I'm starting a fresh thread to discuss just the PURPOSE section that Ben laid out in his earlier post Brand Strategy Purpose & Workflow
Ben asked us to Define our purpose. He provided a template:
PURPOSE:
First, let's define our purpose: We are working on the Branding of Drupal so that we can _____________ Drupal faster than it is _______________ing now.Is that grow/grow? Is that why we are branding Drupal? Are we happy with faster growth or is there some other higher purpose that we are called to? It could be helping people, turning a profit, expanding the web, mobile, what? Why are we doing this?
My take on this is as follows:
PURPOSE:
We are working on the Branding of Drupal so that we can GROW Drupal faster than it is _GROWing now.
I do, whole heartedly, subscribe to the thought that we need to GROW Drupal faster. And for this purpose I define GROW as this… "Growing Drupal awareness and understanding such that we attract developers who want to develop it, designers who want to design for it, and clients who want to create and publish with it."
This, I believe, is the crux of the matter. As much as I love the idea of growing more clients for the sake of growing more clients, I'm FAR MORE concerned about meeting the current demand as well as damned frightful of meeting tomorrow's demand. If another state [as did the state of Georgia] decides to move 65 sites to Drupal… Who's going to do it? Yes, arrangements were made and shops collaborated to get the job done and that's GREAT! But I know for a fact that the process was challenging for Georgia to go from 2 rounds of RFPs to finally getting project allocated. We can NOT sustain this kind of barrier to entry. How many projects are wanting to begin the Drupal development process BUT wind up in another platform because the stakeholders can't find the skilled labor in their price range and time-line? The most conservative estimate to that question should send chills down your spine.
The demand for Drupal is causing some individuals and non-Drupal shops to "provide Drupal services" when in actuality they have NO BUSINESS doing so. How many times have we seen or picked up a project only to discover that the original creator of the site didn't have a clue how to use the menu system, fields, views, or the FAPI?
I know how this happens… Shops get RFPs or emails and potential clients are asking for DRUPAL by name. These individuals and shops say "Sorry, but we don't do Drupal." This only lasts so long. They realize they are turning down more and more work so they decide to "DO" Drupal, and they do it wrong. :-(
THUS, I define the PURPOSE as "Growing Drupal awareness and understanding such that we attract developers who want to develop it, designers who want to design for it, and clients who want to create and publish with it."
If our marketing and branding efforts only result in more clients for 2013 this may not be good. What if 4 more states and 3 countries and 2 universities and 5 K-12 schools want to jump on board and this amounts to 250 to 350 new sites that need built? If those numbers sound too fanciful, cut that in half then. What if we have 125 big projects hit next year? It could be good or it could be bad, but it won't be pretty!
Yes, I am sounding the alarm here. That is exactly how i approach the need that we have to get our message together and get it out there.
Comments
I can't agree more with Doug.
I can't agree more with Doug. Growing clients is important, but so is growing developers. We literally get several calls a week from groups around the country who have broken, half done and failed projects because someone said they knew Drupal, but really didn't. (And to a lessor extend didn't know how to manage a project)
The site owner calls us in a panic that they have to get their site fixed quickly (and often on a limited budget). 9/10 times we can't help them in their timeframe (and budget). Some persevere with there site somehow, but many, many more switch platforms. Here in Dallas, most switch to WordPress primary because there is an abundance of developers who promise that WP can do anything Drupal can although Joomla, SiteCore, Extron and Adobe are also popular.
I have been growing increasingly concerned about how many people start a Drupal site, work with an inadequate developer, then when things go wrong, abandon the tool. Some of these groups didn't have the budget to do it right in the first place, so those I am not too concerned about them, but some do.
Loosing them might be one of the biggest failed opportunity of all.
Website: www.leveltendesign.com
Twitter: @levelten_tom
Learn Drupal: Tutr.tv
So, what you're saying is
So, what you're saying is that the purpose of branding is to attract the following (in order)?
So, to me, it seems that marketing our brand toward developers is a helluva lot different to marketing to designers, which is a helluva lot different than marketing to clients.
But to get back on track to the original post:
To me, I can't think of anything better than Grow/Grow.
That being said, it may be difficult to merge marketing for all three distinct groups.
http://herchel.com | @mikeherchel on twitter
helluva is right
I agree that there are BIG differences in those three. I wouldn't dare to impose an order or priority on them all. That can flesh out as we pursue the conversation.
This three headed beast has been discussed before. It even has more heads depending on who brings it up. So I know that I'm not saying anything new when I bring these up ANDI am equally aware of the fact that it is no easy task to accomplish any one of these let alone ALL of them.
I'm prepared for a long, hard journey to tame this beast and get our house in order.
;-)
Well, let me know how I can
Well, let me know how I can help. :)
http://herchel.com | @mikeherchel on twitter
Solving the "talent gap" solves....
Thanks Doug for starting this thread. Exactly what we needed.
I heartily agree with you and Tom. Drupal is losing opportunities because of a lack of talent. In fact, you could say that the lynchpin in growing Drupal is not attracting more customers but attracting more high-level talent to build the sites. I've heard it said - and I tend to agree - that as Drupal companies we don't need to focus on getting customers but on getting the best talent we can and the deals will find us. While that works for a firm, I'm not sure it works as an entire community.
Not sure as in "I don't know", not as in "I disagree".
I have proposed the idea that customers don't find Drupal and then pick a development shop. Usually, they pick a shop and that shop happens to recommend Drupal. If we take that to heart then we should work on building more Drupal development shops. That will, in turn, grow Drupal. But, we can't build more dev shops without more programmers, themers, designers, information architects, etc.
So, perhaps the purpose of branding Drupal is so that we can attract more talent to Drupal faster than we are attracting it now.
Talent attracts talent. Getting more and better talent will lead to more and better talent. That makes Drupal much better positioned to attract, bid, win, and fulfill the promise of a better website experience - to Tom's point.
OR - and this is a hugely different idea - maybe we need to leave the "Drupal" brand to customers and create a second brand - "Drupal Careers" (or something) that shows the value in building a career with Drupal.
Ben Finklea
Chair, Drupal Branding and Marketing* Committee
*BAM!
I hope it's okay I continue
I hope it's okay I continue to digress a bit about talent :)
I second the notion about attracting talent, and I've found the best talent pool to be fresh graduates who have learnt the latest techniques and methodology from reputable institutions, and just lack the knowhow about Drupal. There might also be other pools of untapped talent, though I think this is the most important one.
So to successfully target and grow our base of talent, should we be targeting tertiary educational institutions? Some of these universities, polytechnics/high schools/etc are busy moving their web to Drupal as we speak, and are sometimes also suffering from lack of talent.
Surprisingly, CMSes are often not taught in education, sometimes there are not even classes that teach open source technologies or php. The belief seems to be that students should learn how to create systems like Drupal and then later when they get a job it's the company's responsibility to teach them the real tools that are actually used in the industry. According to universities, this approach helps students gain universal knowledge that is less easily outdated compared to a course specializing on a particular technology (and they might have a valid point there - it would just be nice if it was combined with real-world experience with tools that are widely used today, such as Drupal)
This results in students that graduate with the belief that a web development project starts by coding a database connection, setting up the SQL schema and implementing user authentication...
What's great is that the schools are really happy to accommodate software guys that approach them and offer to give a small tutorial in Drupal. It's likely that a major mass media company in their city is using Drupal, it's beyond doubt that media students be using CMS at their workplace, and there will certainly be Drupal shops that are recruiting.
Would be cool to hear other views on this.
Maybe this should branch off into an "Attracting more talent" group, so that the overall branding/marketing initiative doesn't float too much off track :)
I'd consider 'attracting more
I'd consider 'attracting more talent' one possible tactic for executing the 'growth' strategy.
It's okay to digress a bit and please, do it in here, we need to diverge first, then converge again on the main points.
Divergence is ok...
...but let's not get so far afield that we are trying to figure out good tactics before we even have a brand promise and a strategy.
I like your points overall. For the purposes of this discussion, I think it's fine to talk about attracting more talent here rather than an entirely new group.
A brand (theoretically) should be designed to focus one set of benefits on one target group. An example of this (everyone's favorite example) is Apple in the last 10 years. Jobs polished the Apple brand with the "think different" campaign. It made the brand cool again. The target was people who were a bit different. Brilliant because anybody who wants to can identify with that idea. But really, he was talking to people who are ok not fitting into the crowd. "The crazy ones". That describes open-source pretty well.
But then, as each product came out, it was a different sub-brand. The famous commercials are called "Hello, I'm a Mac.", not "Hello, I'm an Apple Mac." for a reason. Macs are for people who fit under the Apple "Crazy ones" umbrella but who like things easy. Who like to take pictures, make movies, etc. Not for people who like to futz with their computers all the time to make them work. A Mac just works.
The Mac inherits the cool from the brand "Apple" but then gets very specific as a sub-brand about why it is cool. Then, it works to extend that cool factor into other segments. I can just imagine someone thinking, "I'm creative but I'm just not an Apple person. But, I do hate it when my computer is broken all the time. Hmmm...maybe I'll try a Mac. But, I'm not an Apple person..." and so on. Until they try it. And then, suddenly they're an apple person.
