Minutes for July 25, 2013

Marketing, plone.com progress discussion; Bastille Day and Security Sprint funding; Budget/sponsorship mid-year review.

Paul called us to order at 20:05 UTC

Housekeeping

Attendance

Present: Paul Roeland, Érico Andrei, Matt Hamilton, Matthew Wilkes, Liz Leddy, Steve McMahon, Carol Ganz


Eric Rozeboom was a guest (Eric is plone.com project manager and helping lead marketing efforts).

(Carol and Liz had poor connectivity and missed some discussion.)

Marketing, plone.com & progress

(We took business with our guest first on the agenda.)

We asked Eric for a report out on the recent Bastille Day Marketing Sprint.

Eric began the discussion by asking what the board considered “marketing.”
Talk of raising the profile of the project, materials that help with it.
Community is a selling point, but not part of the target of marketing.
Eric: Ultimate goal is to grow market share. Not earning more money.
Getting more developers, more companies in enterprise content development space.
Érico agreed, but noted that we’re not after general market, but the market we’re good at.
Eric: Better presence in markets, win from competition.
Discussion of market segments, competitors; notes that we’re not trying to get lower ends of the market.

Paul moved discussion to concrete plans.
Liz noted that we’re not really the ones to decide marketing priorities. We’re more interested in facilitating and enabling community decisions on this subject.

Several people noted that it is an agreed priority that we need to get plone.com out as soon as possible, as planned.

Eric: Plone.com will be launched as plone.com (not on another domain) by end of August. Then survey to get ideas about future progress. Within two weeks a preview should be available. Success stories are still short.
Noted that Eric should feel free to draw on board resources to help establish community connections.

Eric left the call

Approval of the minutes of July 11

Matt moved approval; Érico seconded
Unanimously approved with Liz abstaining.


Check if action items were followed up:
Noted we didn’t follow up on APAC; Paul will be in contact.

New Business

Funding requests

Bastille Day Sprint; $3,000 request. This had both marketing and development.
Steve moved allocation of $1,500 from strategic sprint budget and $1,500 from marketing. Liz seconded.
Unanimously approved (Carol had dropped off the line)

Security sprint; $3,000 originally requested
Matthew and Paul noted that they intend to attend this sprint.
Some sponsorship already obtained.
Matthew noted that we may not have as many trans-atlantic people as desired and may not need the full $3,000 for travel.
This sprint has been determined by the security team to be strategic.
Paul suggested allocating $1,500 with a note that we can increase if there are any good opportunities to bring people in.
Liz moved Paul’s suggestion; Steve seconded.
Unanimously approved (Matt abstaining, Carol still off call)

Incoming correspondence

Six Feet Up Sponsorship level
Liz has been soliciting sponsorships; noting availability of sponsorship acknowledgment. Getting good response.
Six Feet Up has asked about their sponsorship level. We have a contract with them for hosting in exchange for sponsorship acknowledgement. The note asked about the level at which this is listed in the new sponsor list.
Discussion noted that we need to be diligent in detailing the services that we’re getting, renew the contract, and establish value. Treasurer services have been added since the contract was concluded.
Agreement that we need to get the contract up-to-date and document the services and their value. Put a term on it.
Steve volunteered to get in touch with 6FU and move this along.

PyCon Ireland

There’s to be a PyCon in Ireland. We’ve been talking on email about how to have a good presence there. Matthew and Alan Hoey may be able to make it. Netsight may also have folks to send.

Old Business

Budget review & sponsorship efforts

We’d agreed we would review this at roughly mid year due to how ambitious the sprint and marketing expenditures are in comparison with previous years. Are sponsorships rising to compensate?

Liz reported that individual sponsorships have risen to a couple of thousand a month. And, we now have three premium sponsors.
This is, in short, going very well. Noted that sponsors really like sprint expenditures.

Budget
Paul discussed moving some of the PSM expenditures from strategic sprint to marketing budgets. General agreement that this makes sense.
Paul summed up: we still can’t guarantee that this will all balance out, but reserves are OK and sponsorships are improving. General agreement that we should stick with the increased sprint budgeting.

Miscellaneous

Matt reported on outstanding IP issues. One of them has simply disappeared!

Adjourned at 21:25 UTC