2019-02-20 DSpace Marketing Working Group, Agenda/Notes

1. Lead timeline discussion

The DSpace Steering Group is meeting directly after this meeting to consider the current DSpace 7 release timeline. Tim notes that this is behind schedule and will likely be updated later today.

• "Preview" release by early 2019 (around Feb). The "preview" release may not include all eventual DSpace 7 features, but gives the opportunity for early feedback from users / testers. One key feature of this "preview" release will be to show off an early version of Configurable Entities (see also DSpace 7 Entities Working Group).
• Beta release in first quarter of 2019 (tentative date - may change). The beta release will be feature-complete and provide an opportunity for more extensive testing / debugging / banging on the system.
• Final 7.0 release prior to OR2019 (tentative date - may change). Our goal remains to have a final release to show off at the OR2019 conference in Hamburg. This date is still tentative as it depends heavily on meeting earlier release goals.

• Coordinating marketing efforts with a changing release schedule is a Chicken-egg situation–which comes first?
• In general DSpace is losing momentum, nothing new that is useful
• A preview release asap is preferable as a solid marketing tool–entities and angular will be in preview
• Would like to promote all features planned for DSpace 7 no matter when they are ready
• Need to know DSpace 7 guaranteed major components to be included in production release
• Pre-release is a chance to communicate with the community, emphasizing the core values of DSpace
• Consensus on working on a plan independently of release schedule

Bram presented 5 goals and metrics for how to measure success.

Should strive for good alignment with what we want to achieve per audience

Goal 1: Get community members involved in the final DSpace 7 work

Goal details:

This work includes:

• development
  • Work on areas where preview release is still incomplete
  • Translate/localize in particular languages
• testing
  • APIs
    • OAI-PMH
    • SWORD
    • REST
  • Angular UI end user functionality
  • Angular UI admin functionality
  • Angular UI crawler/google scholar functionality
  • Accessibility for users with specific limitations
• writing documentation
• promotion/marketing
  • if we find that our own time/resources in this group is too limited, we may need to bring in more muscle

Timeline: preview release is an excellent moment to get these people on board, because it has the potential to spark new enthusiasm

Metric: Keep track/count incoming contributions of people who haven't contributed to DSpace 7 before.

Goal 2: Identify and promote early adopting institutions

Find institutions that are ideally seriously aiming for DSpace 7 PROD releases in 2019, ensure we have good contacts with them, that they are happy and excited that their story is used for DSpace 7 promotional purposes.

Timeline: preview release The institutions that I'm talking too right now, see DSpace 7 as very promising, but have still seen too little to proceed in their planning and seriously committing to the DSpace 7 2019 migration right now. The preview release should contain enough impressive stuff to allow exactly this.

Also, for the timeline, it would be really GREAT if we have them, to play them out at the OR conference.

Metric: number of identified early adopting institutions, that provide permission to be used in DSpace 7 promotion.

Goal 3: Get existing DSpace installations to upgrade to 7 (early majority)

Make sure that there is enough excitement and trust in DSpace 7 for people to take on upgrades.

As a part of this, the upgrade process should be promoted as a manageable project, and give clear guidance on how it can be handled.

Timeline: 7.0 release / Open Repositories Hamburg I don't see how we can work on early majority folks PRE-PROD release.

Metrics:

• Number of institutions that have confirmed to be at least working on upgrades
• Number of DSpace 7 installations in PROD

Goal 4: Get non-DSpace users to adopt DSpace 7 / Grow DSpace installation base

Marketing targeted towards institutions that are unfamiliar with both the product, the community etc

Metric:

• Number of NEW institutions that have confirmed to be at least working on new DSpace 7 installations
• Number of new DSpace 7 installations in PROD

Goal 5: Get the Late Majority and Laggard DSpace institutions to upgrade to 7

Marketing targeted towards institutions that are unfamiliar with both the product, the community etc.

This group of people needs to be convinced with the message that everyone else is doing it (or has already done it) and that they need to hurry up to catch up.

Another message that might work here is DSpace 4 (and older) falling out of the security support in the context of the DuraSpace support policy. These older installations effectively pose a security risk.

Timeline: after synthesizing/concluding about early majority efforts?

Metric:

• Number of institutions that have confirmed to be at least working on upgrades AFTER DATE X
• Number of additional upgraded DSpace 7 installations in PROD AFTER DATE X
• Pascal Becker gathered DSpace 7 Unique Selling Points here: http://bit.ly/dspace7-usp

3.Marketing tasks timeline discussion. Can we undertake general marketing tasks independent of release timeline with the understanding that there will be a product release or pre-release highlighted at OR2019, June 10-13

• Brainstorm list of marketing ideas/tasks–2/20
• Draft content for questions we are asked–4/6
• Draft content for one-sheet–4/6
• Draft content for tri-fold–4/6
• Vendors for Marketing Handouts–3/20
• Sample costs of marketing items–3/20
• Other

Leadership Group has designated $3K to put towards DSpace marketing

An incomplete release is difficult for broad messaging

Massive #s of institutions are not upgrading

Be the first in your country to implemnt DSpace 7 campaign idea—golden seal?

on Mar 5 Pascal and Terry Brady will present a webinar,

“DSpace Docker for Repository Managers: Running Any Version of DSpace from your Desktop”

Could we present a Docker separate release??

Bram dies not agree with Pascal on Docker set up,

Susanna agrees with Docker approach

4. Next meeting focus on scheduling

OR2019 merchandising research

• Costs for t-shirts
• Other SWAG