And this certainly contributes to my point earlier about every subsequent dollar spent on branding is worth more than the previous dollar. Mac users love that cool, it's easy feeling so when their MP3 player dies, they buy an iPod. Because, well, it's easier, right? If iPod was a Logitech brand, maybe they don't buy it. And that "cool" an "easy" extended to the iPhone. And iPad.
As a thought exercise, it would be fun to take a few minutes and try to figure out who Apple was trying to target with iMac, iPod/iTunes, iPhone, iPad, Siri, iWork, and even the more mundane Safari, Mac OS (Cheetah, Mountain Lion, etc.). It's actually kind of fun and interesting. (My answers below.)
So far, this community is trying to make "Drupal" all things to all people. Frankly, we have a lot to learn about branding!
My vision is that Drupal creates that cool factor around the brand. Everything that comes out of this community is cool. And then, the sub-brands all have intrinsic value. "Oh, that's Drupal. It must be ________. Now it does ________? Hmmm. I might have to try that."
Ben Finklea
Chair, Drupal Branding and Marketing* Committee
*BAM!
After thinking about it overnight....
My vision is that we create a cool factor around our brand. Everything that comes out of this community is "cool" (bitchin', awesome, gnarly..."in the parlance of our time".). Then, the sub-brands all start out with intrinsic value. "Oh, that's Drupal. It must be ________. Now it does ________? Hmmm. I might have to try that."
But I digress. The first point we need to overcome is what are we trying to do rather than how we are going to do it.
I think the answer remains grow/grow.
Getting Drupal to grow would certainly involve growing talent. And we would grow our talent base by making the promise to potential talent that Drupal is the place where you want to spend your career.
With Drupal, you make more money, live a better life, get more dates, drive a faster car, your skills won't become obsolete, etc.
Ben Finklea
Chair, Drupal Branding and Marketing* Committee
*BAM!
Ends, not means please!
We are here in the BAM Mission section discussing what the purpose of our efforts are. We are here to work out what the 'ends' are as opposed to the 'means'.
If we discuss growing the talent pool we are discussing means, not ends - the talent pool issue is a result of what has happened so far, and there is nothing to say that more drupal developers = drupal success.
There are many Drupal developers out there who find it hard to get work, and many unsuitable developers who get work - that is the issue we need to sort out, just having more Drupal talent is very business-focused, and whilst business is a significant part of the Drupal community, when you look at the community as a whole you'll see that many of the people who do the real work building and supporting the product are not earning much, if any money from it. If we grow the talent pool more and they put more strain on those who aren't paid, some of whom are close to breaking point already, it will not be a sustainable solution.
What we seem to be doing here already is continuing the current state of how branding and marketing is done in Drupal ("let's just DO it") and is why we have spent so much time putting this system in place, so let's not do that and instead move forward. It starts becoming about the individual person's idea of what Drupal is and not taken from a higher point of view.
We are here to work out what those higher 'ends' are, then through connecting with the wider network we can find the means. If we start to do the means ourselves, we are again DOing too much - we already have a vast network of people with tools, talent, time, products, material, etc. just waiting to be utilised by the community but we have currently no structured means to enable them to get involved.
So as I type I am already starting to see that our role here is to provide the channel to enable that to happen, and to nurture it and make it sustainable. Our role is to work on creating those higher-level 'ends', discuss the 'means' with the community, and enable the 'means' to be fulfilled by the community.
For example if an 'end' was "Supporting the community by providing tools they need to do what they need to do", a 'means' from that may be we find the Commons 3.0 Prototype and help push that forward. We should be promoting what the community is already doing in order to support our 'means' which adhere to our 'ends'.
Another example could be that we need to support the community by making it easy to find out where your local club is, local events, etc. We would then look to the community for existing answers and see if there's anything we could use. We would probably then see the wonderful efforts of the Drupical people and work with them to bring it into the fold.
So, in case you didn't already know I've done the above two examples. I've suggested we support the commons 3.0 on GDO efforts, although I didn't get any financial help as of yet, I haven't had time to follow that up, but I do see it as a Good Thing to do. I've also been speaking to the Drupical guys Nico and Michael, and we are creating an issue on the Commons 3.0 on GDO effort to get Drupical in Commons 3.0.
This I believe is the only way it will work because it totally reflects how we have built the community so far, and it works. We do not have the time or manpower to do it all ourselves, hence why free software works. You can try to do it the other way, but it won't work. Trust in the fact that neither I or you know alone, it's a community thing. That's not a philosophy, it's a process, it's just how Drupal works, and we're here to build the system to enable it to work with the rest of the community who don't necessarily know how to file an issue, as well as those who do.
Much of this comes from a book recommended by fellow Board member and Events Director for the Drupal Association Cary Gordon, - "John Carver's Boards That Make a Difference: A New Design for Leadership in Nonprofit and Public Organizations", and whilst it is a heavy read and I'm still only a third of the way through after a few months of plane-time reading, what he says makes sense, and I often laugh when I see what he says being played out on our own situation.
One example Carver gives is from the Metropolitan Indianapolis Board of Realtors Policy: "Purpose of MIBOR":
So let's forget the means and focus this discussion on setting the ends, the bigger picture, the mission.
Disagreeing with Steve. ;-)
You said a lot there Steve. And I'm about to disagree with most of it. ;-)
It is widely accepted [in this thread alone by me, Tom, Ben] that a lack of talent is costing Drupal dearly. It costs us when there are poorly built sites. It costs us when sites have to move on and find another platform that isn't starving for developers. etc. etc.
If we accept the postulate that "A lack of talent is harming our success," then traditional-logic dictates that the contrapositive statement be equally true. In our case the contrapositive is "increasing the talent pool will impact our succes positively."
NOTE::: for the ins and outs of contraposition within traditional-logic please visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraposition
Another NOTE: NO. I'm not trying to be high-minded or snarky. I find that when a discussion gets down to this level of detail we need to invoke traditional debating skills to bolster position, strengthen point, and clarify deliniations.
We agree whole heartedly on this.
Drupalers who can't get work need to talk to the shops who can't find Drupalers, OR improve their skills so that they can be hirable. I know that this is a generalization, but it certainly should satisfy the vast majority of the non-working Drupalers to whom you are referring.
We need to CROWD OUT the unsuitable developers in TWO steps. {1} by equipping the existing non-working Drupalers with marketing material or other assets that can help them sell Drupal {2} Grow more Drupalers as has been mentioned a number of times by a number of ppl in this thread.
Come on now!
I know a little of what you're talking about here so I will not say that your assessment is incorrect. It is true for a very small number of individuals for very specific and unique reasons.
However... My timid capitulation notwithstanding, I will caveat that no other objectives of BAM would result in any appreciable improvement in the plight of the very small class of Drupalers to whom you refer.
If we say on one hand that work is going undone AND you say that workers are going unworked... I dare say that this reality suggests that there is an alignment issue.
To be clear... The efforts of BAM to grow talent is high value and non-destructive to the greater good of Drupal
How do we, as BAM, "find the Commons 3.0 Prototype and help push that forward" ? Do you mean like organize sprints or contribute code ourselves? It's not clear to me how BAM can "find the Commons 3.0 Prototype and help push that forward" in any practical or measurable way.
Can you elaborate on this? You're into some very cool stuff here, but I'll admit that I haven't been keeping up with these topics. Please provide a brief back-story to this be sure to provide some idea of what role BAM could play in this. My ignorance of this area leaves me clueless as to what we could do.
I think we may have a fundamental disagreement here. That OR I am misunderstanding you completely. While I am a HUGE fan of leveraging existing activities, strengths, processes, etc. What we are doing is in every way a NEW THING and as such will occasionally overlap, contradict, augment, render obsolete other activities that have or are continuing to shape the marketing landscape. As such we need to be RESPECTFUL of existing elements while always being very clear that we are doing a NEW THING here. Since we are funded, organized, and chartered by the DA we have a position to do things in ways that no one else can. When I hear you speak Steve I wonder if you're more inclined to seek out what's going on and support more-so than establish what we're doing and get to it.
I don't say that as though you're some flawed crazy-person or anything. I'm just saying that my interpretation of your writings is that you may not want to pull the trigger because you think we have to wait until we have properly aligned ourselves with some other work or process or known element.
Am I getting you wrong here? Or is it possible that my depiction of BAM is a little off?
It wouldn't be the 1st time I took a wrong turn in a long conversation! LOL
There you go.... I write this in TOTAL LOVE knowing that you will receive it in like manner! ;-)
You're right!
Doug, you're absolutely right, we need more Drupal developers. All I am saying is we need more GREAT Drupal developers.
Answering the other points
Doug, I missed out answering other points you brought up. What I'm saying re helping existing community is that once we work out what is needed in order to grow, many of the hows are already out there, like the commons 3, like the drupical, like the other idea presented here earlier about potential sponsorship.
Our role, IMHO, is to find out what needs help and connect with those who can help, and that's why this group was created. In only the last 24 hours we have already had one offer of potential sponsorship, I'm sure many more are to come, I just want to ensure it goes to growing the good in the community and those who are already spending a lot of time doing stuff for free as opposed to just going on the classic marketing 'growth' - ads, etc.
Again, with me too, don't take any of this personally, we are just discussing, working things out, etc. - that's a Good Thing!
