Marketing of Drupal

Amazee (http://amazee.com) is a cool new social collaboration platform implemented in Drupal. It offers a free platform for people to come together and collaborate online on projects. Features include a project magazine (with cool drag and drop functionality), wiki, events calendar, discussion forums, sponsoring etc. Amazee is a great showcase for many things Drupal is good at including a great user interface.

Maybe it is an interesting candidate for a d.o front page showcase? Here is a summary of recent press coverage:

We've been beating the drum about who's using Drupal for a while now. Here's a nice site, done in Wordpress, called WorkswithUWorkswithU. Anyone interested in making a works with D?

Hey all! We're conducting a 13-question survey to better understand what users of Drupal find lacking in several areas, including themes, e-commerce, and support. The responses will be used for data in a series of free reports for the community, and also to help us create products/services that better serve your needs. Personal/contact information is optional. We'll also be sharing the (anonymized) results so they can benefit everyone. Thanks!

Take the survey

Not two days ago in IRC Kieran tuned me onto Matt Asay's "the open road" blog... and its great reading.
Today he wrote about how important it is for open source projects to take marketing seriously... because its no longer enough to be free and open (when everyone else is free and open).
To get people to talk about you you have to give em something to talk about.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10038966-16.html?part=rss&tag=feed&sub...

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hi all

Just wanted to get these in front of you for your review - we're currently discussing:

a) the experience strategy for drupal.org, (http://www.disambiguity.com/draft-drupalorg-experience-strategy/) and
b) proposed audience segmentation for drupal.org (http://www.disambiguity.com/insiders-and-outsiders/)

take a look, give us some feedback!
and don't forget you can also participate on Flickr, Twitter and Slideshare!
(more info here: http://www.disambiguity.com/opening-the-floodgates/)

thanks
Leisa

After a week of delay due to DrupalCON related travel, it is time for our monthly open review meeting. We will meet for the next round of proposal reviews on Thursday, September 11th at 14:00 Eastern (US) (18:00 UTC).

The meeting will be held in IRC #drupal-dojo on irc.freenode.net. (See http://drupal.org/irc for information about using IRC.) We will meet for 1:30 with the following agenda:

Come to work and live in Paris....

AF83 is actively looking for experienced Druaplers for its Parisian offices... Mostly for newspapers/media/music/social networking sites. Knowing some French is ofcourse a plus but not an absolut requirement. Having european work papers can also simplify life.

AF83 is a young and vibrant company based in Paris with offices in San-Francisco specialized in community centric web sites and mobile applications.

We are always looking for good news stories and announcements. We've been pretty good working with book publishers to promote Drupal books on Drupal.org. We've done less well with DVDs, but with Lullabot's latest we are starting to turn the corner.

We've recently missed Bryght's hosting product re-launch, and the Drupal miracle DVD series. http://www.masteringdrupal.com/news/drupal-miracle

Tom Geller's new Drupal series with Lynda.com is coming soon. There's supposed to be at least 6 more books coming over the next 6 months.

Hi, I've been developing some marketing materials for Drupal that provide examples of Social Networking sites built with Drupal. Examples of Drupal, Newspaper, Library sites in videos: http://blip.tv/file/912733

If you know of other Social Networking sites which should be added please add them to this wiki page.

One observation I've had from lurking in the Knight Drupal Initiative meetings is something that's haunted me before. If only I was good at writing a solid grant proposal and subsequent review and revisions, some of my pie-in the sky ideas might actually turn into something valuable for the community (and provide a self-sustainable way for me to contribute).

Just a few days ago, Ubuntu said it will offer Alfresco CMS. This will sure give Alfresco wider exposure and wider use because it is easier to install using apt-get/aptitude.

While Drupal is already in both Debian's and Ubuntu's repositories, it is quite a few revisions behind on Drupal 5, and no Drupal 6 is available.

Related to Kierans post on the Open Source CMS survey, I just encountered a blog entry being hyped on Twitter about the 25 Enterprise Social Media Platforms/Companies To Be Aware Of.

In my comments, I said I was struck by the absence of the leading open source content management systems--WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal--which have become social media platforms in their own right.

