Outreach is critical and I see 3 components of it.

1) The newsletter is great if it is focused on, as someone else
mentioned, success stories, case studies and unique firebird
advantages. For example I once used Firebird as an embedded database
in a scanning product. In another scenario I use it in a web-based
software as a service infrastructure. Stories that show the depth and
breadth of what makes Firebird truly unique.

2) Each story should be also posted to a blog or wiki individually

Most importantly

3) We need to ask the community to aggressively get each of these
stories posted up on the major social news sites. This is where people
get traffic and interest now. News has become 'Push', not many bother
to pull new sources of information until its been pushed at them at
least once.

Let me give a concrete example, how did I find Firebird? During the
Mozilla controversy on slashdot. It intrigued me, I looked deeper and
I am a committed Firebird user now. I had to be pushed before I
pulled.

Finally, its really hard to get started with Firebird in a non-windows
environment sometimes. We need some more comprehensive tutorials and
every aspect of the various guides needs concrete examples. Even if
its 'standard SQL' we should be overly verbose and then get this
content indexed. Tutorials on things like:

Using Firebird with Propel / Hibernate / Cayenne
Using Firebird as a JDBC/JNDI datasource
Using Firebird with ModPerl
Firebird and PHP
Firebird vs Mysql
Migrating from Mysql/Postgres/Oracle To Firebird
High Performance Firebird Development
Stored Procedures in Firebird
Triggers
Embedded Firebird with Java

To most people on this list these are simple topics but to the average
developer who gets their entire information feed via Google Searches
these are common questions and they are not on the mailing list to
ask. Right now mysql wins almost all of those searches.

I am willing to help out with newsletter content (case studies etc),
wiki development, tutorials and the like.

Sorry such a long message,
John-

On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 1:49 AM, Martijn Tonies <m.tonies@...> wrote:
> Hello Douglas,
>
>>>> Great Idea!
>>>> I like how firebirdnews.org centralizes the news. But having a
>>>> newsletter in paper-format, reviewed and edited by humans, and
>>>> directly related to the Firebird project is just great.
>>>
>>> I'm not sure what you mean by paper-format?
>>
>> PDF or HTML formatted for printer. Not just a recollection of blog
>> posts and texts.
>
> Agreed.
>
>> I guess I meant "professionally looking marketing material".
>
> Agreed, which is why we cannot just "turn on a newsletter" in some
> of the current "things" that exist. Or at least, I like to think so ;-)
>
>>>> Having the sign-up process integrated with the installer (instead of
>>>> just the after-install page) would probably "convert" more.
>>>>
>>>> I'm all for it. Where do I sign?
>>> Subscribe or help? :-)
>>
>> Both. :)
>> I can contribute content (and ads?) from time to time. Not sure how
>> else I can help.
>
> We'll see ;-)
>
> With regards,
>
> Martijn Tonies
> Upscene Productions
> http://www.upscene.com
>
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