Editing
What I'm saying in short is we already have a lot of resources in terms of what we need to grow and we could get far in a relatively short space of time by being matchmakers within the existing community in order to grow it organically.
I agree with Steve on this.
I agree with Steve on this. It's a quality/distribution issue, not a quantity issue.
There's Drupal shops that have over-expanded then collapsed soon afterwards despite Drupal 'growing' during that period (two big name ones spring to mind); freelancers who are massively overworked; others who are underemployed or working dayjobs unrelated to Drupal while putting their evenings into critical community work that hundreds of companies rely upon and several Drupal shops who spend a lot of their time doing disaster recovery.
None of these points to a necessary shortage of 'talent', but it does point to clients who aren't capable of knowing which shops to hire in the first place (or just go for the cheapest option) and end up needing two or more to come in to get the job done eventually - which takes a lot more developer hours than would be needed to do it right the first time.
Also many shops advertise jobs for people to come into their office 9-5/mon-fri - limiting themselves to local workers or people prepared to relocate, while many highly skilled Drupal developers are spread around the planet and are happiest working remotely.
Starting them YOUNG helps everyone.
Hi everyone... I'm new to the Drupal community and am not a developer. Though I've been aware of Drupal for about 4-years, my real Drupal education began about 3 months ago when I started working for Stauffer. I have a marketing and legal background in the beverage industry (7-years with Red Bull).
Svenryen mentioned the state of the education sector and why procuring good talent seems to be a problem. Basically, as I understand it from his comment and what I've learned here at Stauffer, Drupal is not taught in college. Like he said, the thinking is that they'll learn about different software types by hands on use on the job. To that I say "fine," but then it's up to us as the community to do more collegiate outreach. That is the BEST place to nurture Drupal marketing.
I'm sure you're all familiar with Red Bull's marketing strategy - seek out cool, fun events where people 18-25 will be hanging out and pump them full of free Red Bull. This guerilla marketing and community approach has led Red Bull to dominate the energy drink market (though that's changing). College kids make things cool. They're early adopters with growing social networks. In my opinion, they're who we want to target. Get them interested, they get their friends interested. They and their friends get their future employers interested. Before you know it, everyone's heard of Drupal! Everyone wants to build with it because it will get them cool jobs at cool companies. Then companies will want to use it because it will get them great talent that can produce awesome products for half the price.
With this in mind, I've an idea that the Stauffer team might sponsor that involves Drupal and the collegiate market. Hopefully it's something the entire community will participate in because we'll need everyone's help! And since I'm still learning HOW the community works in general, I'm not even sure if it is really feasible.
I am so impressed with everyone's insight here and look forward to reading more. Cheers!
Starting them young
Great post - thanks for joining in the discussion!
There's obviously going to be many areas of education we're going to need to cover, starting young is a very important part of this. I'm wondering whether role models would be useful - we have many young contributors in the project itself, including the whirlwind Dmitri who patches core, built drush make, gives sessions at DrupalCons, and is still only 15 years old! I started coding when I was 9 and I'm still nowhere near as good as he is, and I just turned 40 lol ;)
Also in a couple of weeks I'm running our second BADCampUK and one of the attendees sons is coming along, an 11 year old Drupal fan - wondering whether that's going to be the youngest Drupaler at a UK DrupalCamp!
I think using role models would be far better than trying to sell young people Drupal - we just need to show what other young people are doing and how it's changing their lives.
Do we have to pick role
Do we have to pick role models or getting young people to use Drupal? Why not do both?
Also, who picks role models? Don't the person who looks up to them? I don't think we as a community get to decide who our role models are.
Steve, try not to shut down people's passions. A good idea executed with passion is far better than a great idea nobody cares about. :)
Ben Finklea
Chair, Drupal Branding and Marketing* Committee
*BAM!
The fun of text
Ben - excuse me if I get the wrong marketing terminology, and I'm certainly not trying to shut down peoples ideas!
I just thought that, as they are new to Drupal, they may not know we already have young contributors to the project whom I personally see as a role model.
Seriously, we're all passionate about this and I don't want to waste time arguing, if you think I'm wrong in my language please give me the benefit of doubt, I'm so happy we're at last having these discussions on gdo but we have to remember text only conveys a very small amount of information but have to deal with the low-bandwidth for the time being as we start to build better tools to communicate.
It's all good. :) I just
It's all good. :) I just wanted to hear the idea.
Ben Finklea
Chair, Drupal Branding and Marketing* Committee
*BAM!
I would love to hear your
I would love to hear your idea.
Please start a different thread.
STEVE: we need a "BAM Marketing Ideas" section. I'll create an issue as I don't yet know how to make that happen.
Ben Finklea
Chair, Drupal Branding and Marketing* Committee
*BAM!
I just did Drupal!
Here's the new BAM Marketing Ideas section! Please create discussions and add them to this section:
http://groups.drupal.org/taxonomy/term/78878
Ben Finklea
Chair, Drupal Branding and Marketing* Committee
*BAM!
I'll link this
Ben, for the moment if you need a taxonomy term added please let me know as I just spent hours last night recreating the entire taxonomy, links, etc. because we can't edit taxonomies at the moment. We are still waiting for this issue to be resolved, and I have no idea how to push it forward:
http://drupal.org/node/1472124
BAM Infrastructure
...so yeah, if you need anything for the group, please do click on the "BAM Infrastructure" tab, then click "Create Issue", otherwise it's going to quickly end up in a mess!
Thanks!
24 hour notice: We're going with grow/grow
I'm ready to shut down this thread so we can move on to the next step in my Brand strategy workflow: http://groups.drupal.org/node/250768 .
If this discussion doesn't move significantly by 9pm CT on August 31st then I will close this thread and post a link to the next step.
I think that we can all agree that growing Drupal is a good thing and a noble purpose in an of itself.
I think we can agree that growing developer talent is a means to growing Drupal, not the purpose of growing Drupal.
And, I think we can agree that there are a lot of methods we could use to grow Drupal to many different audiences.
At the end of the day, the purpose of a strong brand is to grow the installed base and the community.
This has been a great discussion but it's time to wrap it up. get any final thoughts in here asap.
Ben Finklea
Chair, Drupal Branding and Marketing* Committee
*BAM!
Grow/grow
Although I haven't yet commented, I have been following the discussions and think the grow/grow idea is good. I like the direction of the discussions.
DSquaredB
Danita Bowman
Thanks!
Thanks!
Ben Finklea
Chair, Drupal Branding and Marketing* Committee
*BAM!
"Grow" is not the purpose...
I think, having read through this thread for the first time, that "grow" isn't the purpose of branding, it's a purpose of something higher, like the overall Drupal project.
The branding exercise should have a purpose to ENABLE the purposes of the Drupal project.
Growth is driven by reputation. If Drupal has a really great reputation for having a community of good quality professionals, especially if they are 'better' than the 'competition', then people will 'buy' Drupal more than they will others.
So, make the purpose to create the best reputation for delivering quality sites.
One of the methods we need to work on is how we recruit and retain the best people and how we incorporate them in to our really great community.
Rachel
Pourpose of Drupal Project
@rachellawson like your approach! But how should we define the reputation of a content management system like drupal, can not be just quality sites?
Shyamala
Unimity Solutions
reputation
Ah - the reputation I was referring to was the reputation of the people involved as in the quality of the things they create and the quality/vibrancy of the project and its community.
Improve the marketing message from the community point of view
Drupal needs to be a good place to be if you're a web developer. Or an aspiring web developer, or a web professional who specialises in _______. Or a business owner who has a compelling _________ to market via the web. Come and hang out with us. We're good people doing good things and having fun doing so.
My experience with Drupal started when I was a freelancer. As a result I worked on lots of Drupal sites for lots of different kinds of organisations. My experience morphed into being the in-house Drupalista (and all things open source) for a publisher. So the role and the nature of my work has changed dramatically.
As I've matured, I see aspects of the Drupal community have moved on and yet other aspects are still the same. The marketing of Drupal could do good work and acheive results by exploring the different major segments of the community, defining what they are, and marketing to the segments of the community.
Give some respect to the different kinds of community members as it takes all sorts to keep the project going.
And ditch the mimicking of Apple with the cool message. The lame overuse of the word awesome and rockstar, etc. There are other exciting and more accurate adjectives, adverbs and metaphors which can be used (be creative, dammit!) which can help provide a strong and differentiating message for Drupal. One which makes people want to join the community because there are like minded developers/designers/marketers/business owners/hobbyists in the community that I want to hang out with.
And then the marketing message ends with a call-to-action.
HTH.
Richard
Richard Sheppard
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/richardsheppard
Spot on!
Thanks Richard, I think you're spot on!
Come for the code, stay for the community
What's cool about Drupal is the community, the people who make it.
When talking about Drupal, you're talking about a group of passionate people making and maintaining a great product.
The product would not exist without the community, so look at the community who grows it, and help them to grow themselves and their segments of the community.
Defining the Purpose - how about this?
Slight rewording according to feedback on twitter
This includes sustain/improve on those values too.
Slight rewording according to feedback on twitter
This includes sustain/improve on those values too.
Please stop with the
Please stop with the assertion that Drupal has an insanely amount of demand right now, it does not!
