Marketing OOo

[John Jason Jordan-3]

NoOp suggested:

http://marketing.openoffice.org/art/galleries/cdart/index.html
[I'm still waiting for the 3.0 cdart...]

Indeed, what I need is 3.0 art, or better, the ability to purchase OOo
3.0 on CD with 3.0 artwork on the CD. A problem I have is that people
take my CD with OOo on it and are scared to install it for fear of all
the horrible things they have heard about viruses and the net and such.
A "official" looking CD would eliminate this problem.

I could download appropriate artwork (modify the 2.0 artwork or wait
for the 3.0 artwork), but I do not have a printer than can print on
CDs. Even if I did, I would like to be able to distribute hundreds of
such CDs. My university has 27,000 students and actively supports OOo.
OOo is installed on all university computers in all student computer
labs. The help desks would be happy to put up a cardboard display with
OOo if only I had CDs to put in the display. I can buy CDs on eBay and
elsewhere, but the vendors think their CDs are worth $5 and up. That is
prohibitive for me. A blank CD costs 25 cents US or so, so I figure 50
cents apiece is a fair price. I wish CDs at such a price were available
on the OOo website. In quantity OOo could produce the CDs and sell them
at a fair profit at that price.

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[Shawn Taylor]

The problem becomes distribution. It's not profitable to mail a CD for .25
cents and you are not accounting for the printing costs.

The better approach in my opinion is send them here, let them see the OOo
user community, the site, show them the list off OOo books available:

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/A-Conceptual-Guide-to-OpenOffice-Org-3/R-Ga
briel-Gurley/e/9780977899166/?itm=3
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Beginning-OpenOffice-3-0/Andy-Channelle/e/9
781430215905/?itm=5
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Openoffice-Org-2-Firefox-and-Thunderbird/Gr
eg-Perry/e/9780672328084/?itm=8
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Learn-OpenOfficeorg-Spreadsheet-Macro-Progr
amming/Mark-Alexander-Bain/e/9781847190970/?itm=3

Part of the fear of the web is in being able to establish something is
legitimate. Lend OOo your credibility on top of it's own...

Shawn

-----Original Message-----
From: John Jason Jordan [mailto:johnjasonj@...]
Sent: Tuesday, October 07, 2008 11:53 PM
To: users@...
Subject: [users] Marketing OOo

NoOp suggested:

http://marketing.openoffice.org/art/galleries/cdart/index.html
[I'm still waiting for the 3.0 cdart...]

Indeed, what I need is 3.0 art, or better, the ability to purchase OOo
3.0 on CD with 3.0 artwork on the CD. A problem I have is that people
take my CD with OOo on it and are scared to install it for fear of all
the horrible things they have heard about viruses and the net and such.
A "official" looking CD would eliminate this problem.

I could download appropriate artwork (modify the 2.0 artwork or wait
for the 3.0 artwork), but I do not have a printer than can print on
CDs. Even if I did, I would like to be able to distribute hundreds of
such CDs. My university has 27,000 students and actively supports OOo.
OOo is installed on all university computers in all student computer
labs. The help desks would be happy to put up a cardboard display with
OOo if only I had CDs to put in the display. I can buy CDs on eBay and
elsewhere, but the vendors think their CDs are worth $5 and up. That is
prohibitive for me. A blank CD costs 25 cents US or so, so I figure 50
cents apiece is a fair price. I wish CDs at such a price were available
on the OOo website. In quantity OOo could produce the CDs and sell them
at a fair profit at that price.

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[John Jason Jordan-3]

On Wed, 8 Oct 2008 00:01:23 -0400
"Shawn Taylor" <shtaylor@...> dijo:

> The problem becomes distribution. It's not profitable to mail a CD for .25
> cents and you are not accounting for the printing costs.

I'm not asking for one CD for 25 cents.

I failed to explain something. I will personally pay 50 cents per CD
for someome to ship me 100 of them with appropriate OOo artwork. If
that is too little, let me know how much it would cost and I may agree
to a higher price. The funds are my own funds, not the funds of OOo.

I look at it this way. I cannot write code, so I cannot contribute to
OOo that way. I can contribute a small amount of support by
participating here, but that is not much. On the other hand, I have
access to thousands of university students and can promote OOo to them.
But I need help. I need materials. I need CDs with OOo that look
professional. But to do the job right I need hundreds of them. I will
pay for them myself out of my own funds, but it shouldn't cost more
than 50 cents or so for each CD.

