Those familiar with Superhero movies and comics will know the world is divided into two camps: Marvel and DC. The Marvel superheroes such as Iron man and Captain America, and the DC ones such as my own favourite, Batman.
I skipped mum, mum, mum, or dad, dad, dad and went straight for Batman as my first words. And have I ever been allowed to live it down?
DC is also what we call the person representing a department on the board of Open Source Matters, (OSM). They coordinate between the board of OSM and the department and help to make the departments run effectively.
The Past Heroes
In the past, some of the Department coordinators have taken on the other meaning of DC and been seen as superheroes, coordinating the departments as well as running the department, organising events and covering for others, working a full week for the benefit of Joomla as well as then putting in a full week at work.
Those long in the organisation can all think of some names that come to mind where the individual went above and beyond what is required, putting in most of the hours god sends in order to get the department's work done.
Age of the Mortals
Unfortunately for the marketing department, I'm no superhero. I lack several superhero skills that the department requires. I'm not particularly good at graphics. I could paint and draw a bit but only in the pre digital era. More modern artistic skills are an essential for many in the marketing area.
I don’t have a marketing background. It's only late in my career that I have appreciated how a good PR company or marketing team can really turn a product or event around and make a success out of what would have been a failure. And to cap it all my creative talents are somewhat underdeveloped. I can, so I am told, create a mess but that's as far as creating features in my inventory of talents.
What I do have is connections in different departments and a knowledge of what needs to be done from my days of running the Joomla London user Group (JUGL) and the self knowledge that I cannot possibly pull this off myself. It needs a team.
I am living proof that anyone can do it badly, but Joomla needs to shine so we need a team of talented individuals to step forward to take on that work, the work we all want to see done to bring Joomla to the attention of the world.
In the period running up to the release of Joomla 4 I did immerse myself in the day-to-day running of the department with the help of those in the department to get an understanding of what was required. It was a good learning process and has given me a broad grounding in what is needed to run the department on a day to day level. But we also need to excel and produce marketing campaigns. We need individuals to meet online and bounce ideas about, coming up with campaigns, slogans and imagery. This takes a group of people, people who gell, not just one telling the others what to do. So, basically: the marketing department needs you.
Role play
What can you do within the marketing department? I have assessed the jobs and the time involved to give a transparent list of what is required and the roles to be filled.
Releases:
With each release, about once every six weeks, we need people to get the document ready for the release, liaise with the release leads and ascertain the specifics for that release.
That takes a few hours per release.
We need the graphics updated for the release. It takes me ages, but it should take a few minutes for a graphic designer to tackle it.
Marketing liaison
Joomla needs someone who will coordinate with the marketing liaison team to make sure they are aware of the document they will translate and post and the updated graphics assigned to the group.
This job takes a few hours for every release.
Newsletter
The newsletter for the release needs preparing, testing and sending. Once acquainted with the process, it’s an hour of work to go through it. It's also good to have a second pair of eyes to proofread.
Developers version
As well as the major releases, there are the releases on the developers portal for the next version of Joomla, less often, but both can clash timewise, so to have a separate group of people working on that would be helpful.
AdWords
We need a group to help with AdWords and a marketing campaign to push the message of our excellent product to a broader audience. Not something I have done since taking on the DC role but vital if we are to further our course and do Joomla justice.
PR and External Articles
Writers who know CMS platforms and can write insightful, media-centric articles to help those pushing PR emails and marketing campaigns.
Graphic designers, Proofreaders, Marketeers
The project could do with a core of designers to help the ones doing it now, so there is a team allowing all to take time when away, on holiday and to just bounce ideas off.
I want this to be fun and rewarding. To open the opportunity to many so that the workload for each becomes light.
We could do with volunteers to help with logos, template designs and so much more.
Let’s create a powerhouse!
With your help, the marketing team could become a powerhouse to drive the outreach of Joomla, so that rather than going from job to job just getting it done in time we can plan, have people who can look forward and prepare campaigns: New year, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, Joomla Days, Joomla Birthday, teach your cat to code day. I made the last one up but you get the idea.
How can you join
Joining is the simple part. You can email me directly,
It would be super helpful if you were to list your skills and talents so I can get a feel of where you might fit into the marketing team.
A rough idea of time commitment and also your timezone would help as we are a truly global outfit and knowing when to get a group together does involve some logistics.
I will then invite you to Glip (the online team chat service we use) and add you to the team with a quick introduction to help the rest get up to speed.
If you are not on the volunteer portal yet, please do sign up and create a volunteer profile. I can then add you to the team in the portal and, a nice extra, you will be given your voting rights for future department elections. It’s also a great opportunity to introduce yourself to fellow Joomler users.
If you don't feel you can contribute on a regular basis we still have openings for those with packets of time. You can sign up to this docs page: https://docs.joomla.org/Help4Joomla details of which are explained in this recent magazine article Help4Joomla needs you!
I look in on it every few weeks and will contact anyone who puts their name there and see if we can fit your time and talents to a useful task to help progress Joomla.
As to what we need, I have touched on the marketing side, graphics, writing, proofreading, but we also need leadership, organisation, coordination and people who will just get stuff done.
We have a core team forming but we need more. If you have any skills to help marketing and some time to be active in the marketing team then don't delay, message me and let's turn ideas into reality and unleash the superpowers of our great CMS Joomla on the world.
In an age of heroes Joomla needs Marketeers to save the day.
Joomlers Assemble!