At Mediacurrent, we invest a tremendous amount of time, money, effort, and energy into marketing - you know what the net result is? Perhaps one or two viable leads a week - that's it. At times, I think that people have this perception that if you can spell Drupal, your phone will be ringing off the hook with work. You know what kind of work is mostly out there - its the small business who has passively heard about open-source and/or Drupal and has a laundry list of requirements to go along with their $500 budget. In short, they have no idea what the level of effort is to custom engineer a CMS like Drupal.
The reality is most Drupal-centric firms have struggled to scale, and less market-demand is partially to blame. Please don't show me some kind of pie-chart or stats on Drupal's market share. I'm speaking from being in the trenches of marketing and selling Drupal services for 5+ years. Am I crying the blues or being a hypocrite since we have gone from a 2-person partnership to 27 employees since 2007. No, not at all. I am grateful everyday to the Drupal community, and the amazing opportunities its allowed.
For every Drupal deal that is won, there are a ton of others that are lost to our proprietary counter-parts. How can that be? They offer an inferior solution and ridiculous licensing fees. You know why? They have invested a ton in marketing (and sales) - its a huge competitive advantage they have over open-source software, and they know it.
I cannot thank Ben, Steve, Doug, etc. for bringing awareness around this issue.
I'm digesting the comments, and look forward to continued discussions.
Cheers,
Dave
Mediacurrent
Complete agreement
I think these comments hit the nail squarely on the head. The small budget comment particularly hit home.
John Hannah
Friendly Machine
Hopefully...
...you cannot thank us ENOUGH ;)
Thanks so much for commenting, I think this issue is vitally important. With over 2,000 reads of just 2 blogs I've written in the last 2 days I refuse to believe this is a non-issue, and the fact we are taking over a group first set up over 6 years ago shows that these sorts of conversations are overdue.
I actually do think there is a lot of demand for Drupal - there always has been, but it has always been a tough piece of software to get into for at least me and most of the people I've spoken to over the last two years of attending Drupal events.
I do however believe that we have the opportunity to change this, and IMHO the only way is to do it how we are now, by involving everyone in our community who wants to contribute, and even by using Drupal that's contributing as I read earlier somewhere else I'll find the link if you need it ;)
Yes we need to market, but we can't expect people to market a product which they don't understand, and for me the key is right here on drupal.org and groups.drupal.org. I am so excited about this and other efforts like Commons 3.0 on g.d.o., the drupal.org improvements, Drupal 8, etc. it is wonderful to see the whole community coming together - even those who have stepped out for a while.
Thanks again for your contribution and ongoing support Dave,
Steve
Ha, yes, sorry forgot the
Ha, yes, sorry forgot the "enough" -thanks for the correction Steve.
Phew ;)
Ah the joys of text!
Roll on the DrupalVR headset.
{goes domain hunting...}
My ten cents...
Even though I'm new to this conversation, I'll step out on a limb and say that when one approaches Drupal from the outside looking in, Drupal already seems very developer centric. The conversation seems to be mostly internal - by and for developers - and it would seem to me that marketing efforts would be directed to decision makers, helping them understand Drupal and providing a more welcoming environment, which it really doesn't do at this point.
I have been personally involved with organizations where management has made the decision to go with Drupal because it made business sense. The developers were then in the position of getting up to speed with Drupal or going somewhere else.
The existence of lots of Drupal developers does not create a market for Drupal. If there is a ton of work for a particular platform, developer's will come. People like making money and if you have a strong brand and a strong product, the developer base will take care of itself.
Part of the Drupal brand at present is complexity - hard to use. Non-developers stay away for the most part because it's intimidating. Branding ultimately boils down to how people feel about your product or service. The purpose of the branding effort should be to shape those feelings people have about Drupal as part of a broader marketing strategy.
Wouldn't it be cool if senior managers started saying to the developers, "What about this Drupal I've been hearing about? It sounds great, we should take a look at it."
John Hannah
Friendly Machine
Spot on!
John,
Thanks for joining in!
Drupal the software is where it is today in large part due to drupal.org & groups.drupal.org. This is why we are bringing the branding and marketing conversation onto the system, because without understanding what Drupal is, it's pretty hard to represent it best to others. The system is how we make things. Hopefully it can be a bit more federated in the long term, but for now this is what we have - along with a number of projects at the moment working to improve the system.
Hopefully these conversations are showing a little, or perhaps a lot, about what Drupal is, because at the end of the day, that fundamental understanding is what is going to make the project not only survive but also thrive.
It is not about what you or I think, it may be, but Drupal is bigger than one person can ever know and it takes an open community to support an open community IMO.
I am excited about the start of these conversations because having worked with Drupal for 7 years it breaks my heart when I see some of the installs I see - especially when I've seen Drupal do some wonderful things - like the person I met in Chicago who downloaded an intranet distro of Drupal, OpenAtrium, and helps prisoners when they come out of prison on their 12 step programme. He didn't have to pay a dime for it, and he's doing what he wants with the internet, and helping lots of others at the same time.
We have a lot to thank to everyone who's built this community to what it is, and there's no doubt the business side of things has played a huge role in that. But we mustn't lose sight of the heart & sole of the community and just go all speed out on grow grow grow, which is what the original wording sounded a bit to me like it was saying.
I realise I get a little too passionate about these issues, but words are very powerful and, as with architecting a Drupal site it's all down to just thinking a little beforehand before jumping in and getting stuck in a position which is hard to get out of because the DB dumps aren't from the same time as the code and you didn't bother watching that video on code-driven development because your favourite band was playing that night.
I think I need some rest ;)
Branding is a bit more complex...but not much more.
Just to clarify your comment:
I would just ammend it a tad and say:
Branding ultimately boils down to how people feel about your product or service compared to the alternative. Alternatives may be direct or indirect competitors or may be to do nothing.
The goal of Branding as a science is to increase preference for a brand so that the brand is the obvious best choice for the target audience. We want to make our target feel like it would be irresponsible and just plain wrong to pick any other brand.
That is not the purpose that WE, this thread, you people, me, right now are doing Drupal Branding. We will absolutely be establishing preference points, creating clear bonding ideas, demonstrating how our brand is the best possible choice, etc. That goes without saying.
The question at hand is WHY should WE, right now, today, as part of BAM do these branding activities? (Scroll down before you reply as I intend to pick up this idea at the bottom of this thread...)
We haven't even begun the discussion on who the target audience should be. I encourage everyone to keep in mind that we will discuss all questions in due course. Please head on over to http://groups.drupal.org/node/250768 so that you can understand the process that I would like to go through.
Ben Finklea
Chair, Drupal Branding and Marketing* Committee
*BAM!
Another Perspective for What it is worth
Not sure how a branding discussion evolved to this. I'm going to comment on what I see as the issues raised and not on the branding topic.
Growth of adoption of any technology is essential to the long term survival of that technology. Drupal is not have critical mass yet in the market. It needs to grow or eventually it will be irrelevant.
I agree with John Hannah's comment "If there is a ton of work for a particular platform, developer's will come.". This is what is happening today in the market. Unfortunately it comes in all kinds of quality. There needs to be a solution for this issue, which is independent of the need to grow Drupal.
Many large SIs are now growing Drupal practices. Companies you may never had heard of in some cases. I hear names daily from enterprise Drupal users. These are not companies attending Drupalcons, so they're not familiar to most of us. In some cases, they have hundreds of Drupal developers.
Drupal has lost the battle for the low end, Wordpress has that. It's OK, because it's not where Drupal's strengths lie (enterprise like developer led solutions, as opposed to SMBs). The battle is now on for the enterprise. The upcoming Gartner MQ will show Adobe, Sitecore and others and the leaders. With a lot of pleading, Acquia was able to get on the chart, in a modest visionary position. IMHO, Drupal needs to be one of the top 2 choices for the enterprise to survive. This is where some more Drupal marketing / branding would help.
Tom Erickson
Acquia
PS (Doug) I visited the CTO of the Georgia Tech Authority who owns the project you mentioned above. I am not familiar with the issues that existed in the tendering process, but Mediacurrent and Phase II did a fantastic job in the implementation and the customer is very happy with the on time, on budget delivery.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Tom Erickson | CEO | Acquia
O: +1 617 669 0827 | M: +1 617 669 0827
53 State St
Boston, MA USA
Good news!
Tom,
It's great news that there's so much adoption in the Enterprise, you are of course one of the people to thank greatly for that, along with companies such as palantir.net, without whom our local Brighton & Hove City Council would not have a shiny new, free and open source website developed in the space of a few months.
It is thanks to the contributions from companies such as yourselves that Drupal has made such deep inroads to places where legacy systems run rife and millions of pounds are spent on licence fees, and that's before we even talk about not being able to fix the broken software you're paying those license fees for.
But, we must not lose sight of the fact that Drupal is a Free/Libre Open Source Software project, and is thus run by the community. It touches thousands upon thousands of people's lives in many ways, and from what I can see will be going for many years to come, but not without what it fundamentally grew up on, which is what George pointed me to at that random nodeid number on the branding side of things.
It could indeed survive without all this community around it, but I doubt it would be Drupal according to those values - maybe, but saying Enterprise-only is kinda breaking those already.
The reason this conversation got into this length is because it is long overdue - the same conversations I have seen across the world and now need to be brought into the system so we can discuss them and resolve them as a community.
