strategies themselves for relevant products or parts of them.

With Microsoft being a company relying on partners for 96% of its revenues, it will be highly important to drive innovation by building its partner network not only on top of commercial interests and proprietary software, but also on merit and fame for great software development achievements - a huge benefit of Open Source communities.

Microsoft needs to leave behind the scorched earth policies that clearly don’t work. Microsoft’s top executives need to re-state and re-assure that they want to live in peaceful coexistence and cooperation with Open Source. Most of all, Microsoft will have to accept that patent gimmicks won’t get them anywhere in their quest to play nicely with the Open Source community.

Otherwise, Microsoft will continue to cripple itself when it comes to additional strategic business options available with Open Source – not being able to apply OSS business strategies to some of their own products or growing cooperation with OSS vendors and projects. The intended acquisition of Yahoo! will be ill-fated without Microsoft successfully building a good relationship with the Open Source community, given that prominent community members such as PHP’s Rasmus Lerdorf are key to Yahoo!’s success.

The goal for Microsoft is to get past the point where they rely on the Open Source community giving them the benefit of the doubt and instead leverage the potentials of Open Source to Microsoft’s own advantage based on trustful relationships with the cathedrals and the bazaars.

At Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) next week, Brad Smith, general counsel for Microsoft, will keynote the event. A panel and the audience will be able to ask him questions right after his presentation.

InitMarketing fellow Stephen Walli blogged some questions he would like to see raised and I set up an area where everyone can post questions and vote as well as comment on suggested questions: What would YOU ask Brad Smith at OSBC?

I will be flying to San Francisco at March 23rd for Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), which takes place March 25th and 26th. Prior to OSBC, I will attend the second annual Microsoft Open Source ISV Forum at March 24th. I will fly back to Germany March 27th.

Please get in touch with me if you would like to meet.

Drop me a line should you also be at OSMB congress in Nuremberg, Germany. I’ll be there at January 22nd only. Looking forward to seeing you there!

Mindquarry will exhibit at Web 2.0 Expo Berlin and offers a special discount to those who want to see us and chat about what’s going to happen.

Read in the Mindquarry Weblog how to receive the special discount.

Web Monday “connects users, developers, founders, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, researchers, web pioneers, bloggers, podcasters, designers and other folks interested in Web 2.0 topics (in the broadest sense)” - as they say about themselves.

This event takes place once per month on a Monday in several cities around Germany. Today, I was flying to Berlin to spend a week in the Mindquarry office and, hey - it’s Web Monday!

Right now, I sit in the Newthinking office and listen to Lars‘ presentation of Mindquarry.

I am happy to be here, together with 40 other attendees. Lars told me that usually it is even more people - cool! If you’re in Berlin on a Monday, check if it’s Web Monday, it’s worth being there.

I am also happy to be here because finally, I got the chance to meet with Markus Beckedahl face-to-face.