Re: A cohesive sales message

Josh Berkus wrote:

>Folks,
>
>IF we could get back on topic for a minute ... not that the discussion of
>copyright infringement isn't interesting, but in the meantime Rob has been
>left hanging.
>
>To quote Peter:
>
>
>>Marketing material needs to be made with a specific purpose in mind. So
>>before you create something, you need to ask yourself who the audience
>>is and who will carry it to that audience.
>>
>>Likely audiences in the near term are guest at expositions and
>>conferences. Flyers (to pass out) and posters (to decorate) are the
>>obvious types of material for these occasions. So talk to t
>>
>>
>
>Absolutely. The posters are easy from a *content* perspective; all it
>requires is a logo & name and our motto ("The world's most advanced Open
>Source database"). Aside from the design, our main challenge is deciding
>how many languages to do posters in.
>
>For flyers & brochures, I see three audiences. At conventions like OSCON and
>PHPCon, we will be talking pretty much exculsively to fellow geeks, and our
>materials should focus on the technical and community benefits of PostgreSQL
>in a buzzword-free way. They should answer the questions "What can I do with
>PostgreSQL that I couldn't do otherwise? What resources exist to help me
>work with PostgreSQL?"
>
>The second audience shows up at conventions like Linuxworld and Macworld ...
>the suits. These people, in my experience, are mostly interested in being
>reassured that they won't be fired for choosing PostgreSQL over MSSQL or
>Oracle. For them, we'd mostly want testimonials, and buzzword-compliant
>lists of features and comparisons. These materials should answer the
>question "Is PostgreSQL equal to major proprietary databases?"
>
>The third audience is the press. Depending on the reporter and the story,
>most of what they want to know can be answered with the materials for either
>of the two groups above (more the "suits" than the "geeks"). However, they
>will also want the answer to the question "What is PostgreSQL? Where did it
>come from?" which would include a brief history and an explanation of
>ORDBMS.
>
>Ideally, I'd like to find a way to condense things down to two "packages" -- a
>"geek" and a "non-geek" package.
>
>Opinions? Thoughts? Rude noises?
>
>
>

I think we need to consider first, what is it that we want the people to
do, after they get the material. Personally, my opinion is, that the
focus is on getting people to www.postgresql.org . Since the handouts we
give, contain only some information, and we hope that the people
receiving them get interested. And we hope that they will install
PostgreSQL. And to be able to install, they need to get the software.
And for that, the web site is the place, they should go to. (Okay, you
can also get a distribution, and install from there, but for more info,
www, is the place.)

I think that we should more think of the path of getting the people to
install postgresql. Once it is installed, they can show that it works.
They can test it, and show that this is what happens. They can create a
test set and run several databases with it. And they can get the test
set approved. And all that work well, they will have a good chance of
beeing accepted. But the point is to get people to install PostgreSQL
for the first time. Or, for a CTO, it can be that someone else tests it
for him.

Of course the material we hand out, can not say only, that go and read
the web site. There has to be some interesting points, that you want to
read more. And to read more, you would go to the web site. (Of course,
you would also want to read other sources, to see if there are
complaints etc.) On the web site, we should perhaps think more of what
we want the people to do, rather than having different links available.
So, if you are new to PostgreSQL, go here. If you want to now, what's
new in PostgreSQL, go here and so on.

I also think, that people are more familiar with Oracle/mssql style of
packaging the database. There the advocacy site is "on top" of the other
packages and involved in marketing the stuff. The client (for example
pgadmin3), is part of the package as well as replication, documentation,
etc. (Okay, you might need to pay some extra, to get some specific parts.)

One thing that I think we could consider, is having an iso image, with
Knoppix and postgresql. Or something similar. It could be that the
database would be totally on a ramdisk. (That would be fast atleast ;-)
But the main point here is that it would be easy to test. It could make
it easier for the next step, to install PostgreSQL on to your own harddisk.

Or perhaps creating packages, where there are for example in one tar.gz
file, the server, "all" drivers, several clients etc. People download
distributions that are on several CD's to their harddisk. Would they not
want one package that contains "all" of PostgreSQL?

I think that the "geek" and "non-geek" distributions are the same. Both
of them are interested in things that are new and fancy, and things that
are proven good. (And make their life easier.) If you are a "geek", it
is very propable that if you fall in love with PostgreSQL, you need to
sell it to your boss. And if you are the boss, you need to sell it to
the "geeks" (and customers).

Windows support, well, for some it might be easier to install PostgreSQL
into their laptops, and test it, or do some developement, but I would
not run any production database on Windows.

In Finland, about 99,9% of the people somehow related to evaluating
databases are satisfied, if the material/documentation is in English. As
long as the database supports our character set.

Rgs,

Jussi