I personally see a long lifetime in the smaller, lower end of the market through vertical market-focused distributions adding extra value to SAAS for smaller businesses, and a whole raft of other opportunities.
By continuing to sustain and improve what we already have by setting our mission values at the highest possible level in order to support our community, we help raise everyone's ship, or increase the size of the pie for everyone as I kept hearing so much at the varios CxO events.
I understand at the beginning these things are going to take a time to get used to, and I may be of course entirely wrong, but my spidey-senses say I'm not. Drupal is the land of opportunities for many, not just Enterprise, we're all gonna have a better future working together IMO, cash or no cash.
Right you are.
Thanks for chiming in, Tom!
You're absolutely correct that Phase II & MediaCurrent are doing an awesome job.
Last year, I was asked by another organization to help put a bid together for that project and in the process of doing so I became aware of the two rounds of RFPs, the pre-existing hosting issues, and a variety of other details.
I have kept up [somewhat] with how that project is going and it is going exactly as I expected. These two shops are knocking it out of the park!
I use the GA 65 website story as a STRONG selling point. I use it to encourage decision makers to choose Drupal as their solution AND I use it to encourage individuals to choose Drupal as a career.
I really really really hope we wave this flag a LOT and draw some serious attention to it. Potential clients are somewhat less enthusiastic these days when we keep mentioning the WhiteHouse victory. But when I tell them that GA is almost done moving 65 websites [including an extreme volume of existing content] away from a very expensive platform and instead onto Drupal... I make a compelling case for Drupal as a SOLUTION and a CAREER. ;-)
Recent Drupal Marketing Events - Some insight
Hello again all - In case you missed my earlier comment, I'm new to Drupal. My familiarity with it began in 2009 because one of my best friends works for Chapter Three, a well known Drupal shop in SF. Currently, I've been with Stauffer in Los Angeles for 3 months and my education about why Drupal is the best solution for Enterprise level projects continues. At Stauffer I'm helping with marketing, hence my interest in this discussion. In the capacity of a marketing associate, I've learned, first hand, that Drupal has a very long way to go to remain "relevant" as tom_eric stated. I say this because I've attended two very disappointing Drupal events in the last month.
I attended the Drupal Drive Event in LA a few week's ago. It seemed that the affair was meant to get Los Angeles based enterprise stakeholders excited about Drupal. But rather than a room teeming with potential clients, I found many empty seats. Those that were filled were mostly with other Drupal development shops. Now, let me be clear, this event was an invaluable opportunity for ME to learn about Drupal through the presented case studies, but I could not ignore the missing ingredient: potential business!
On to the next event - Last week's Drupal Business Summit Los Angeles. The event had a similar format, meaning keynote speakers presented case studies about their success with Drupal. Yet, I did not meet a single potential client at this engagement and instead spent the day learning more about Drupal with other "competitors." Again, this was invaluable, but was not what I expected. I spent the afternoon talking candidly with the event organizers on what went wrong. Were press releases sent? Invites extended to stakeholders? Creative approaches to social media taken? The answers varied, but one thing was clear: There's still so much to be done and those running Drupal shops don't always have the time, energy, and resources to do what needs to be done.
I hope I didn't offend anyone with my insight here, but please remember I am new. Fresh eyes. From my non-developer perspective I understand that growth is a goal. I understand that growing more talent is also a goal. Quality leads and quality talent are both in relatively short supply. Though at this current juncture we've encountered an influx of exciting leads and we hope that continues. Finding quality talent is definitely our core issue at this time.
Most of you have a long, fruitful relationship with Drupal, while my love affair has only just begun and it's exciting! I see the potential here and I think creative, out of the box approaches to marketing, similar to the Red Bull example of my earlier comment, might be a way to approach the marketing of Drupal. I also hope that bringing in non-developer folks like myself will infuse the community with the perspective it needs to become a recognizable brand to those who use it AND those who need it.
More than +1?
Thanks so much for posting again, shame I can't give more than a +1, I hope others will!
I saw the same things, but I also know the people behind the scenes, and over the last six months right to the very top of the organisation who's mission it is to support and foster the community. The Drupal Association runs DrupalCons and drupal.org, and from what I've seen over the total of seven years now is they've done a pretty amazing job and for that I am thankful, because it's given me opportunities to get out of situations in my life I would wish on no-one, and it allows people to have a quality of life they want no matter what situation they are in.
What has been done in terms of creating a wonderful open source software is down to the people in the community and the discussions between them, and the leaders who help to ensure stuff actually gets done.
What hasn't been done until now is this, joining in the part of our community who know their own fields of expertise but don't perhaps know Drupal.
By providing a scalable bridge between the communities and discussing the issues, we resolve them with better answers.
For me, the better answer is we work together to resolve these issues, and the DA has the advantage of neutrality and economies of scale. By voicing the issues we can resolve them.
I'm not saying I'm "right" in any of these things, I'm simply encouraging conversation as it shows what Drupal is - not just to one person or group, but as a whole, and I think, as Tom quite rightly says, there's far more people out there under-represented at the moment, I just differ where he says it's all Enterprise, as I believe others would too who work in the nonprofit field.
I heard someone say earlier there was so much they could say on this subject but they aren't, that I don't think is necessarily a Good Thing all the time, especially when there seems to be imbalances in the community. Drupal has always been a push-pull kind of thing, and as someone said in Munich last week arguing is just how we work things out as human beings. Drupal is not just a CMS or a CMF, for me it's a People Management Framework. For others it's different, that's why if you don't like it you change it, if you do like it you maintain it.
/rant
What I realised at Munich
If you see something which you think should be different it's most likely you're the person to change it, for example your experience in social media etc. above. Yes, the local organisers are great at that too, but as a whole community including people like yourself worldwide we can scale up quicker than the same marketing conversations going on around the world in various places.
Someone said to me last week they wish there'd been more on views as they'd given a session at their camp and it was packed. I asked if they'd submitted a session but they hadn't.
Drupal has tens of thousands of contributors who contribute mostly through drupal.org, we could achieve similar here and make sure we support the local events by providing them with support.
I'm running a DrupalCamp in two weeks because I feel it's important for Drupal to be represented in the Brighton Digital Festival but I've had little help when asked as people are busy and we've lost a couple of key people as they moved out of Brighton - a city with over 2,500 new media businesses.
You can't just slap a label on Drupal and say "it's that", because most of the time, it's probably you who can change it, and I don't think that message has been communicated well to all yet, which is why I'm here doing this at ridiculous o'clock before it closes.
Just getting the ball rolling... it's all good!
@Steph - thanks for your
@Steph - thanks for your sharing your comments. You have made some very astute observations. We have been struggling with trying to expand outside of the existing Drupal fish-bowl. We need fresh ideas and perspective like yours.
BTW, you will be glad to know that at Drupalcamp Atlanta this year we signed up two new sponsors - Red Bull and 5 Hour Energy. They jumped at the opportunity to market in front of an audience that is notorious for being caffiene/energy users :-)
Enterprise? Isn't that a starship?
Focussing on the enterprise is the perspective I'd expect Acquia to take. But it's not the focus I'd like to see Drupal take.
Dismissing SMBs or SMEs as we also call them, small to medium enterprises... and how Drupal also meets their needs is a big big mistake in my view.
Developing a single Brand Identity for Drupal was always going to be a challenge.
Defining Drupal in a way that excludes a large part of our community doesn't strike me as a particularly positive thing to do.
Small organisations, non-profits and hobbyists probably aren't lucrative leads for Drupal solution providers. But they are a pipeline of contributors into our community. I think we need to be really careful not to brand Drupal in a way that turns these people away.
Donna Benjamin
Former Board Member Drupal Association (2012-2018)
@kattekrab
Donna, thanks for sharing
Donna, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I do not think anyone wants to exclude small/mid sized businesses or non-profits. This is about aligning Drupal's strengths to the needs of the market. If a small-business though needed a brochure-ware type site, Drupal is usually seen as being too complex, not as user-friendly, too costly, etc. when stacked against Wordpress. IMHO, if we attempt to push forward with a branding and marketing strategy that Drupal is great at "everything" and is targeted to "everyone" we will be unsuccessful.
If we bring awareness, better promote, brand, etc. Drupal as an open-source CMS that can provide enterprise solutions, I'm not sure how this alienates any part of the community?
I would assert that Acquia has actually been the leading proponent of trying to help small businesses that want a Drupal-based solution. They invested a tremendous amount in Gardens, which includes an affordable managed hosting option. They are currently doing some amazing things with Spark, which is clearly aimed at helping content administrators and organizations that need to self-administer their website as much as possible.
The marketing of Drupal starts with positioning
To preface, I wholeheartedly agree with Tom's central message.
Marketing really starts with "positioning." How a company, organization, or even open-source project positions itself in the market is critical. Most young companies struggle immensely with positioning. They may start out offering a set of services that they have a deep expertise in, but they begin to gradually expand. In short, they stray from what they excel in. For example, many web agencies tend to fall within two categories - they are generalists or specialists. Have you ever seen a firm that claims to specialize in a variety of CMSs? I have. The "trying to be everything to everyone" model is usually a recipe for disaster. There expertise and value becomes diluted, and lets face it, how can a firm possibly be an expert in so many different platforms? The truth is they cannot. They then have an extremely hard time differentiating and become a commodity that competes purely on cost. However, true experts become really good at solving a smaller sub-set of problems (i.e. the medical field). This is articulated beautifully in Jim Collin's book "Good to Great" with what he calls the Hedgehog Concept.
