KDE promo last year!

So I promised in an earlier blog to summarize what I've presented today to the e.V. membership: the work of our marketing/promo team!

Growth

Last year has been a stunning year. Why? Well, 12 months ago, at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit, there was barely any marketing team left. After some comments by Till Adam I decided to stop writing myself into a burn out and start recruiting new promo peeps. Which has been quite successful, luckily many new volunteers have joined the promo team and it's a vibrant and active bunch! I think the work we've done over the last 6 months speaks volumes.

Announcing

Now before I start talking about what we did over the last year, first a cool announcement: we've got a new Marketing Working Group! A few years ago the MWG was set up at the same time as the Technical and Community Working Groups. The MWG has become rather inactive (as in, all the members were busy with other things) and hasn't done much over the last year. At the e.V. meeting today I have proposed to relieve the current members of their duty (they had agreed with that when I asked them) and to appoint four new members:

Stuart Jarvis, UK citizen and very active KDE promo dude. Referred to as 'Royal Stu' since he was named so in a badly translated article on a Chinese website when he announced the rebranding for us, he was on the kde-promo marketing list for years but became very active at the end of 2009, recently taking care of the new KDE software labels and editing articles for the dot.
Justin Kirby, US citizen and closely related to one of our e.V. board members (as in, shares a home with Celeste). He claimed he wanted to get involved for a long time but finally came through at the end of last year and is working on the t-shirt store and other stuff.
Pradeepto Bhattacharya, from India, needs little introduction for most of us. He's incredibly active in India, organizing meetings, attending conferences, representing KDE almost every week. He has been involved in the KDE community for many years and his work resulted in the we are KDE song. What else to say?
Sandro Andrade, one of the Brazilian cornerstones of KDE promo. He co-founded the LiveBlue, has been writing code for years and of course promotes KDE in Brazil. He also tends to create pretty pictures like the KDE SC 4.4 release party poster!

The e.V. membership agreed and they were voted in. So we've got a diverse bunch of people, who have proved themselves by their dedication and skills - and they now have to steer the MWG towards relevance again. Good luck guys, make something out of this!

Report

Then, the report you've all be waiting for (of course).

What happened in 2009-2010?

• As usual: the team attended lots of events & fairs.
• 
  
• GCDS not a big success in promo area, lacking volunteers.
  
• after that focus on growth of the team, including return of some 'old timers'
  
• New DOT infrastructure (drupal)
  
• Dot became much more active, new writers & editors (latest addition to editors: Carl Symons)
  
• Too many writers to mention, new writers every month!
  
• marketing pages on community.kde.org wiki - better coordination
  
• November: Marketing team meeting with many new members (15 people, compare with 2008: 4 people!)
  
• Planning for release of 4.4 (announcement & feature guide),
  
• rebranding and
  
• new website launched with restructured and updated content
  
• After meeting: Rebranding announcement.
  
• work on connecting with other communities, did get in a bit closer touch with Brazilian community (still lots to do)
  
• Januari: promo gearing up to Camp KDE, was successful.
  
• work on social media like Youtube, Facebook and linked-In
  
• Februari: great promo around 4.4 release, including new website and buzz.kde.org update!
  
• New KDE software labels for wider community
  
• e.V. Supporting membership supported by Promo team
  
• T-shirt and other gear shop
  
• Booth Box improvements coming up
  
• lots of work to prepare for Akademy - more professional than ever.
  
• Another thing: we're testdriving Etherpad to get rid of Google Docs! thanks to Jeff Mitchel for setting it up.
  

There is obviously more, and these notes are short - but I think it's clear that 2010 has been a stunning year for KDE promo up and until now, and I hope it'll only get better!