Caleb Gilbert
Fri, 12/21/2007 - 19:25 — Caleb G
What is your motivation for being a member of the Drupal Association?:
My motivation for being a member of the Drupal Association is to become more involved with the project which I've been working with over 2.5 years, am working with on a full-time basis, and because I believe that I have enough skills/time to add value to the association's efforts.
What are the primary goals you would like to work on?:
My strengths are along the lines of marketing, PR, advocacy, evangalism, planning, and/or documentation. To this end, I would like to help the association achieve/maintain a sterling reputation within it's different spheres of influence.
What strategy will you employ in order to accomplish said goals?:
Given the flexibility of the platform, there are now many specialized types of Drupal sites and Drupal users whose highest concern/priorities are very different from each other. I believe a key to Drupal's continued success relies on the association's ability to become more targeted in communicating solutions that solve the specialized problems of its many different user groups. The more the Drupal association can help tailor communications to these unique groups, so much the better.
What yearly budget would you need in order to accomplish said goals?:
Minimal year budget needed for all of the ideas I currently have in mind. Meaning that they can all be implemented online (e.g., Drupal.org, the Drupal Association website), via PDF's, and/or through communications with other online entities (in the form of P.R., interviews, guest articles, etc). I suppose an exception would be if it was desirable to have certain things printed for Drupalicons and such, in which case there would need to be a budget for those printed items.
What strengths/experience you have to help you accomplish the goals?:
In addition to a B.S. in Marketing, I have been selling web/creative services to organizations large and small for several years, as well as other (offline) sales/marketing experience.
Since it may be relevant here's links to my online work http://highervisibilitywebsites.com/portfolio , as well as my layout, design and production of media kits, sales kits, and all sorts of stuff for large companies in my former days as a designer/production manager - http://highervisibilitywebsites.com/print-design .
How long have you been using Drupal, and how'd you get your start?:
I've been involved with Drupal since 2005, first as a someone who just wanted a more robust community blog, and as someone, who merely by coincidence, was also developing static websites on a professional basis at the time. Realizing the advantages of Drupal I began pushing into the heavier development aspects of it, and have now become quite comfortable with Drupal, including it's api's, community. Currently, I am a full-time Drupal developer, working for myself at highervisibilitywebsites.com.
Have you made existing community contributions, and if so, what?:
**Contributed and/or assisted patches to Drupal core as well several contributed modules
**Contributed several handbook pages, including helping lead the charge for Panels 2 documentation
**Maintainer of ATCK project
**Have helped answer many peoples' questions in irc as well as at Drupal.org
**Basketball coach
**Political/social activism
How much time can you invest in your Drupal Association work?:
16-20 hours/month
Apply for Board of Directors membership:
Apply for Board of Directors membership
Board of Directors position:
Marketing coordinator, Communications coordinator
Statutes:
I have read and understood the Statutes of the Drupal Association. I am prepared to participate by following those statutes.
Comments
Marketing know-how is definitely something we can use.
The current list of Permanent Members has a pretty high proportion of code monkeys. ;)
This is a strong application with a lot of good stuff.
I'm also interested in your long-term goals regarding marketing and outreach. Cleaning up, consolidating, and re-packaging some of the existing community documentation to different audiences is awesome, but what's our next step? Also, how do you plan to involve the community in the "selling" of Drupal?
Outreach
"Outreach". That's the definitely a word the keeps bouncing around my head a lot.
In business circles its widely regarded that PR is, under normal circumstances, greatly superior to marketing/advertising. The problem for many organizations is that they honestly just don't have a lot which makes for interesting/compelling PR opportunities. For instance, a for-profit company that sells hot dogs. Well, sure with some creativity they can come up with *something* to gin up some PR, but there's a finite cap on those possibilities and to really get their name out in the marketplace they'll likely need to allocate a good bit of resources for traditional advertising/marketing. :-(
Of course, the hot dog company scenario is not at all the case for Drupal -- the internationally acclaimed, open-source, not-for-profit, community which is simply out to keep improving software that it provides the world for free. :-)
Who in their right mind *wouldn't* want to (A) talk to knowledgeable people within the Drupal community about how Drupal can add value to their organization/cause (e.g., via interviews, speaking engagements, conventions, etc), and/or b) actually do something with the Drupal community to directly help their cause/organization (as in the case of GHOP and or Summer of Code, for instance).