I mention this because one of the few mistakes (as it relates to leading Drupal) I think Dries made a few years ago was incorrectly positioning Drupal as a generalist CMS. He would even make comments that "he was not ready to concede the small-mid size business" market to Wordpress. Drupal is clearly suited to meet the needs of enterprise-level organizations - we should recognize and accept this. Of course, Drupal should be more user-friendly and intuitive, but the over-arching focus should be on solving the website problems of very large companies. Acquia's Large Scale Drupal (LSD) initiative was established with this in mind. Frankly, Wordpress is a better solution for blogs or micro-sites that are being used by a non-technical audience. Once a company recognizes how its positioned, it can then align its marketing message around its expertise and core offerings. For example, we can clearly state on drupal.org why Drupal is the superior solution for enterprise-level organizations with complex needs. We then need to back-up whatever we claim to be good at. This is usually best illustrated in the form of case studies that provide quantifiable proof around Drupal's value. For instance, we can show other state governments how Georgia just saved 4.6 million dollars by adopting Drupal v. the proprietary platform they were on.
Thanks for the great discussion everyone.
Drupal isn't all things to
Drupal isn't all things to all people, but it's many things to many people.
I create conference websites for small non profit organisations in the education sector. Small conferences, with small budgets, that need to save time and money doing things smarter. Drupal is perfect for them.
This is a niche. It's not one I expect Acquia or MediaCurrent to pursue because there's not enough money in it, but there is enough money in it for me to make a living, and share my expertise and experience with people who need it.
The Drupal Association is dominated by North Americans, and increasingly the project seems to be driven by folks hell bent on pursuing large projects.
I firmly believe there is room for a richer, more diverse eco-system, and that means not only acknowledging there are small fish in the sea, but also plankton and seaweed.
Donna Benjamin
Former Board Member Drupal Association (2012-2018)
@kattekrab
This is the statement I
This is the statement I proposed in an earlier comment:
"The Branding and Marketing Committee exists to foster growth, promote, increase awareness, and advance the open-source software principles of the international Drupal community."
There is no North American bias here. There are people who are passionate about Drupal throughout the world. No one wants to prevent you to pursue your niche, and its wrong for you to insinuate that the DA has some kind of hidden agenda to pursue large projects or desires a less-diverse ecosystem.
Circles
The many worlds of Drupal! Drupal covers a wide range of non-enterprise solutions for example http://openoutreach.org/
What Drupal has done is show that by working for the common good works, so by saying it is just X or Y isn't true, from a discrete mathematics point of view.
It's an ecosystem.
Steve - I wholeheartedly
Steve - I wholeheartedly agree that Drupal can absolutely solve a variety of web related issues via its amazing ecosystem of developers, designers, sys admins, marketers, etc. Of course, there are a plethora of successful non-enterprise Drupal adoptions, but what we are really talking about is how we successfully position, market, brand, etc. Drupal into the future.
If we just rely on saying Drupal can "do anything" CMS related then we will absolutely lose out to other platforms that are positioning themselves differently. For example, when a friend comes to me and says they want to set-up a blog, I suggest Wordpress even though I am a Drupal evangelist. Frankly, I respect the fact that Wordpress is better suited to meet my friend's needs.
Echo chamber
I feel we are so stuck in our little echo chambers, I wish more people would talk about their point of view.
Drupal is Drupal because as you said it was pitched a certain way previously. Marketing is the process of meeting the demands of the market, and at the moment the market, in terms of dollars, is indeed Enterprise.
Those Enterprises sell to other Enterprises, who in turn sell back to us - whether in the form of a car, a house, etc.
We buy those cars, houses, holidays (Tui is a big Drupal user here in Brighton and coming along to our camp) with the money we make.
Many of us make money from working with Drupal.
Many of us use the software the Enterprises make to help all kinds of people.
Those people buy cars, etc.
Anyway, I feel this is circling too, plus I see it's gone 9pm CDT which is apparently close of the conversation.
When I was voted in we had 655 votes out of a potential 250,000. We have a long road ahead before any of us understand the true extent of what Drupal is, and I don't think the future is just Enterprise Drupal, that's just one part of it.
Ref http://buytaert.net/help-needed-what-is-drupal
Forgot the figures...
250,000 people in turn and apparently 0.05% of people who have Drupal.org accounts do anything with it, so millions of the Drupal community are quietly out there.
Distributions
That's where distributions come in.
We have Drupal Distributions for intranets, for government, for education - even for churches!
Drupal will become a generic name like Linux. We need to market distributions the same ways as Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, Mageia, Mint, etc. We have to promote OpenAtrium, Drupal Commerce, OpenPublish, OpenPublic, Open Outreach, Aegir, OpenAcademy, OpenScholar, etc.
As for targeting small businesses, indeed there is a need for a simpler and much friendlier Drupal Distribution that can compete in the same level as Wordpress. Would that be Spark?
Kind regards,
Nick
Final (?) thoughts
Thank you all for your participation. This is not an easy thing we are undertaking. Branding is complex. It is an idea. It's the harnessing of motivations and markets. If it was easy, everybody would look like Apple. (And I will continue to invoke Apple, Amazon, Google, Porsche, Starbucks, etc. because they are damn good at this. Not because I want to mimic their brands but because I want to learn from their successes and failures.)
We strayed far. There were a lot of great ideas that I will revisit and pull back into future BAM discussions. But, it is time to end this thread and move on. That's controversial, sure, but just wait until we get to a really difficult question. This one was actually the easiest one.
So, here are my conclusions:
Doug Vann: ""Growing Drupal awareness and understanding such that we attract developers who want to develop it, designers who want to design for it, and clients who want to create and publish with it."
TomDude: Growing clients is important, but so is growing developers...
mherchel: To me, I can't think of anything better than Grow/Grow.
svenryen: I second the notion about attracting talent...
yoroy: I'd consider 'attracting more talent' one possible tactic for executing the 'growth' strategy.
DSquaredB: I...think the grow/grow idea is good
siliconmeadow: ...One which makes people want to join the community because there are like minded developers/designers/marketers/business owners/hobbyists in the community that I want to hang out with.
Mediacurrent: For every Drupal deal that is won, there are a ton of others that are lost to our proprietary counter-parts.
friendlymachine: Wouldn't it be cool if senior managers started saying to the developers, "What about this Drupal I've been hearing about? It sounds great, we should take a look at it."
tom_eric: Growth of adoption of any technology is essential to the long term survival of that technology. Drupal is not have critical mass yet in the market. It needs to grow or eventually it will be irrelevant.
Epiphany: It's not the adoption of drupal by enterprises but for enterprise solutions. That's what is in common between tom's SIs and Steve's prison 12-step program guy. Regardless of the fact that SIs are huge with thousands of people and that nonprofit is only one guy, they both needed and got an enterprise solution. I think that we would also say that if Ford wanted to build a blog, they'd be just fine picking WordPress. They shouldn't pick Drupal because they are an enterprise but rather that they need a simple blog. (Setting aside the standardization of your platform benefits...)
So, here's where I think we should end up. (Keep in mind that this is for the purposes of THIS body of participants:
(To quickly address the talent gap since it came up so many times: This new purpose encompasses that problem. We can't increase the adoption of Drupal for enterprise-level projects if there is not enough talent. That's a given. But, talent is only one factor. Perhaps the important one for today but certainly not the only factor worth considering.)
I think we should leave this thread live for one more day. One request: Let's bring the conversation to a focussed conclusion. Do not cast wide. Comment on the final purpose. Not if you think it is perfect but is it close enough that we can move on? (One more reminder: this normally wouldn't be a public facing purpose. It's something that I ask a CEO/CMO to level-set a conversation as we are getting started. Usually, it doesn't take more than 30 seconds for him/her to tell me why they want Branding help. And, almost always, it's to grow their business.)
Here it is one last time. Please comment ONLY on this proposed purpose:
Thank you! The new deadline is midnight CT on Sept 1.
Ben Finklea
Chair, Drupal Branding and Marketing* Committee
*BAM!
Enterprise or not to Enterprise
Ben... I like your statement above.
I also agree that one should not get hung up on the term enterprise, and if that happens, it should be dropped. There are other ways to describe that Drupal is best for creating "killer web experiences", which is the way Acquia likes to differentiate Drupal from Wordpress.
I can't help but feel there is a lot of desire to cover all use cases here, though. To really understand how Drupal will grow, it's fundamential to understand when and why it wins and loses in CMS decisions. I met with a prominent digital agency yesterday. Drupal was sixth in their evaluation behind Adobe CQ5 (1), Sitecore (2) and others like Ektron, SDL/Tridion and more. Yet we know from head to head battles, that Drupal can win more than it loses against these competitors. How to improve that win rate? Effective marketing would help.
Separately, we also know from our studies that Drupal really struggles in the majority of cases to win in small business deals. It's not only more complex, it's more expensive to implement. It seems that Drupal developers earn more money than Wordpress developers, and projects can be longer. However, it more complex projects - typically in larger organizations, but of course not always - Drupal does beat Wordpress, as Wordpress cannot meet the technical requirements.
