[Evangelism] promoting WPD

[Chris Calloway]

On 3/11/2009 1:35 PM, Scott Paley wrote:
> Thinking more about this though, who does WPD target? Are we trying to
> target those who don't have any idea what a CMS is?

That's a good question, Scott.

I was just trying to help Roberto clarify what he wants from suggesting 
we rename WPD.

I will say, that the WPD event my user group held last year only 
attracted people who already knew what a CMS is, already knew what Plone 
is, and, well, were already using Plone.

I don't think that was a good use of our time. It was fun seeing 
everybody. But it wasn't a good use of department time during business 
hours on a work day.

Part of that was, Plone is already marketed to death in my area. It's 
been very visible since the beginning here and we've trained just about 
everybody who is a candidate for Plone training here. There are 
commercials for Plone on the local public radio station here, 
ferpetessake. There was also non-profit here that was making free Plone 
sites for just about any other local non-profit that wanted one right 
from the beginning of Plone. So everybody here has had a Plone site at 
one time or another and they're mostly kind of over it now.

There have also been some monumental Plone and Zope project failures and 
unmet expectations due to Plone over-marketing in my neck of the woods 
that have given Plone a bad name in many quarters around where I live. 
It's very hard to market Plone here to anyone who knows what content 
management is because they have X number of Plone horror stories to draw 
upon already as their main knowledge of what content management is.

So I can't really say what would be good for your area.

But in my area, about the only people left to market Plone to are people 
who don't know what a CMS is yet, but who may need one.

And I'm not sure if I'm ready to manage the expectations of people in 
that category, given past experience.

-- 
Sincerely,

Chris Calloway
http://www.secoora.org
office: 332 Chapman Hall   phone: (919) 599-3530
mail: Campus Box #3300, UNC-CH, Chapel Hill, NC 27599