Welcome to future home of Freedomware Marketing. The Tux Project is going to be shifting gears a bit. This site is set to become a grass-e-roots website where we can all work together to openly collaborate on promoting the use of Freedomware in our local communities. Whether you are a business owner who uses or offers Freedomware solutions, or an individual enthusiast. You will find that this is the place for you to share your promotional ideas and work together collaboratively in order to make them a reality.
Selling Custom LiveCDs that touch people
By "selling" I mean creating something that can be sold well (or that "sells itself").
I would like to start work putting together numerious desktop selections that cater to users that really like certain topics. The more they like the topic the better it will be for the Linux supplying the avenue to the destination.
The usual disclaimers apply: "putting together" doesn't necessarily mean "we" do all, most, or even any significant amount of the work.
Here are two different topics we might chose among a great many others:
-- "Shoes" ..meaning catering to those that like shopping -- a hobby can be powefully attractive and more people can relate to (eg) shopping of one type or other than they can relate specifically to computers or computer related topics.
-- "Shoes" ..meaning catering to those that are connected to the retail business or really to any part of the economy -- livelihood is usually extremely relevant to people, especially when it is something of a career and not a mere job.
Basically, there are so many categories, I feel I might do an injustice to many missing the list if I attempted to make a real list.
If apps sell the OS, interests sell the apps.
Would people be more willing to try a Linux LiveCD (and not politely or impolitely decline.. or accept it and chuck it) if they felt they could really help increase the payback they got from an important topic only through getting that CD? I think so. They don't have to care that it is based on Linux or that it doesn't run with Windows. They would probably care much more that it provides access to resources they value and does so in a comfortable fashion.
Here is a comment where I was a little more exasperated than usual. It considers a simple strategy that can be used to guide distro/desktop design http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2007-11-08-014-26-RV-DB-H...
Specifics for the design and things we can do easily to get started sooner rather than later include:
-- Provide website shortcuts to resources. We could categories/subtopic to make it easier for users to avoid subtopics they don't like.
-- Provide a nice selection of desktop apps and menu listed apps readily available with relevant defaults (and provide choices whenever possible). You want the setup to focus on the central theme, but play and diversion is a part of any serious work :)
-- Provide specially selected wallpaper and other cosmetic touches. Make it easy to change these.
-- Try to start a community what would take it upon themselves to keep the content fresh. This community would be an example of a resource ("started" could mean "find"). You would expect to have tools to make updating the distro something a nontech user could do.
-- Videos can be a great form of documentation and resource. Today, it is much easier to create interesting videos. Disk space is rather cheap. ETC.
Here is a nonfree Linux distro that I think many can learn from (the website content are also on the money in many respects): http://www.kiddix-computing.com/ . As long as you don't take away the more serious apps, many adults may like and benefit from something like the kiddix platform. It can provide a new introduction to Linux, perhaps dispelling some myths along the way (it may even have positive shock value) and helping the user go a little further.
One of my goals it to be able to sell Linux to some of the most disinterested regular Jack/Jill Users in existance. A shopping mall is one place to try and test out any ideas. Recently talking to one of my sisters (she doesn't shop that often and has some attitudes similar to myself) helped drive the point that it may be a very difficult task indeed. I only went into some details of some of the apects of the general notion I had in mind, but then again, "not interested" speaks for itself. I know, I am frequently a "not interested right now" person. So we need a way to sell to the crowd with the automatic "not interested" answer to all of life's confrontations.
Of course, Linux should have appeal to those with this attitude of "I want things basically only on my terms," but we still need to get people to hear/see the message in a way to which they will relate and under their terms.
[BTW, another issue that came up was trust. In my case, I'd like to explore the avenues we have to reaching the end user without having to rely on "trustworthy" intermediaries that can be bought off. Linux if by for the people. You can see it and touch it. Trust is Linux/FOSS's/Freedomware's/etc strong point. It should show once we climb over the initial potentially very high hurdle "not interested" and other users put out. Word of mouth is slow but it works for a reason. It is based on trust and usually means the "marketing"/BS/etc filters have already been overcome.]
I would like to start work putting together numerious desktop selections that cater to users that really like certain topics. The more they like the topic the better it will be for the Linux supplying the avenue to the destination.
The usual disclaimers apply: "putting together" doesn't necessarily mean "we" do all, most, or even any significant amount of the work.
Here are two different topics we might chose among a great many others:
-- "Shoes" ..meaning catering to those that like shopping -- a hobby can be powefully attractive and more people can relate to (eg) shopping of one type or other than they can relate specifically to computers or computer related topics.
-- "Shoes" ..meaning catering to those that are connected to the retail business or really to any part of the economy -- livelihood is usually extremely relevant to people, especially when it is something of a career and not a mere job.
Basically, there are so many categories, I feel I might do an injustice to many missing the list if I attempted to make a real list.
If apps sell the OS, interests sell the apps.
Would people be more willing to try a Linux LiveCD (and not politely or impolitely decline.. or accept it and chuck it) if they felt they could really help increase the payback they got from an important topic only through getting that CD? I think so. They don't have to care that it is based on Linux or that it doesn't run with Windows. They would probably care much more that it provides access to resources they value and does so in a comfortable fashion.
Here is a comment where I was a little more exasperated than usual. It considers a simple strategy that can be used to guide distro/desktop design http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2007-11-08-014-26-RV-DB-H...
Specifics for the design and things we can do easily to get started sooner rather than later include:
-- Provide website shortcuts to resources. We could categories/subtopic to make it easier for users to avoid subtopics they don't like.
-- Provide a nice selection of desktop apps and menu listed apps readily available with relevant defaults (and provide choices whenever possible). You want the setup to focus on the central theme, but play and diversion is a part of any serious work :)
-- Provide specially selected wallpaper and other cosmetic touches. Make it easy to change these.
-- Try to start a community what would take it upon themselves to keep the content fresh. This community would be an example of a resource ("started" could mean "find"). You would expect to have tools to make updating the distro something a nontech user could do.
-- Videos can be a great form of documentation and resource. Today, it is much easier to create interesting videos. Disk space is rather cheap. ETC.
Here is a nonfree Linux distro that I think many can learn from (the website content are also on the money in many respects): http://www.kiddix-computing.com/ . As long as you don't take away the more serious apps, many adults may like and benefit from something like the kiddix platform. It can provide a new introduction to Linux, perhaps dispelling some myths along the way (it may even have positive shock value) and helping the user go a little further.
One of my goals it to be able to sell Linux to some of the most disinterested regular Jack/Jill Users in existance. A shopping mall is one place to try and test out any ideas. Recently talking to one of my sisters (she doesn't shop that often and has some attitudes similar to myself) helped drive the point that it may be a very difficult task indeed. I only went into some details of some of the apects of the general notion I had in mind, but then again, "not interested" speaks for itself. I know, I am frequently a "not interested right now" person. So we need a way to sell to the crowd with the automatic "not interested" answer to all of life's confrontations.
Of course, Linux should have appeal to those with this attitude of "I want things basically only on my terms," but we still need to get people to hear/see the message in a way to which they will relate and under their terms.
[BTW, another issue that came up was trust. In my case, I'd like to explore the avenues we have to reaching the end user without having to rely on "trustworthy" intermediaries that can be bought off. Linux if by for the people. You can see it and touch it. Trust is Linux/FOSS's/Freedomware's/etc strong point. It should show once we climb over the initial potentially very high hurdle "not interested" and other users put out. Word of mouth is slow but it works for a reason. It is based on trust and usually means the "marketing"/BS/etc filters have already been overcome.]