So, besides "Cleaning up, consolidating, and re-packaging some of the existing community documentation to different audiences", I believe a crucial next step for Drupal marketing is simply to encourage every knowledgeable Drupal community member we can to engage their local (or if they're feeling strong, state/national/international) organizations, media, and communities with accounts of how Drupal can help add simplicity, value, and even some fun to their business/lives.
Drupal, in large part sells itself at this point, we just knowledgeable and good natured people to help continue letting people know about it. It would be my hope/intention that I could help play a part in doing this personally, as well as empower/encourage others to do the same.
Clearer goals
Hi Caleb, you state you want to "help the association achieve/maintain a sterling reputation within it's different spheres of influence." That's pretty vague. Could you give some more concrete goals, so we know what you are actually going to do?
Cheers,
Kieran
More on goals
Hi Kieran,
To be more detailed, and (of course) allowing for feedback, here is one idea I have to help improve Drupal's marketing reach:
1. Identify the x-number of most important 'site-genres' to target for (e.g., corporate/enterprise, community, blog, etc).
2. Identify the x-number of most important 'stakeholder-positions' to target for (e.g., users, non-developer decision makers, developers).
3. Create handbook pages and/or other promotional materials (e.g., PDF's) that target the identified sub-audiences. By tailoring the content directly to specific concerns and/or technical capabilities, we'll make it much easier for prospective Drupalers to see how Drupal can solve their particular problems.
A sample hierarchy to help illustrate the idea further (this is initial and probably wouldn't be the same for every audience, but hopefully gets the basic concept across):
+ Drupal audiences
1. Enterprise/Corporate
a. Case studies
b. Enterprise/Corporate sites built with Drupal
c. Stakeholder perspectives of Drupal for the Enterprise/Corporate
1. Users
2. Decision maker, non-developer
3. Developer
2. Community/Social networking
3. Blogging
4. Portals
5. Ecommerce/Shopping
6. News
Marketing work in progress
Hi Caleb, thanks for clarifying. Let me help you review some of the existing efforts.
1. http://groups.drupal.org/node/6876 - Showcase sites by type
2. http://groups.drupal.org/node/3761 - Personas
3. http://drupal.org/cases, http://drupal.org/success-stories, http://groups.drupal.org/node/6943 - Marketing budget
It would be good to see what you'd like to do with that as a start.
Kieran
re: Marketing work in progress
Thanks for the links, I've seen a couple of them before but not the personas one, which is a verrry interesting start to what I mentioned earlier regarding 'Drupal audiences'.
What I have in mind involves taking all of these things which are currently spread throughout Drupal.org, in varying states of quality and then vigorously polishing up the wording and formatting of them in the process of creating some targeted, easy to read, and eye pleasing handbooks and PDFs that are compiled specifically for a respective market rather than just, "here's the whole Drupal enchilada, find the one link you're interested in out of the 100 possible ones on the page" situation which exists now to some degree.
*Please note that I added the following to my application:
Since it may be relevant here's links to my online work, as well as my layout, design and production of media kits, sales kits, and all sorts of stuff for large companies in my former days as a designer/production manager.
I like this approach and I
I like this approach and I think it's really important as well. I think with the existing gallery and "personas" (I hadn't seen that page either -- very useful direction) and Caleb's marketing skills this could be really advanced significantly.
looks fine
hi
this looks fine. Could you please add in a field if you are up for both Permanent Membership and Board member?
I can't currently edit the application
...but I am up for being both a permanent member and a board member, if the Drupal Association will have me. :-)
You should be able to edit
You should be able to edit your profile now.
Thanks, have updated...
....my application accordingly, as well as have filled in the newly added field for 'budget required'.