Next week, Thursday, I will present in Istanbul, Turkey on “Does Open Source Software Needs Marketing? Why and How”.

Here’s further information from the invitation letter:

We would like to see you among us for the Open Source Marketing seminar
jointly organized by TUBITAK UEKAE and IBM-Bilgi Center for Advanced Studies,
to take place on November 27th at 13:00 in Istanbul Bilgi University
Dolapdere Campus.

The seminar will be delivered by Sandro Groganz, the founder of and consultant
for the open source marketing firm InitMarketing. Detailed info regarding the
seminar is provided below.

Date: November 27, 2008 Thursday
Time: 13:00
Plave: Istanbul Bilgi University Dolapdere Campus

Thank you in advance.
Best regards
Pardus Project // TÜBİTAK UEKAE

Does Open Source Software Needs Marketing? Why and How

The market share of Open Source software will double within the next four
years. More and more new companies provide Open Source products right from
the start and established players release their source code under an OSS
license.

These days, everyone knows that Open Source is a viable business model – but
how does one successfully market an Open Source product? A download link
alone will not suffice. It rather needs a strategy combinin traditional
marketing with community relations and social media marketing.

This presentation will showcase examples from the Open Source domain and
provide hands-on advice about how to unfold a vital Open Source ecosystem
where geeks and customers alike contribute to value creation.

Looking forward to seeing you there! Thanks to Erkan Tekman of Pardus fame for organizing it.

I very much enjoyed the video interview conducted with Andrew Rodaway, Director of Marketing, Canonical at OSiM.

In that interview, Andrew says:

“A lot of money will come into the open-source movement over the next few years and that drives the marketing agenda.”

He is certainly very right, because at InitMarketing, we experience steady and growing demand for our Open Source marketing services. Although the global economy isn’t in good shape, our customers invest in marketing their Open Source products more than ever.

It really seems that Open Source is doing good in a time of recession and every marketing dollar invested by Open Source vendors in a time where proprietary vendors struggle during an economic downturn is wisely spent because it gets them ahead of proprietary competition.

Watch the interview with Andrew Rodaway about marketing Canonical and Ubuntu at InitMarketing.tv.

I just published a video interview with Stormy which I recorded at OSiM in Berlin.

A video interview with Boris Kraft, CTO Magnolia, the Simple Open Source Content Management System, just got published on InitMarketing.tv. Boris discusses various aspects of marketing Magnolia.

Here’s an excerpt of the part I find most interesting:

Question: You’re building up the Magnolia office in New York. Is there a difference you realized between how to market your open source product in Europe compared to the US?

Boris Kraft: I think there are many differences. The expectations are different in the US, there are all these images we have in our heads about how the US economy works, about how the consumers are, and a lot of that is actually true. It’s much more hype, marketing is very very important, and the whole process is very fast, so it’s much more hype than substance – that’s my experience so far. So, coming from an European country – like Magnolia International sitting in Switzerland – this is a part where we typically have a very thoughtful way of doing things. We like to produce quality, and it takes longer, this is very difficult for us to deal with: To have this “Swiss mind set” and come to the US and basically clash with the “US mind set”. I kind of have to be there and say “we are the best, we are the greatest, we have everything tomorrow” whereas here we would say “yes, well, actually we can do this, yes” – you know, it’s a very different perception…

You can watch the interview highlights (4:44), the full interview (12:38), or read the transcript of the full interview.

InitMarketing.tv has just been launched! This is where InitMarketing will publish video interviews with key figures about marketing Open Source software. Currently, there are three interviews available:

• Bruce Perens, co-founder of the Open Source Initiative
• Florian Effenberger, Co-lead OpenOffice.org Marketing Project
• Oliver Nachtrab, former Product Manager, SUSE, Open-Xchange

More interviews will be published regularly, such as with Andrew Rodaway (Director of Marketing, Canonical), Fabrizio Capobianco (CEO, Funambol), Shane Martin Coughlan (FTF Coordinator, Free Software Foundation Europe), Stormy Peters (Executive Director, Gnome Foundation), Boris Kraft (CTO, Magnolia), and more.

Thanks to all interviewees for great insights and also to Wirawan Harianto for his design work!

Watch the video interviews about Open Source marketing.

For all of you in the German-speaking regions of Europe, OSBF will offer various talks related to marketing Open Source software. As a founding member of OSBF’s Open Source Sales & Marketing Group, I’ll present a two hours introductory workshop about Open Source marketing and will be available for Q&A afterwards.

