Re: [Semediawiki-user] SMW marketing

[Markus K. <ma...@se...>]

On Mittwoch, 18. November 2009, Alex Kozak wrote:
> I think the best way to market SMW is to show how powerful it can be, and
> the best way to do that would be to show off use cases. The power of SMW
> isn't just in what it can do, but in what it can do compared to how
> difficult it is to get going. Using SMW an organization could set up a the
> infrastructure for a collaborative database within hours. There are plenty
> of good examples of this.

I agree. This is probably something that is best reported in blog posts ("We 
have recently set up this great site within just two hours. ...") We could 
also make a list of "good" publicly accessible show cases on our homepage.

> 
> But I also think that it's going to be really hard to market it without all
> of the necessary extensions getting built in in some way. When I tell
>  people about SMW and they're interested in trying it, I then have to
>  qualify my recommendation with a whole list of extensions that they need
>  to research. It would be nice if that wasn't necessary and if it were all
>  part of the core functionality.

This is what SMW+ and Semantic Bundle try to address. If these are not 
suitable for your case, then you can contribute by providing some feedback to 
the maintainers of these distributions. I am sure that reasonable requests 
will be answered.

The separation into extensions outside the core mainly serves maintenance by a 
globally distributed and loosely connected group of developers. Each extension 
has a responsible person and can be improved, released, and (if necessary) 
given up without interfering with the others.

> 
> I also think that there are some desired features still missing, the
>  biggest of which being better support for multi-lingual wikis. I
>  understand this is mostly a problem with MediaWiki, but the semantic
>  aspect adds an extra layer of complexity. Hopefully I'll be able to share
>  a paper that I've been working on about that soon.

I agree that this is a complex topic, but there is probably no straightforward 
way to solve this problem. But don't hesitate to file concrete feature 
requests.

-- Markus

> 
> - Alex
> 
> On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 6:44 AM, Markus Krötzsch <
> 
> ma...@se...> wrote:
> > Hi again,
> >
> > there has been some discussion at the SMW Camp that we should improver
> > our marketing to engage more users and contributors into the project,
> > which should
> > help to improve the software and its extensions, user support, and
> > overall impact. This email is meant to initiate a discussion to collect
> > concrete proposals.
> >
> > A number of ideas have been brought forward:
> >
> > (1) Promotional material: we should print T-shirts and laptop stickers.
> > This
> > idea will need to have some funding, but most of all it hinges upon the
> > creation of a logo (see my other email). We should have this settled for
> > the
> > next meeting at the latest.
> >
> > (2) More documentary media: Screencasts, videos of introduction talks,
> > and maybe other media (preconfigured VMWare images have been mentioned)
> > would be
> > helpful to allow for a quicker start in SMW. We are soliciting
> > contributions
> > here: if you have resources to produce such material, do not hesitate to
> > send
> > it to us so we can include it on our site or put up a link.
> >
> > (3) Blog posts: The first thing that anyone can do is to publish blog
> > entries
> > about successful applications of SMW. We are happy to set up links from
> > our homepage if you send us the link.
> >
> > (4) Popular media publications: Articles in (technology or other)
> > magazines and the like are reaching many users. We should look out for
> > opportunities for
> > raising awareness in this way. I don't see a concrete action that one can
> > take
> > here at the moment.
> >
> > (5) Social Web activities: Dedicated groups in social networking sites
> > could
> > be of some use. Maybe we should start a Facebook group. A LinkedIn group
> > was
> > launched by Philipp recently. Twitter currently is also raising awareness
> > in
> > some groups. However, please keep important communication activities on
> > this
> > list, as it is otherwise very hard to follow the various discussion
> > threads.
> >
> > (6) More aggressive linking home: SMW could by default replace the
> > "powered by" button of MediaWiki in the standard skins (configurable, but
> > enabled by default). We have been too modest to do this so far, but it
> > might by of some
> > use. Not sure if the layout of the button would allow for a shared
> > "MW/SMW" linking there. This action also depends on the new logo.
> >
> >
> > These are all proposals that I recall from the meeting. Comments,
> > contributions, or further ideas are welcome.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Markus
> >
> > --
> > Markus Krötzsch  <ma...@se...>
> > * Personal page: http://korrekt.org
> > * Semantic MediaWiki: http://semantic-mediawiki.org
> > * Semantic Web textbook: http://semantic-web-book.org
> > --
> >
> >
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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> 


-- 
Markus Krötzsch  <ma...@se...>
* Personal page: http://korrekt.org
* Semantic MediaWiki: http://semantic-mediawiki.org
* Semantic Web textbook: http://semantic-web-book.org
--