[Gambas-user] Lectures in marketing

[Radoslav Dejanović]

On Tuesday 18 November 2003 22:47, Benoit Minisini wrote:
> Eugenia Loli-Queru sent me a e-mail asking me to write an article for
> OSnews.com about Gambas, on 10 Apr 2003. But I never had the time to do
> that, and I was not very interested on speaking about my own project
> before having a stable version. And not being a journalist, I can't be
> neutral...  ;-)

I hope you wouldn't mind a short lecture in marketing... ;)

You see, lots of developers and professionals have wrong point of view. 
They think this way: "I'm so good, my products are soo useful, therefore I 
don't have to market them/self, for people will recognize me and come in 
wast numbers, making me rich and ego-happy." 

The above *isn't* really accurate. Gambas isn't a good example, for it does 
attract technically inclined people, as you can see. And every day more 
and more people do hear about it, and all this is a great stuff. 

However, the curve that represent number of Gambas users versus time 
would be much steeper if you could do just a little bit of marketing your 
product. For a hunded people who like Gambas, there are hundreds of 
thousands that have never heard of it, and of those many thousands you 
might gain another hundred people to like your product. 

What good is that? Of course, we're not talking money here. There's some 
other wery valuable asset you have - your users. They're the most 
important asset of Gambas, for if it wasn't about them (and surely it 
isn't about the money), your product wouldn't go that far. 

Think of having really big number of testers, feature dreamers, addon 
developers... in a bigger community you get better chance to get more 
smart people who could  push the development. 

To get this, you do have to forget about your modesty and talk to the 
people about Gambas. Sure, write an article! Have some journalist 
interview you and ask you some not-too-briliant questions. Answer them 
with patience and understanding. Create a public image of you and your 
product! Let the world know that there's some sort of "Visual Basic for 
Linux" that is in development stage, but already promises a lot! 

Get more people. Get a lot of them and you'll see that this will raise the 
speed of development, and quality of the product as well. ;)

-- 
Radoslav Dejanovic
founder and director
Operacijski sustavi d.o.o. http://www.opsus.hr