Someone at OOo needs to set this up. If OOo "the organization" would
set this up the cost per CD would be minimal.
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[James Knott]

John Jason Jordan wrote:

> I could download appropriate artwork (modify the 2.0 artwork or wait
> for the 3.0 artwork), but I do not have a printer than can print on
> CDs. Even if I did, I would like to be able to distribute hundreds of
> such CDs. My university has 27,000 students and actively supports OOo.
> OOo is installed on all university computers in all student computer
> labs. The help desks would be happy to put up a cardboard display with
> OOo if only I had CDs to put in the display. I can buy CDs on eBay and
> elsewhere, but the vendors think their CDs are worth $5 and up. That is
> prohibitive for me. A blank CD costs 25 cents US or so, so I figure 50
> cents apiece is a fair price. I wish CDs at such a price were available
> on the OOo website. In quantity OOo could produce the CDs and sell them
> at a fair profit at that price.
>
>  

Does your university have the means of duplicating & printing CDs?
Lot's of organizations do these days.  What about commercial duplicators?

--
Use OpenOffice.org <http://www.openoffice.org>

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[Barbara Duprey]

John Jason Jordan wrote:

> NoOp suggested:
>
> http://marketing.openoffice.org/art/galleries/cdart/index.html
> [I'm still waiting for the 3.0 cdart...]
>
> Indeed, what I need is 3.0 art, or better, the ability to purchase OOo
> 3.0 on CD with 3.0 artwork on the CD. A problem I have is that people
> take my CD with OOo on it and are scared to install it for fear of all
> the horrible things they have heard about viruses and the net and such.
> A "official" looking CD would eliminate this problem.
>
> I could download appropriate artwork (modify the 2.0 artwork or wait
> for the 3.0 artwork), but I do not have a printer than can print on
> CDs. Even if I did, I would like to be able to distribute hundreds of
> such CDs. My university has 27,000 students and actively supports OOo.
> OOo is installed on all university computers in all student computer
> labs. The help desks would be happy to put up a cardboard display with
> OOo if only I had CDs to put in the display. I can buy CDs on eBay and
> elsewhere, but the vendors think their CDs are worth $5 and up. That is
> prohibitive for me. A blank CD costs 25 cents US or so, so I figure 50
> cents apiece is a fair price. I wish CDs at such a price were available
> on the OOo website. In quantity OOo could produce the CDs and sell them
> at a fair profit at that price.

I applaud your efforts in distributing CDs, and I agree it would be
great if OOo supplied them in single-to-bulk quantities. But
until/unless something is done officially, there are label-maker
programs that print on special labels designed for CDs, and they usually
come with a plastic part that attaches the labels in the right position.
You could make a nice label and stick it on, and it wouldn't be too
expensive. I haven't bought any of the label sheets in a while, but I
know they don't cost much. Making hundreds would definitely be a chore,
but if you can't find another way to get this done, this operation might
fill the gap for a while. Commercial duplication would be great if the
service doesn't cost too much for you, though.

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[NoOp-4]

On 10/08/2008 07:31 AM, Barbara Duprey wrote:

> John Jason Jordan wrote:
>> NoOp suggested:
>>
>> http://marketing.openoffice.org/art/galleries/cdart/index.html
>> [I'm still waiting for the 3.0 cdart...]
>>
>> Indeed, what I need is 3.0 art, or better, the ability to purchase OOo
>> 3.0 on CD with 3.0 artwork on the CD. A problem I have is that people
>> take my CD with OOo on it and are scared to install it for fear of all
>> the horrible things they have heard about viruses and the net and such.
>> A "official" looking CD would eliminate this problem.
>>
>> I could download appropriate artwork (modify the 2.0 artwork or wait
>> for the 3.0 artwork), but I do not have a printer than can print on
>> CDs. Even if I did, I would like to be able to distribute hundreds of
>> such CDs. My university has 27,000 students and actively supports OOo.
>> OOo is installed on all university computers in all student computer
>> labs. The help desks would be happy to put up a cardboard display with
>> OOo if only I had CDs to put in the display. I can buy CDs on eBay and
>> elsewhere, but the vendors think their CDs are worth $5 and up. That is
>> prohibitive for me. A blank CD costs 25 cents US or so, so I figure 50
>> cents apiece is a fair price. I wish CDs at such a price were available
>> on the OOo website. In quantity OOo could produce the CDs and sell them
>> at a fair profit at that price.
>
> I applaud your efforts in distributing CDs, and I agree it would be
> great if OOo supplied them in single-to-bulk quantities. But
> until/unless something is done officially, there are label-maker
> programs that print on special labels designed for CDs, and they usually
> come with a plastic part that attaches the labels in the right position.
> You could make a nice label and stick it on, and it wouldn't be too
> expensive. I haven't bought any of the label sheets in a while, but I
> know they don't cost much. Making hundreds would definitely be a chore,
> but if you can't find another way to get this done, this operation might
> fill the gap for a while. Commercial duplication would be great if the
> service doesn't cost too much for you, though.