We can always cite exceptions, but it's tough to argue with the data that indicates the overall trend. Using a surfing metaphor, any technology that seeks to stay relevant - which means growing adoption past a critical mass point - must "ride the wave" that it can catch.
This does not contradict any notion of Drupal being a community. But if one thinks about it, many of the great capabilities that differentiate Drupal - like views - were sponsored by and created for enterprises. That's a key reason why Drupal is so strong here.
Tom
--------------------------------------------------------------
Tom Erickson | CEO | Acquia
O: +1 617 669 0827 | M: +1 617 669 0827
53 State St
Boston, MA USA
Clarification needed
What exactly do you mean by enterprise? The term is used in various ways and it usually excludes small businesses.
I love that Drupal is great for large enterprises, but let's not forget small business. And when I say small business I'm not talking about the local flower shop. In my experience, it doesn't take that long for most firms to outgrow WordPress.
I think a whole lot of Drupal folks make a living working with small business. So, I guess a clear definition would help clarify things. I know you mentioned enterprise solutions with a caveat, but I hear that and I think small business is getting excluded.
Not trying to pick nits, just want to make sure I understand.
John Hannah
Friendly Machine
Small businesses
I agree: small businesses have been essential to Drupal's growth, and will continue to be so. If we market Drupal as a software for large enterprises only, many Drupal developers will lose their jobs.
The key to Drupal's success are distributions. What distribution will serve the needs of small businesses?
Startups too
Thanks for joining in the conversation Nick!
Many startups also use Drupal as a platform. Distributions are accelerators but don't make money themselves, but do when you add value services to them - hosting, support, etc.
There are many distributions and it's my personal belief there'll be many more:
http://drupal.org/project/distributions?solrsort=sis_project_release_usa...
I see a market for distribution support services for those who want to create and market their distributions, as many of the existing Drupal hosting providers offer partnerships for distributions.
Distributions aren't necessarily easy to create and maintain. We are starting to see basic tools such as http://drushmake.me/ appear, and there are opportunities for many more.
Personally I think we could equate the situation to not having enough inward-investment over the last few years through the phenomenal growth Drupal has and still is going through. The more we support those who make and maintain it, the more it becomes easier for others to adopt it. One hand washes the other, etc.
We are just starting these conversations - the coders have been working this way for many years so although we have come far already this is just the beginning!
To start, I think we need to separate core branding and marketing with contrib branding and marketing in the same way as the project itself. In order to create a strong core brand we need to treat it as such, so I suggest when we end this conversation we use the projects we've set up for this, create a relevant issue - "DrupalBAM Purpose Statement" and we set it in code. We then get revision control and it is less likely to be misinterpreted as opposed to something which isn't set into some kind of revision control.
This may sound like a boring thing to do, but as we've already seen, once we get onto the gdo and do systems there is forward movement.
Anyway, I digress... the answer to your question is "it depends", what small businesses are you talking about? There are some SME distributions already, but the landscape is wide open for many more, and it's my humble opinion that vertical is the way to go as the functionality is similar. Pick a vertical ;)
Clarify?
You said,
"The more we support those who make and maintain [distributions], the more it becomes easier for others to adopt it. One hand washes the other, etc."
Can you define "support" as you use it here? What would BAM do to "support" distribution maintainers? How would those efforts differ from supporting Drupal as a whole?
You said,
"To start, I think we need to separate core branding and marketing with contrib branding and marketing in the same way as the project itself."
How is that "separation" defined? What do we do that "separates" it? How does that look?
THNX
Support
In his book "The Networked Enterprise: Competing for the Future Through Virtual Enterprise Networks", Ken Thompson outlines a number of subroups which we could replicate the structure of here to address key issues:
-- Branding and Market Development
-- Network Development and Governance
-- Member and Capability Development
I won't go into further details here as this thread is already smoking ;) but we'll need to further break up those teams according to what can be done from within the DA and what can be done through the wider network of companies using/selling/contributing etc.
Again, this is not necessarily the right way but a step forward and models our community as it exists now, not just what one or two voices say it is or want, that will most likely end with rm -rf * it, forking, etc. - which in Drupal hasn't happened yet.
As per above, we have a number of needs to address in order to keep to our charter, and whilst the contrib module is the "Wild West", so is the business world of Drupal. See what they're doing over there in terms of how to rate modules etc. and think how we could apply similar thinking to business world. We've made a wonderful modular piece of software, we're just building the modular business model on top of it. More contributors and not just those who are developers developers developers imo!
To clarify
To clarify - I am not saying this rigid structure should be in place for all Drupal goings-on, that's ridiculous as it's Free software so you can do what you like with it according to the licences involved.
What I'm saying is that if we model our efforts in this way we can support those things that are going on in the wider outside world than this little echo chamber. So like an API, so when enterprise is going out there to bid we could have direct "circles" of people (from the Joomla! session) who's responsibilities are to ensure they have all the info we need.
We are creating the model here, it doesn't exist yet. I'm just putting potential ways forward, we have to try things out and see what works and what doesn't.
Woah, there...
Nobody is saying we should market only to large enterprises. You are attributing far too much meaning to one simple word: "enterprise". It means very different things to different people. And, in this context, we are not using "enterprise" to refer to the organization that is considering Drupal but to the complexity of the project.
I love your sub-brand thought process. Drupal cannot be the brand for every single use case. I think that Drupal should be the mother brand that allows many different sub-brands to flourish. Like Porsche has the 911, the Cayenne, the Boxter, etc. Even if I guy a Cayenne SUV for my family car, I know I'm getting a Porsche under the hood.
But, before we do all that, we need to define the brand for Porsche. I mean Drupal. That is what we are doing right now. The question before us is a simple one. Why should we work on branding Drupal? What change (very high level) are we trying to have on the world?
The statement we are considering is not a marketing message. It's not something we should ever put on a piece of collateral. It's simply to get our minds focused on what we are doing here in this Branding and Marketing exercise. That's why it usually take 30 seconds in a typical scenario to figure this one thing out. It just isn't as controversial as we are making it out to be.
Ben Finklea
Chair, Drupal Branding and Marketing* Committee
*BAM!
This.
Exactly. Enterprise is kind of in the "contrib" world, and also represented heavily in core. BUT the needs are differing, so by separating BAM into DrupalBAM Core & DrupalBAM Contrib we have a sensible separation of role, responsibilities, issues, etc. but still maintain lines of communication between both. This enables core BAM to move at it's pace (brands should evolve and not change every day at a whim) and contrib to move at their pace (we need more support for business at camps). Again don't take any of these examples as best/existing/concrete - we simply don't have enough people in these conversations yet to fully understand all the issues.
In your summary Ben you missed out my suggestion for core brand purpose:
http://groups.drupal.org/node/250853#comment-810143
Contrib could then be "To assist in the adoption of Drupal by Enterprise".
There is "Enterprise Drupal", but Drupal is not just Enterprise as you quite rightly say.
I am replying on another comment with more info... heyrocker has a great video about initiative maintaining which really covers the entire world of how Drupal is made - that's the story which needs to be told imho:
http://blip.tv/drupalcondenver/painting-the-bikeshed-lessons-from-a-drup...
I wouldn't say that I missed
I wouldn't say that I missed it...
Seriously, I just felt that is was a complicated mouthful that I can't really get behind. While I may agree, it's to referential. In other words, you have to understand what sustain/improve means, what the values of the community are, what the community is, and probably some other deeper concepts.
Right now, I just want a simple directive to work on Branding. Something as easy to understand as "Let's grow Drupal faster."
Ben Finklea
Chair, Drupal Branding and Marketing* Committee
*BAM!
growing faster
we enable drupal to grow fast by helping to sustain/improve the Drupal community according to the values of the Drupal brand.
scale not speed
we enable drupal to scale in the market by helping to sustain/improve the Drupal community according to the values of the Drupal brand
Don't get hung up on the word "Enterprise"
The reason I say enterprise-level projects is simply that it addresses the complexity of the need rather than the size (however you measure it) of the organization. I think it's best that we shouldn't necessarily be clear on what it means.
Has the word enterprise absorbed too much meaning in our community to be helpful? Should we use the "complex projects" instead? "Big Projects"?
Ben Finklea
Chair, Drupal Branding and Marketing* Committee
*BAM!
follow-up to previous comments
@John - Good question. The word "enterprise" has certainly become a buzzword in Drupal, now all we need to do is inject "synergy" into the mix and we will be all set :-). To me, enterprise in this context is about providing a broader set of CMS/web solutions to organizations. The quantifiable size of the company is moot - small businesses, even ones with under 10 employees, can certainly have enterprise- level requirements. It just happens to be that most organizations that have broader needs are larger organizations.
@Nick - History shows us that its actually quite the opposite. If Drupal continues to try and be a catch-all solution that markets and brands itself to all sectors (small, mid-size, large, etc. companies) we have positioned ourselves as generalists. Again, being a generalist is not where you want to be in the marketplace, and a sure-fire way for Drupal to become irrelevant. If you are a developer that provides your (small business) customers excellent value for their dollar, I would assert that you have very little to worry about.
