[ Warning: Long post ]

I'm just replying to this message because it has "Firebird" and
"Marketing" words on it. :-)

Well, jokes apart, here is a resume story of what we have beeing doing:

<begin Newbie Info about Marketing Firebird>

- Some of us took the responsability to "spread the word", using the
available channels that we know and we can access.
For example, each time there is a new version, some of us peak up the
news, re-arranje it to fix on "the target", and take care to follow up.
This have been working well. We do it locally (for example I'm doing
this in Portugal, and CFLP and Firebase are doing this in Brazil, others
are doing the same in other countries), so you will find Firebird info
in various places around the world. If you feel you can do this in your
own country, you're welcome to do it. :-)

- We are trying (hard) to be in Linux Dists. Mandrake is the one that we
have more chances to be, but work is beeing doing on other distros as
well. It's not simple to be on the distros. I think that our biggest
problem is to be in the first, and the others will be simpler (just a
personnal opinion). Some FF members already spend a lot of time with
this, and we all hope that this efforts will be valuable. Do you have
direct contact with any Linux Distros? Please help us achieve this.

- One thing that we believe that could help Marketing Firebird is doing
(and maintaining) Firebird ports of 'popular software". We believe that
people will be using Firebird (or at least know about it) because
popular software like PHP Nuke does not provide support to Firebird
"out-of-the-box".
Some people are already doing some work on this area: Lester Caine is
one of them, and he can give more details (Lester, are you there?)

- We have an yearly conference (that has beeing performed in Fulda,
Germany), and other events, such as the Firebird Developers Day that was
performed in Brazil this year (organized by Firebase and other
identities); If you are related to events organizations, and you would
like to have a Firebird representative in your event, please contact the
Firebird Foundation: I'm sure one of us will be near by and glad to be
there.

Other "marketing" operations are done in the same way.

Marketing is (some how) discussed in Firebird Foundation, but you don't
need to be a FF member to do your own Firebird marketing activity.
[ And if you don't are a FF member, please consider to be: that's the
way to go if you want to help the project. ]

<end Newbie Info about Marketing Firebird>

Now...

Answering Giulio:
every time you look in a web site and Firebird is not mentioned, and you
think it should be, feel free to try by yourself to put Firebird's name
on it. :-)

Answering Carlos Sanchez:
Well, honestly we don't have a way to tell you were *directly* you can
help. You're a volunteer, pick up something that you can do, FF will
give you all the support we can. That's the way it works. From times to
times, some of us need help on a task, and this will normally be
announced in this General List.

Well, thinking twice there is something you can do: you can buy a nice
T-Shirt from IBPhoenix Shop (Paul, help me on this - where are the
t-shirts and the hats that Lester has been working on? I can not see
them on IBPhoenix Shop). And you know that profits from this are
reverted to the Foundation.
This works in a small scale. I have a lot of Firebird t-shirts, some
from Fulda, some from CFLP. People ask me about "what's Firebird', and I
have the oportunnity to speak about it for a while. :-)

Answering Jakub:
One think that could help marketing Firebird are real stories. Why don't
you spend a few time writing down why your company switch from access to
Firebird? I'm really sure that Firebird Project, IBPhoenix, CFLP,
Interbase World, and other Firebird-related sites all over the world
will be glad to publish your story.

Asnwering Set:
You are loosing your attention! You never did that when you were a
single man! ;-))
The web site was a problem that we had, and FF decide to spend a closer
attention to it. We can see now a very good progress - the development
news are updated almost in "real time", the web site is looking good
with different browsers, you can get Foundation info directly. I would
like to forget about the out-of-date Novice's Guide, and put a closer
attention on Documentation For Starters: "Firebird Getting Started
Guide" was translated in many languages, and - best of all - this job
was done using our own Documentation System.

Artur
( Firebird Marketing Discussions Addict )