Lightscribe CD burners are within the price range of many these days (I
don't have one... I'm poor :-). Not as fast as commercial burners, but
with some actual "official" cd artwork to burn to the lightscribe CD's
it eliminates the need to hand stick CD labels (I do that & it's not
much fun).

http://www.lightscribe.com

However, in addition to the artwork, you also need a proper & up-to-date
OOo ISO to burn to the CD. Unfortunately, these don't get updated very
often... note that the latest is:

http://projects.openoffice.org/index.html#distribution
 http://distribution.openoffice.org/cdrom/
  http://distribution.openoffice.org/cdrom/distributors.html
   http://distribution.openoffice.org/cdrom/iso_downoad.html
<quote>
The standard ISO images are available for normal download through the
Extended mirrors. The images are contained in a sub-directory named
"/iso/en" (for English images) or "/iso/de" (for the German images).
</quote>
http://distribution.openoffice.org/mirrors/index.html#extmirrors
 ftp://openoffice.cs.utah.edu/pub/openoffice/extended/iso/en
Up to higher level directory
File: md5sums 1 KB 04/03/2008 12:00:00 AM
File: ooo_240_sol_20080329.iso 496036 KB 03/30/2008 12:00:00 AM
File: ooo_240_win-lin-macintel_20080329.iso 618618 KB 04/02/2008
12:00:00 AM
File: openoffice.org_extras_20070328.iso 460420 KB 10/09/2007 12:00:00 AM

As you can see, the last time an ISO was created win/linux/mac was
04/02/2008 and considerable changes have been made to the 2.x versions
since then. Than in itself wouldn't be too bad if OOo provided a method
for incremental updates between versions, but unfortunately you'd have
to download the entire 2.4.1/x or 3.0 again anyway to be current. Note:
I'm downloading now just to see what is in the ISO.

Perhaps the way to go is to do a Portable Apps
(http://portableapps.com/apps/office/openoffice_portable) CD instead.
They even have OOo3.0Beta2:
http://portableapps.com/apps/office/openoffice_portable/test

Or hand out prebuilt OOo logo'ed thumbdrives instead. Students would
take those immediately as they know that they can overwrite them with
whatever they want. But at least they'd have the most recent version on
the drive to use rather than a 6 month old CD. Unless of course you want
to spend $8.69 at the OOo lulu store for the same 6 month old CD:
http://www.lulu.com/ooo

Obviously the OOo marketing folks that have their gala meetings in
Beijing and Paris prepare CD's etc for handouts. If they can do that,
then I suspect that they can assist the education project and/or someone
like JJJ with his small request. (JJJ I'd send marketing an email and
ask - certainly can't hurt).




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[John Jason Jordan-3]

On Wed, 08 Oct 2008 11:59:49 -0700
NoOp <glgxg@...> dijo:

> Lightscribe CD burners are within the price range of many these days (I
> don't have one... I'm poor :-). Not as fast as commercial burners, but
> with some actual "official" cd artwork to burn to the lightscribe CD's
> it eliminates the need to hand stick CD labels (I do that & it's not
> much fun).

Actually, my desktop computer has dual DVD drives that are both
Lighscribe enabled. I can heartily disrecommend them. First, all they
will do is gray - no colors. Second, they are slower than the second
coming - about ten minutes to place the image on the media. Third, you
have to buy special Lightscribe media, which costs twice as much as
regular media. And fourth, the software supports only a couple of image
formats. And finally, getting the software to run on 64-bit OSs is not
trivial.