I don't know how much credence or play this analysis piece will get, but thought it should be on our radar screen.

Drupal has been nominated as one of the three best business applications for the LinuxWorld product Excellence Awards. Starting tomorrow, the judges will be visiting the Drupal booth at LinuxWorld to take a look at Drupal and see how it helps businesses. We were up against a lot of competition and it's great to be nominated in such a competitive field.

Thanks to the booth sponsors HaloSys, Gravitek Labs, AF83, and Acquia for funding the booth in the product section of the expo.

Cheers,
Kieran

DrupalCampLA is September 13-14 and will be located in Los Angeles area.

For those who haven't seen the DrupalCampLA promo video then be sure to see it at DrupalCampLA.com, and please make sure you vote on our camp attendance poll if you plan to attend or not. Thanks!

Video: http://drupalcampla.com
Attendance poll: http://groups.drupal.org/node/13157

cross posting from Drupal For Good, and the french version at the France Group

A community effort to help a NGO get some ass-kicking internet presence — October 4th and 5th, 2008 — Paris, La Cantine Numérique

On the first weekend of October 2008, in only 2 days, the Drupal French Community will build a complete and live website for a selected NGO. All free. Free as in free beer, and free as in free speech.

What’s in it for the selected NGO?

You do not have an internet presence? You have a very lousy one? You want to to do a specific incredibly cool thing on the web?

Please register on the main Drupal n’Go web site (http://www.drupalngo.org/user/register). Then visit http://www.drupalngo.org/en/node/add/applications to fill in the project application form.

Both small and large NGOs can apply. The community will choose a single NGO project.

http://www.waterandstone.com/downloads/2008OpenSourceCMSMarketSurvey.pdf

The survey shows that three systems lead the race: WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal. The survey concludes that these three systems have opened up a large lead on the rest of the pack to become the dominant brands in the market.

Hi, one of my Drupal friends suggested I post this here.

Our non-profit, The Collaboration Foundation, is a finalist for a $10,000 online 'Ideablob' grant. We need votes to win. The grant would be used to build an innovative non-profit Drupal site that will look like this: http://collaborationfoundation.org/images/web/cf_home.jpg

Please vote here:
http://ideablob.com/ideas/1247-The-Collaboration-Foundation-C

About The Collaboration Foundation

Just saw this publication from the ALA:

http://www.techsource.ala.org/ltr/drupal-in-libraries.html

I have yet to read it, but will pick up a copy soon -- the sample of the text gives a decent idea of what the book is about.

Cheers,

Bill

Can someone (or multiple people) please promote http://groups.drupal.org/node/13422 with a drupal.org post -- preferably front page -- and some blogging.

We will meet for the next round of proposal reviews on Thursday, August 7th at 15:00 Eastern (US) (19:00 UTC).

This meeting is part of our ongoing monthly review meetings. To be held in #drupal-dojo on IRC [freenode]. (See http://drupal.org/irc for information.)

We will meet for 1:30 with the following agenda:

1) Review current proposals that need decisions:
-- http://groups.drupal.org/node/11859
-- http://groups.drupal.org/node/13071
-- http://groups.drupal.org/node/12721

I haven't come across this yet anywhere in Drupal land: http://code.google.com/opensource/osa-hall-of-fame.html

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blockquote>The Google-O'Reilly Open Source Awards have been presented to individuals for dedication, innovation, leadership and outstanding contribution to open source.

Below are some attachable images made to market Drupal with the tagline: "Out-of-the-box".

Feel free to add your own translation/interpretation below:

• English | Get it right, "out-of-the-box"
• English | Get the best, "out-of-the-box"
• Tagalog/Filipino | Ito ang tama, "Ilabas mo"
• Italian |
• Spanish |
• German | Sofort einsatzbereit
• German | Auspacken und Loslegen
• Italian |
• Dutch |
• Chinese |
• Japanese |
• Hebrew |
• Russian | Сделай правильно, "решение из коробки."

I am working on submitting the Drupal survey response for Gartner's latest research report. We are looking for three customers with 1000 users in a production deployment. Ideally these would be successful deployments and the customer would be willing to have a quick chat with myself to ensure we are providing the right customer reference. Good customer references are the single biggest factor in impacting report recommendations.