Yet, the dates are not set and we are still collecting feedback from OSBF members on the topics.

OSBF members will not pay for attending the presentations, non-members will be charged EUR150.

It’s been quiet for a month on my Weblog due to still increasing demand for the services offered by InitMarketing. The more I am happy to be able to present some of the work we are doing for our clients.

In June, we started to work with YMC on what we labeled “marketing phase 1″. This project set out to build a completely new corporate design and identity. We re-defined the positioning and branding of YMC, re-launched their corporate website regarding visual appearance and content, created marketing collaterals and more.

About YMC

YMC is located in Switzerland. Their software is what we categorized as “Open Source Web 2.0 Content Management” and it is named Volano. Volano is based on eZ Publish and – you might have already guessed it – provides some cool Web 2.0 functionality on top of it. Volano itself is available under an Open Source license to YMC’s customers.

YMC provides support and services for Volano and currently focuses on the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). One major customer of YMC is Swiss Televsion SF where they use Volano for the website related to the daily news broadcast SF Tagesschau. A highly interesting implementation done by YMC is 029, a Web 2.0 portal where social travel booking takes place: A group of people can find the best package for joint holidays.

Corporate Design

Most of all, I am happy about the results achieved in creating a new corporate design for YMC. We started with the logo and then moved on to designing the website.

New YMC Website.

I especially do like the rings and the illustration used in the banner. The rings symbolize communities that sometimes overlap. The pieces of the rings sum up the individuals who are members of the community.

The illustration is great because it is a creative piece of art that is in sync with the banner’s claim that YMC combines spontaneity and quality in it’s Web 2.0 content management solution. Most importantly, the illustration highly differentiates YMC from other software companies, who tend to use stock photos of architectural buildings or even worse, of two business men shaking their hands.

The new corporate design also works well regarding booth designs, as this picture shows, taken at OpenExpo a few days ago:

YMC booth at OpenExpo 2008 (Credit: Andreas Heer).

The corporate design work also included the design of business cards, presentation slides, case studies, etc. and we are about to deliver the style guide to YMC.

Marketing Collaterals

We at InitMarketing assisted YMC in re-structuring and re-writing the content of www.ymc.ch to have it in sync with the more focused brand identity of YMC. We are currently in the proccess of coaching YMC when it comes to identifying and writing about thought leader topics on YMC’s corporate Weblog. Furthermore, we helped YMC in writing two case studies and delivered a case study template to them.

All this marketing work forms the basis for the public relations activities we just started for YMC.

InitMarketing teamed up with Olliance Group and we’ll present a workshop entitled Building an Effective Commercial Open Source Strategy at Open Source in Mobile (OSiM) conference, Berlin, September 19th. My fellow Roberto already posted some details about the OSiM workshop.

I got some 25% discount vouchers for the conference (valid until Friday, Sept 5th) – shoot me an email or leave a comment and I’ll get one to you.

InitMarketing is now a member of Open Source Business Foundation (OSBF). OSBF is a European-wide Open Source network founded by Richard Seibt of SUSE fame. The activities of the network focus on the business benefits of Open Source software. The members of OSBF are companies, institutions, VCs and persons inspired by open source software – all together over 120 to date.

There are plenty of useful working groups within OSBF, such as:

• With the Open Source Business Award, OSBF annually awards innovative ideas, concepts and promising business plans.
• The Campus Coaches provide member companies their diverse professional experience free of charge.
• The COSAD working group develops best practice guidelines for OSS.
• The OSBF Embedded project fosters the use of OSS, especially Linux in embedded systems.
• Just recently, OSBF started a sales and marketing project that InitMarketing is a core member of.

In only two years since OSBF’s birth, it has established itself as probably the most important interest group for OSS businesses with a strong footprint in Germany and a growing attraction all over Europe.

Flo of OpenOffice.org fame just pinged me via email and asked if I knew anyone who would be interested in exhibiting together with them at Systems trade fair. This is what he writes in his Weblog:

OpenOffice.org will exhibit at the Systems trade show in Munich, which takes place from October 21th to 24th, one month after the release of OpenOffice.org 3.0. If you are offering products, services or software related to OpenOffice.org, you are welcome to co-exhibit with us at our booth. Booth management, organization and marketing will be done by the association OpenOffice.org Deutschland e.V.

Given that OOo 3.0 will be released shortly before Systems, I guess there will be quite a hype. Hence, if you are in the OOo business in one or the other way, this seems like a great opportunity to raise your visibility.

Find more information and how to contact Flo in his post about the exhibiting opportunity with OOo at Systems.