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List:       kde-promo
Subject:    Re: [kde-promo] Speaking of the KDE league...
From:       Tink <tink () kde ! org>
Date:       2001-06-07 16:23:41
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At 15:48 +0200 06/07/01, Eva Brucherseifer wrote in Re: [kde-promo] 
Speaking of the KDE league...:

> Right now I am in the organisation team for the KDE booth for the Linuxtag in
> Germany, which is probably the biggest event for KDE, since KDE is _very_
> popular in Germany. So it should be possible, to get some money for
> organizing this... But all people tell me is, "there is no money for making
> flyers for linux expos, there no money for this, there is no money for that".
> What happens to the money. I thought (maybe this was stupid) that KDE League
> exists in order to provide promotion and promotion material.
> 
> Why don't KDE have professional posters and flyers (instead of these
> home-made not very-colorful 300dpi ink jet prints). Why don't we have CDs to
> sell? Where are the KDE t-shirts to sell? What about the marketing?

Eva,

Being married to Waldo gives me some insight and knowledge others 
maybe don't have.

I know there is money for promotional activities. I also know that 
some of it is used for paying press agents to print the KDE 
announcements. But there is money, maybe not from the league, but 
from sponsors before the league era.

2 years ago when we were living in Nurnberg it was decided within the 
core developers team that there should be a brochure, flyers and 
business cards.

I have been working on professional looking flyers, posters and 
business cards twice. I did spend a lot of time designing them, 
gathering information that should go into a brochure, researching 
which professional printer would be cheap and would still deliver 
quality work. Also researching print on demand options. When my 
designs were ready I presented them to the core-developers. They 
should agree on the design, I made several models. After that I 
emailed for months trying to force a decision. Nothing, no response 
whatsoever. No need to say I was heavily dissapointed. So it didn't 
go anywhere.

After that SuSE tried to make some business cards for KDE. After they 
collected all the info what had to go on the cards, no one heard from 
them again. Till all of a sudden last fall someone started to mention 
them again. I was a bit pissed off because they made it sound like it 
was a new bright ide when I already had put in many many hours to 
design something professional looking for them, that they just had 
thrown away.

According to the core team it's not their priority having flyers, 
businesscards or a brochure. As long as there are people like you and 
others who make flyers on their own printers and which maybe poor 
quality but reasonable looking, they're satisfied. Why should they 
spend 3000/5000 DMark on something they can get for free? I tried to 
point out that it's so much more professional if you have a good 
quality of promotional material but they just don't seem to get it.

I guess due to lack of people who can and will take decisions in this 
matter this isn't going anywhere and things will stay as they are and 
KDE will always have the image of nerds who are hacking linux instead 
of the profesional and glamourus looking desktop it can be.

I for one have given up, every once in a while someone who needs to 
go to a conference will complain about the lack of businesscards or 
the lack of flyers. They will do out and print some poor quality 
business cards on their printer and flyers too and that's it. it has 
been like that for years and I don't see it change.

--
Tink
-- 


"First be who you really are, then do what you need to do in order to 
have what you want."
--
 
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