From the Gartner Social software market survey

We got interviews from:

Hi, I am working with Damian from Packt Publishing to get a suitable quote for his press release about the 2008 Packt Publishing awards.

He's looking for a quote about why the win was valuable to the Drupal community. If you've got time to make a quote, or find a particular good quote here: http://drupal.org/node/188772 or from Drupal planet please add it here.

Thanks for your help.

This will be the first of a series of ongoing monthly review meetings. To be held in #drupal-dojo on IRC [freenode]. (See http://drupal.org/irc for information.)

We will meet for 1:30 with the following agenda:

1) Review current proposals that need decisions:
-- http://groups.drupal.org/node/11585
-- http://groups.drupal.org/node/11859

The project sponsors are welcome to answer questions during this review. The possible outcomes of these reviews are:

• Submit the proposal to Knight for possible funding.
• Reject the proposal, with reasons why.

we're mostly friendly. and mostly fun. but we're pretty geeky. in a cool way, of course. but this month we're a bit melancholy on the news Crystal is leaving us for Seattle. :-/

the good news is that we taped our meeting. ya, real geeky. but LA area is HUGE. and sometimes making it to the meeting in person can be difficult. so there you go... we're geeky but thinking about everyone that wanted to join us, but couldn't.

Drupal has been selected as a finalist for the SourceForge 2008 Community awards in 5 categories.

Special thanks to Nicholas Thompson, Michelle, Rahul and others in who were involved in the nomination and promotion of this award: http://drupal.org/node/267469

I originally posted this discussion to the Portland OR DUG and was then asked to repost it here.

Recently NTEN (Nonprofit Technology Network) put out their 2008 CMS Satisfaction Survey. You can find the full text and numbers for this survey on their web page, though it will cost you $50 if you are not a member. They are a valuable nonprofit themselves, so supporting them seems to be a good thing, and this report would go a long way to helping many of you convince your clients to use Drupal, more than you could achieve in $50 of billable time in many cases, so it would be $50 well spent.

In any event I thought I'd at least share the basics of that report, on how Drupal ranked in customer satisfaction and related areas. Remember though that this is not representative of all your clients, but is nonprofit focussed, which is a group probably more likely to use free tools before most others, so it is unlikely that the world at large matches these numbers, fascinating as they are.

Web conference: http://acquia.acrobat.com/keyperformanceindicator/
For Participants: Access Code - 450345#
Dial - (712) 432-1600
International Dial-in Numbers:
Austria - 0820 4000 1552
Belgium - 070 35 9974
France - 0826 100 256
Germany - 01805 00 76 09
Ireland - 0818 270 021
Italy - 848 390 156
Netherlands - 0870 001 920
Spain - 902 886025
Switzerland - 0848 560 179
UK - 0870 35 204 74

This call will be recorded, I apologize for the late or night call for European members, but this was the time when Mike was available.

Are you interested in helping to spread the word about Drupal? LinuxWorld Expo is coming to Moscone Center Aug 4-7. Come share, learn, and have fun with other Drupal and open source fans. LinuxWorld Expo is geared more towards enterprise solutions. If you're interested in open source (beyond Drupal), this is a great opportunity to learn from others and to share what you know about Drupal.

I'm working with Amazon to coordinate the effort to host a booth at LinuxWorld Expo.

Back in May Forester research contacted the Drupal association asking if they could talk to some Drupal customers and vendors. We connected them with a couple of Drupal consulting shops and in turn some of their customers. Here's the report and a nice summary by Matt Asay, from Alfresco:

Quoting the report from Matt's quote:

Drupal.org Redesign Business Objectives

These objectives were developed by Michael Meyers and Laura Scott of the Drupal association.

OVERVIEW:

Acquia and AF83 are pleased to announce that we are have purchased a booth to represent Drupal at LinuxWorld. The booth with equipment value is worth almost $6000. If you'd like to work the booth at LinuxWorld or are interested in contributing to the booth costs please let me know.

Tue., August 5, 2008 10:00am – 5:00pm
Wed., August 6, 2008 10:00am – 5:00pm
Thu., August 7, 2008 10:00am – 4:00pm

If you are available to be a volunteer at the booth please contact me.