> However, in addition to the artwork, you also need a proper & up-to-date
> OOo ISO to burn to the CD. Unfortunately, these don't get updated very
> often... note that the latest is:
> <snip>
> As you can see, the last time an ISO was created win/linux/mac was
> 04/02/2008 and considerable changes have been made to the 2.x versions
> since then. Than in itself wouldn't be too bad if OOo provided a method
> for incremental updates between versions, but unfortunately you'd have
> to download the entire 2.4.1/x or 3.0 again anyway to be current. Note:
> I'm downloading now just to see what is in the ISO.
>
> Perhaps the way to go is to do a Portable Apps
> (http://portableapps.com/apps/office/openoffice_portable) CD instead.
> They even have OOo3.0Beta2:
> http://portableapps.com/apps/office/openoffice_portable/test
>
> Or hand out prebuilt OOo logo'ed thumbdrives instead. Students would
> take those immediately as they know that they can overwrite them with
> whatever they want. But at least they'd have the most recent version on
> the drive to use rather than a 6 month old CD. Unless of course you want
> to spend $8.69 at the OOo lulu store for the same 6 month old CD:
> http://www.lulu.com/ooo

Portable drives would also need to be painted with the OOo logo and
artwork, plus they are kind of expensive.

More importantly, I need to overcome the fear factor. I just came home
a few minutes ago from the university where I had been invited to speak
to a phonetics class about how to use the international phonetic
alphabet on their computers. I assure you that the level of computer
illiteracy among university students is appalling. Of the 24 people in
the class one was using Linux, four had Macs, and the rest XP. Not ONE
of them knew how to install a font. Half of them couldn't figure out
how to download a font. And only a couple of them knew how to
uncompress a zip file. At least half the class had never installed any
software on their computers - the computer came with the OS and an
office suite, and that is all they have ever used. And I am including
the professor in my comments.

Once I handed an Ubuntu live CD to a graduate student and explained how
it worked. She replied "I can't install any more programs on my
computer because my husband used up all the memory." I am not making
this up.

Now, the problem is that we humans fear that which we do not know or
understand. That is human nature and there is no changing it. I have
handed homemade CDs with OOo/Windows on it to students and they quickly
thrust it back at me. They have heard so much about viruses and other
malware that they don't even want to touch it, as though they could
transmit a virus to their computer just by hand contact. That is why I
think I would do much better with professional commercial quality CDs.

I would also make foldout CD sleeves with OOo artwork and instructions.
I do have access to printing equipment and I can produce the sleeves
myself, although time is occasionally at a premium. What I don't have
is access to CD printers, but I suspect that somewhere in the OOo
organization there exists a high speed CD printer. I would be willing
to pay whatever the CDs cost OOo.

> Obviously the OOo marketing folks that have their gala meetings in
> Beijing and Paris prepare CD's etc for handouts. If they can do that,
> then I suspect that they can assist the education project and/or someone
> like JJJ with his small request. (JJJ I'd send marketing an email and
> ask - certainly can't hurt).

That is a good idea. I'll do so as soon as I figure out their e-mail
address.
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[Clayton-24]

>> Obviously the OOo marketing folks that have their gala meetings in
>> Beijing and Paris prepare CD's etc for handouts. If they can do that,
>> then I suspect that they can assist the education project and/or someone
>> like JJJ with his small request. (JJJ I'd send marketing an email and
>> ask - certainly can't hurt).
>
> That is a good idea. I'll do so as soon as I figure out their e-mail
> address.

The first place to look is the Marketing project at
http://marketing.openoffice.org/  The community there has a mailing
list... might be worth asking them there.


C.


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[NoOp-4]

On 10/08/2008 11:59 AM, NoOp wrote:
[snip]

> http://distribution.openoffice.org/mirrors/index.html#extmirrors
>  ftp://openoffice.cs.utah.edu/pub/openoffice/extended/iso/en
> Up to higher level directory
> File: md5sums 1 KB 04/03/2008 12:00:00 AM
> File: ooo_240_sol_20080329.iso 496036 KB 03/30/2008 12:00:00 AM
> File: ooo_240_win-lin-macintel_20080329.iso 618618 KB 04/02/2008
> 12:00:00 AM
> File: openoffice.org_extras_20070328.iso 460420 KB 10/09/2007 12:00:00 AM
>
> As you can see, the last time an ISO was created win/linux/mac was
> 04/02/2008 and considerable changes have been made to the 2.x versions
> since then. Than in itself wouldn't be too bad if OOo provided a method
> for incremental updates between versions, but unfortunately you'd have
> to download the entire 2.4.1/x or 3.0 again anyway to be current. Note:
> I'm downloading now just to see what is in the ISO.
>

I finally downloaded the ISO, and sure enough all of the files are
2.4.0. So it would be a waste of time to download and burn that ISO to CD's.


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