@Ben - thanks for summarizing all of the comments. The branding statement is solid - am still digesting, but think you are headed down the right path.
We are working on the Branding of Drupal to increase the adoption of Drupal for enterprise-level projects faster than it is being adopted now.
History shows us
"History shows us that its actually quite the opposite. If Drupal continues to try and be a catch-all solution that markets and brands itself to all sectors (small, mid-size, large, etc. companies) we have positioned ourselves as generalists".
What do you suggest then? That we market Drupal for large enterprises only?
What I'm suggesting is to market Drupal as a generalist much the same way as Linux. History shows that this has served Linux well. We see Linux everywhere: embedded systems, mobile phones, enterprise servers, user desktops, etc.
Should we market Drupal for large enterprises? Absolutely, but not Drupal per se - just specific distributions.
Red Hat, Fedora, CentOS did not devalue the Linux brand, much the contrary.
The same should happen to Drupal and its corresponding distributions for each market.
You/We
@Mediacurrent: That may be what you and some others are here for, however the purpose of the Branding & Marketing Committee, as set out in our Charter, is to support the community as a whole:
https://association.drupal.org/about/staff/marketing-branding-committee
ONE part of that is to increase the adoption of Drupal for enterprise-level projects faster than it is being adopted now, but that is only one part of it. To achieve that, we need to support the community as a whole.
This involves finding out what the issues are and taking steps to resolve them, which is what we are doing now.
You/We
@Mediacurrent: That may be what you and some others are here for, however the purpose of the Branding & Marketing Committee, as set out in our Charter, is to support the community as a whole:
https://association.drupal.org/about/staff/marketing-branding-committee
ONE part of that is to increase the adoption of Drupal for enterprise-level projects faster than it is being adopted now, but that is only one part of it. To achieve that, we need to support the community as a whole.
This involves finding out what the issues are and taking steps to resolve them, which is what we are doing now.
What he said.
@MediaCurrent nailed it. Couldn't say it better myself as you can see.
When I install Ubuntu, I feel good because it fits my use case really well. But I also feel good because I know it's Linux under the hood. I can do all my Linuxy things if I really want to. I never do but I know I could and that's comforting.
The problem is, right now, that most potential customers don't have that same warm and fuzzy feeling about Drupal the way they do about Linux. So, all the D distributions don't get the happy afterglow that Ubuntu, Red Hat, etc. get.
We've got to fix the core line of mental code that says "Drupal is good at everything but isn't that great at anything." and replace it with "Drupal is the best in the world at ____." When that's done then ALL the distros get better branding.
AArrgggh! I digressed into the next steps. See how easy that was? FOCUS on the statement. We will pick this thought process up in the next branding step. :)
Ben Finklea
Chair, Drupal Branding and Marketing* Committee
*BAM!
Drupal is the best in the world at ____.
"Drupal is the best in the world at ____."
Sorry, didn't follow...
Should ____ be 'large enterprise'?
No.
No.
Ben Finklea
Chair, Drupal Branding and Marketing* Committee
*BAM!
Bikeshedding
;)
/ducks
Many things...
Many things IMHO... speed of innovation, looking after its core community, etc. - best ask the people!
Ways forward...
http://www.bioteams.com/2011/12/06/all_you_ever.html
...and rule 2 here:
I'm guilty of all of this, but rule 2 here should also help:
http://www.bioteams.com/2012/02/22/four_rules_for.html#more
supporting a wide community of contributors
Drupal is the best in the world at supporting a wide community of contributors.
We could do better in certain areas though, such as I mentioned previously in terms of supporting initiatives which help the community as a whole such as Commons 3.0 on GDO, Spark, DrupalCamp Kit. The DA only has a limited amount of revenue and very limited resources so it is up to us to provide support where we can to ensure we sustain and improve the community - in terms of enterprise, small business, etc. as they all help each other ATEOTD.
wide/diverse
Diverse - trying to get over the fact that what makes Drupal is that we don't only have one type of contributor.
This is why we need to move this sort of core word phrase defining into an issue on a project, which I'll do once this conversation has drawn to a close a little more according to the timebox set by Ben.
huh?
"supporting initiatives which help the community as a whole such as Commons 3.0 on GDO, Spark, DrupalCamp Kit."
Those are noble causes indeed. I don't believe we'll be doing any of that for a long time, if ever.
"The DA only has a limited amount of revenue and very limited resources so it is up to us to provide support where we can to ensure we sustain and improve the community - in terms of enterprise, small business, etc. as they all help each other ATEOTD."
Whoa!
That's a MUCH broader goal then we, BAM, can endeavor to accomplish.
I'll hit you up off-line and discuss this further... ;-)
@Steve/Nick - please do not
@Steve/Nick - please do not think of this as me wanting to leave the small business in the dust and cater to big business/corporations. FWIW, I have been an entrepreneur/small business owner for 14+ years, and never worked for a "larger" company (and never will). As an example, take the auto industry, anyone with the financial resources has the ability to go out and buy a Porsche, but they clearly cater to a higher-end market via their branding, messaging, ads, etc. Our goal should be as John eluded to - when a CMO with a set of problems is tasked with redesigning their website, we want Drupal to be at top of mind and in on that conversation. That is certainly starting to happen, but we have a long way to go.
In this context, Linux v. Drupal is apples and oranges - a better comparison would be an actual CMS. Wordpress is having the same debates (i.e. should they continue to expand by going after Drupal in the enterprise space or focus on the lower-end market?).
Too many areas
See my recent reply re splitting up - there's too many differing needs to say "this is the problem".
At the moment this conversation is very US/Europe focused in terms of replies AFAIK, I would like to see views from other continents.
This is an ongoing discussion but for the purposes of our current efforts we need to move onwards - I just want to make sure we don't just focus on growth in enterprise because that's not what our charter is here, just one small part of it.
Maybe you're right but this
Maybe you're right but this is not the thread to address that question.
"But I'd prefer a blue bikeshed..."
Ben Finklea
Chair, Drupal Branding and Marketing* Committee
*BAM!
Branding the platform + product
"if we want the business ecosystem to grow further and continue to prosper, we must facilitate other business models, such as developing, marketing and supporting vendor specific offerings on top of the Drupal platform. Much like how Canonical, Red Hat and other Linux companies are operating today" - Thomas Barregren, CEO and co-founder of NodeOne
http://nodeone.se/en/blog/separation-of-drupal-the-platform-from-drupal-...
We should market Drupal as a platform, specially with Drupal 8 incorporating Symfony.
Let's empower distributions to market each niche with their products.
In the end, everybody wins.
yes.
yes.
Ben Finklea
Chair, Drupal Branding and Marketing* Committee
*BAM!
_people_
"Drupal is the best in the world at people."
Great conversation
First to @rachellawson - I like the way you think!
After digesting some of the comments and thinking a bit about my own reaction to the proposed purpose statement, it would be hard for me to support using the term, "enterprise".
The reason for this is that I've been in a lot of conversations on this subject and 90% of the time when people mention the enterprise, they are really saying "big company". It has really come to strongly have that connotation even outside the Drupal community.
And although it might come across as being too fussy about words to some folks, I think it matters. I think having a statement that is something more akin to:
"The purpose of undertaking the branding of Drupal is to increase the adoption of Drupal for projects requiring powerful and flexible solutions."
Or something similar that doesn't have the same baggage as "enterprise" and if someone in the Drupal community who hasn't been following this conversation were to read it, no matter what type organizations they serve, they would be cool with it.
I think this is a great conversation to have. My guess would be that ultimately generic Drupal will not be a strong competitor on the very high end. It will instead be a tightly focused flavor of Drupal with its own brand - kind of like Redhat Linux or Ubuntu.
But promoting the core Drupal brand is still critical.
John Hannah
Friendly Machine
To Ben and Steve's point, I
To Ben and Steve's point, I am going to try to stay on message and not focus on the target audience.
I think John makes a legitimate point around the negative connotation that "enterprise" may stir, and it does not have to be in the branding statement. The more critical aspect will be once this is complete to make sure our marketing efforts are aligned correctly with how we position Drupal.
Here is my swipe at a statement based on the collective input I've seen:
"The Branding and Marketing Committee exists to foster growth, promote, increase awareness, and advance the open-source software principles of the international Drupal community."
And we are done.
Thanks for the lively discussion!
Let's drop "enterprise" because it's too loaded with "big business" meaning to be useful.
Here's what we are going with:
The purpose of undertaking the branding of Drupal is to accelerate the adoption of Drupal.
(Several people above wanted to try to make this into a discussion about a positioning statement for Drupal or a statement about the BAM committee. Those are way outside the scope of this conversation.)
I would like to invite each of you to participate in the next phase of our discussion:
Who is Drupal's target group?
Who are Drupal's competitors and what do they do well?
Who are Drupal's mindset competitors?
What is it that Drupal does so well?
Ben Finklea
Chair, Drupal Branding and Marketing* Committee
*BAM!
Comments are Now CLOSED
Thank you Ben, for your stewardship and leadership!
I'm turning OFF comments for this thread.
Any one is WELCOME to start new threads in the group of your choice if you feel you have an axe to grind and wish to continue any portion of this discussion.
Closing comments here is not meant to stifle conversation, but intended to preserve this conversation as a completed one.
Thank you!