Behind the Scenes at TDF: Marketing in Q1 2016
Before going into the details of the marketing activities, The Document Foundation (TDF) is proud to announce that Mike Saunders was hired as Marketing Assistant in mid-February. Mike is known for the famous feature videos he made for LibreOffice 5.1, and he has kicked off the Month of LibreOffice Contribution in May, amongst many other projects. Welcome on board, Mike!
Paraphrasing a famous song, marketing at The Document Foundation is “the activity that never sleeps…”. The first quarter is one of the busiest, as we have FOSDEM and one major release happening between the end of January and mid February, followed by several minor releases – to keep up momentum – and a few events, including CeBIT in Germany.
FOSDEM 2016 was a large success for LibreOffice, thanks to the strategic positioning of the booth in the main lobby of building K, where most of the large projects are represented. It was the first time for TDF in the “kernel” of the exhibition, and it showed up. On Saturday, January 30, the project registered more visitors than during the entire FOSDEM 2015 (and almost as many on Sunday, January 31).
On Saturday, January 30, TDF developers were also on stage during the Open Document Editors DevRoom, with over 20 different talks about the upcoming LibreOffice 5.1 release, and related topics.
During FOSDEM, the certification committee also hosted several sessions, mostly via remote connections, to evaluate five candidates: one from Spain: Pasqual Milvaques, one from Taiwan: Frankling Weng, and 3 from Italy: Paolo Dongilli, Antonio Faccioli and Diego Maniacco.
One week after FOSDEM, the marketing team coordinated the announcement of LibreOffice 5.1 on Wednesday, February 10. During Monday and Tuesday, I hosted five different conference calls, with journalists from Europe and the United States. Thanks to this effort, the media coverage has been excellent, with hundreds of positive articles worldwide.
One year later, the improvements to the distribution of press releases based on specific features of phpList are showing up, with an average hit rate often higher than 30%. Thanks to phpList for offering us a free account.
In March, the marketing team has focused on two different projects: CeBIT in Hannover, the largest high tech trade show in Germany, and TDF 2015 Annual Report, which is the most important document produced by the project during the year.
CeBIT is the largest German trade show, and most visitors already know the office suite or even use it. Even if the interest has been lower than in the past, several project members – Thorsten Behrens, Thomas Krumbein and myself – have had the opportunity to present LibreOffice at the open source area, thanks to the collaboration with CIB.
TDF’s 2015 Annual Report will be released during the second quarter, and will provide an overview of what has been achieved by the project at large – i.e. including native language projects at local level – in each area.
Starting from May, we will be organizing a monthly PR call, to involve native language communities in marketing activities. In addition, starting from July, we will also organize online webinars to share competences in marketing and communications with local communities. During these webinars, we will also cover the LibreOffice migration protocol.