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List:       kde-promo
Subject:    Re: [kde-promo] Address database for press contacts
From:       Philippe Fremy <phil () freehackers ! org>
Date:       2003-04-22 14:27:16
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> It's absolutely necessary to keep track of your press contacts when
> you're conducting a properly managed promotion effort.

I fully agree. But we did that with html documents. We had:
- contacts.html:  list of all the people we want to contact but have not 
done it yet.
- in_progress.html: a contact has been initiated (lettter, phone call, 
meeting at an exhibition). Every further contact with this person entity is 
written down here, whether successful or not
- clients/xxx.html : when the contact becomes serious, we would give him its 
own page in a directory.

Our files had section by type of company we would contact to help us 
organise the whole thing. Something very important was that every 
communication attempt would create an entry, so that we know exactly who 
said what last time or why the contact failed. That way, anybody could take 
the file and continue the job.

One important thing here is that the amount of effort to maintain a contact 
was directly proportinal to the benefit that contact brings.


> Besides.. it's not like what we're doing costs the KDE community
> anything. I'm dedicating my own time, my own server and my own bandwidth
> to this effort. If it fails, well, tough luck but we at least tried. I'm
> not going to put my energy into some game of random journalist-chasing. I
> want to know what I'm doing and what the effects of what I'm doing are.

I don't want to blame you for that. But in the last year, we have witnessed 
a few attempts to build an infrastructure to help promotion and almost all 
of them have stopped at the infrastructure part and never went into the 
promotion stuff. So we have some dead infrastruture like the todo list of 
kde-promo, or the enterprise forum where nothing actually happens.

This is why I insist on actually doing promotion instead of infrastructure. 
Usually people just get tired after the infrastructure part.

I you feel confident that you will get past this level, you have all my 
support. Other felt confident too though.

> Oh and FYI, I'm already working on an article for the Consumentengids as
> was discussed here yesterday. 

I find that a lot more interesting to know that the LDAP database.

> It's probably just as useless as setting up
> a DB because they won't publish it anyway, but I'm doing it regardless
> just to get their attention.

Usually you can reuse some material from one article to another. So this is 
never completely wasted. Do not forget to put it in the promo site so that 
people willing to write more article in dutch can get some inspiration.

> I'm also working on designs for dutch
> promotional material like business cards, letterheads, shirts, mugs,
> caps, pens.. 

Apart from business card and letterhead, this is expensive stuff that does a 
project like KDE can not afford because it does not bring back much. Would 
you rather have KDE spend 100 euro on mugs or on paying for the travel 
expense of a developer for making a conference about KDE ? I am sure the 
second brings a lot more to the project.

Anyway, you can get this financing from KDE eV, see how they welcome  your 
proposition.

> So yes I got off my butt and am doing things that I consider useful.

You really have all my support and I hope you can achieve something.

	Philippe

-- 
You should not reinvent the wheel. 
Except when the first inventor made it square!

 
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