Average users don’t understand the principles behind Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). They know it’s free, but their definition of ‘free’ is the beer one, not the freedom one. To average users ‘free’ as in beer is much easier to communicate than ‘free’ as in freedom. If we want to further expand the adoption of open source and spread our free culture, we need to consider a new means to achieve our ends – professional marketing.
Sender
We need experts who take care of this. Experts who stop coding and start communicating. Who could that be? Well, there is more than one group that can benefit from professional marketing. Open Source Software needs it. Creative Commons, too. And even for the whole bunch of people out there, commonly referred to as ‘hackers’, a better definition of what a hacker is and does would come in handy. Somewhere in these groups, we have to find our communicators, to start broadcasting the message. But wait? What message?
Message
On the 23rd Chaos Communication Congress (23C3), I learned about Valerie Hoh’s vision in her lecture Why OpenSource Needs Professional Marketing:
We would [Open Source Software] to be recognized by everyone and make sure that those who are concerned – computer users of this world – at least have an idea, what FOSS is, what free operating systems and free desktops are, and what advantages that kind of software can give them. We want everybody to see what good FOSS can do for them.
That’s the big picture. A big picture is good for us to better understand what we’d like to achieve. But the people we want to address don’t care about a big picture. They need small, tangible pieces of information. Or even better: emotion. Just like good marketing works (as far as I know). Great, this leaves us with two problems:
First, we’re all tech people. Tech people don’t care about marketing. And marketing people don’t care about tech. If you know exceptions from this rule (or if you even consider yourself to BE one), you should start acting now and get in touch!
Second, if we had a gun, who should we start at shooting? Good marketing always carefully defines a target. If the target is large, you hardly miss, but there won’t be any effect. If the target is small, you can affect it adversely, but hitting it becomes really hard. So who’s our target?
Receiver
If we want to influence, we need to better understand who we want to influence. We have to put our source code away for a moment and start listening. What are your requirements? What would you like to achieve? How do you think, customer? We have to understand our users. And this time it’s not your coding colleague, you’re talking to. It’s the kind of guy that asks questions like “What is a ‘[server|operating system|browser]‘?” (Better prepare for worst case)
There is hope! Something’s happening: Corinna Habets aka palas brought usability to the hacker crowd in her 23C3 lecture How To Design A Decent User Interface. One of her key arguments is:
For average users the UI practically _is_ the application (i.e. as much as we may wish to, they don’t care whether it’s programmed well, only if they can use it)
Although usability is not marketing, it is an important change in the mindset of how to treat the average user. And good marketing can join in right where usability gets focused.
The main challenge for our communicators will be leaving the comfort zone and start to build rapport with the average user. With those people who in general don’t read our blogs, don’t attend our conferences but still use our products. So how can we reach them?
Medium
Do we need lots of money to get open source software into television or big newspapers (or pick any other expensive media here)? Well, there certainly is an opportunity in this approach. But I don’t think it’s necessary. Even the marketing sector has a slight feeling of uncertainty, if above-the-line media is the best tool to do marketing with. They’re not telling anyone, but they’re looking for something more effective.
Have you heard what’s going on in the marketing space, recently? I read about blog marketing, viral marketing, guerrilla marketing. Hey, they’re using our tools and technologies! Maybe they’re not that far away from our thoughts and principles? Is there a common ground, we can start from?
If there’s one industry which I believe comes next in the evolution of free culture to turn free, it probably is – considering the conversion of journalism as already completed – marketing. Individuals create their own blogs, podcasts and videos. Popular platforms like YouTube provide the infrastructure to distribute that content. This can and already is used for marketing purposes.
Communicate!
Looks like all we need for professional marketing is available for reasonable cost: little money and a lot of work. Just as we’re used to in the Open Source world.
So if you’re…
- a software developer, creating open source software
- a content creator, believing in free culture
- a marketing professional, interested in open source
there’s an opportunity for you to take: Get in touch with each other and tell this world something about freedom!
” For average users the UI practically _is_ the application (i.e. as much as we may wish to, they don’t care whether it’s programmed well, only if they can use it) ”
… this reminds of something I’ve said long time ago about, well, let’s call it ‘Kiosk Systems’:
” It doesn’t matter how good, advanced, complex or ‘promising’ the (software) back-end of a system is. In the end the front-end itself (meaning the user interface) will let people decide about whether the (whole) product is successful or not. ”
I explicitly did not say ‘good’ or ‘bad’. It’s the ‘end-user’ accepting it. If he doesn’t like it (and one can really use the term ‘like’ in a matter of taste) or worst case cannot ‘use/control’ it, he won’t buy (in terms of accepting) it. Not to forget: when talking about decision makers, you have to mix up the ‘end-user’ expectations with the expectations from those people who originally ‘ordered’ that piece of software. Biggest problem in that case usually is: we cannot foresee how people (end-users) will use an application.
Enough for now,
Stay in touch,…
Marco