I am arranging for a Drupalcon Booth at OSCON. Let me know if you are available to represent Drupal during the following hours.

Exhibitor Registration/Move-In:
Monday, July 21, 12:00PM - 6:00PM
Tuesday, July 22, 9:00AM - 6:00PM
Exhibit Hall Hours:
Wednesday, July 23
10:00AM - 4:30PM
6:00PM - 7:30PM (Expo Hall Reception)
Thursday, July 24
10:00AM - 5:00PM

Location: Oregon Convention Center
777 NE Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd.
Portland, Oregon 97232

I've been working with members of the Drupal association, particularly Jacob Redding and Moshe Weitzman, and the infrastructure team to help calculate some statistics to measure the growth of GDO. I've got a blog post going into more detail coming up. I'll link to it shortly.

Kyle Else from Toursheet LLC has signed the contract for the booth. I am working with Andy and Anne from promethost to raise money for the booth expenses and to help coordinate volunteers.

http://www.hostingcon.com/2008/attend/floorplan/

Kieran

Acquia would like to thank everyone who voted for our 1 minute video submission for the Enterprise 2.0 contest. We've now made it to the second round and we've added an important section to the video, the Drupal Ecosystem, with dozens of Drupal consulting company logo's.

How did we select these logo's to represent the Drupal ecosystem:
1) Looked for sponsors of Drupalcon Barcelona and Drupalcon Boston
2) Drupal Association Organization Members

Acquia has submitted a 1 minute video about Drupal to the Enterprise 2.0 Launchpad contest. The video site, is actually a Drupal site. If you get a chance to watch this one minute video and vote, it will help give Drupal some exposure at Enterprise 2.0.

http://launchpad.enterprise2conf.com/node/14

Miami-based design firm studio:module picked up 4 awards last Friday from the Horizon Interactive Awards for sites it had built using Drupal 5.

Over 1,000 sites were reviewed in this competition for creativity and originality, overall design, technical merit, effectiveness and user experience. Here's a list of the Drupal sites from studio:module that won:

This page is a resource for members of the Drupal community. If you would like to promote the Knight Drupal Initiative, you can use the following materials.

For more information about the KDI, see the program goals and the FAQ. To submit a proposal, please review the application tips and the application process.

Program summary

A one sentence summary of the KDI.

* The Knight Drupal Initiative is an ongoing grant program for Drupal and is designed to help people improve their communities by providing a robust, freely distributed, open source digital publishing platform.

Elevator pitch

For use when you have thirty seconds to explain the KDI.

* The Knight Drupal Initiative is an ongoing, open grant funding process for the Drupal open source project. We want to enable more people to enter the digital conversation by lowering the technical barriers to entry. We will provide powerful tools for digital publication, free and open to all. Our goal is to encourage people to improve their communities by supporting the free exchange of information and ideas.

Three Drupal sites are up for Webby's: http://www.theonion.com, http://www.changeeverything.ca/, http://maplight.org

If someone has a chance to make a front page post that would be helpful.

Hello, in approximately 90 minutes Barry Jaspan and Jeff Whatcott will be demoing how to build a bicycling community with Drupal. Acquia is one of 6 finalists in this contest and after watching the competition there's a good chance we can win.

Voting will be Moses SMS messaging service: In order for us to win we would like you to text 'acquia' to ###### (A number to be disclosed when the voting opens).

Your help will be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Kieran

I've been pretty cynical in the past about blogs. I am now a convert.

For Drupalcon we identified over 70 blog posts that helped drive awareness and ultimately successful fund raising and successful attendance. For the recent Drupal testing sprint in Paris, France we used the same technique.

What worked for the testing sprint was trying to justify the expense and working on the anticipated outcomes of the sprint. We used blogging to raise awareness and attract sponsors ultimately raising funding for 8 people to attend Paris.

Congratulations to Drupal for winning a CNET Webware 100 award in the publishing category.

webware.com — Culled from an initial set of over 5,000 nominations, voted on by almost 2,000,000 people, Drupal shines as a premiere platform for social publishing. Congratulations to the Drupal community for your hard work and great success.

Digg it here

From Robshouse.net