RE: OpenOffice.org (was Re: Ooo blog) - Take care of the users!

["Dennis E. Hamilton" <de...@acm.org>]

I am going to maintain my neutrality, but I think there is one thing to keep in mind.

Every time a URL changes, you lose people.  Every time you break a (deep) link that someone bookmarked, you risk losing someone.  Every time a way that worked before in finding service or support or software or anything else changes, you lose people.  You also increase the prospect for interlopers to manager their SEO and advertising in a manner that interferes with people finding what they were really looking for.  How many faux services are already offering OpenOffice.org downloads?  I'm afraid to look.

So, disruption disrupts.  It's in the nature of disruption that you don't know how life will be on the other side.

This comes down to two questions, it seems to me:

 1. How do we arrange for people to be able to still use what they already know to access and use OpenOffice.org resources?

 2. What do we do to have this still provide what they are expecting to find (which may be the more difficult question)?

This is about how people are served and about how we demonstrate care for that.

I would suggest that no matter what we call things, an over-riding concern is how we provide continuity with all [*.]openoffice.org web locations and how we serve the community that relies on them as well as we are able.  Where we are not able to provide what is already expected, we demonstrate our care for those who arrive there and assist them as well as we can manage.

If we don't accomplish that, protecting the brand becomes irrelevant.  No matter what, people ultimately respond to what we do, not what we say, not what we claim.  Maintaining goodwill requires good deeds.  Brands are perishable.  Customer loyalty has to be earned every day.

 - Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: Dennis E. Hamilton [mailto:dennis.hamilton@acm.org] 
Sent: Monday, July 11, 2011 17:57
To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org
Subject: RE: OpenOffice.org (was Re: Ooo blog)

+1 

That works for me, conceptually.  I don't have any history with OpenOffice.org, the project, however, so I intend to stay neutral on how this gets thrashed out.

 - Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: Carl Marcum [mailto:cmarcum@apache.org] 
Sent: Monday, July 11, 2011 16:54
To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org
Subject: Re: OpenOffice.org (was Re: Ooo blog)

It seems to me that a lot of the problem arises in keeping the 
development project and the product brand names exactly the same.

If there are indeed going to to be 2 websites, OpenOffice.org which is 
where end users go to get the product, help, etc. and the 
<tbd>.apache.org where the development project resides.

I understand the need to maintain the product brand.

+1 to keep OpenOffice.org the product (at least near term).

I think the Apache brand strenthens the project development and that's 
one reason I'm here.

+1 for Apache OpenOffice the project.

Looking at the people listing, it's possible not all members are here 
because of OpenOffice.org the product, but common development of the 
code base.

Best regards,
Carl

Re: OpenOffice.org (was Re: Ooo blog) - Take care of the users!

[Rob Weir <ap...@robweir.com>]

On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 12:19 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton
<de...@acm.org> wrote:
> I am going to maintain my neutrality, but I think there is one thing to keep in mind.
>
> Every time a URL changes, you lose people.  Every time you break a (deep) link that someone bookmarked, you risk losing someone.  Every time a way that worked before in finding service or support or software or anything else changes, you lose people.  You also increase the prospect for interlopers to manager their SEO and advertising in a manner that interferes with people finding what they were really looking for.  How many faux services are already offering OpenOffice.org downloads?  I'm afraid to look.
>
> So, disruption disrupts.  It's in the nature of disruption that you don't know how life will be on the other side.
>

The beauty of Apache mod_rewrite is we can rename the project to
"Apache Guano" if we want and still not disrupt users.  Even if we
don't rename the project at all, and stick with "OpenOffice.org",
we're still going to need to define a ton of redirects, just because
of infrastructure changes.

So I've always been assuming the general goal of not disrupting
incoming links, even reasonable deep links.  But mod_rewrite gives a
level of indirection (no pun intended) that enables flexibility with
how we ultimately deploy the assets.  Things can be moved around and
renamed, if it makes more sense for us, and we can avoid disrupting
incoming links.

> This comes down to two questions, it seems to me:
>
>  1. How do we arrange for people to be able to still use what they already know to access and use OpenOffice.org resources?
>
>  2. What do we do to have this still provide what they are expecting to find (which may be the more difficult question)?
>
> This is about how people are served and about how we demonstrate care for that.
>
> I would suggest that no matter what we call things, an over-riding concern is how we provide continuity with all [*.]openoffice.org web locations and how we serve the community that relies on them as well as we are able.  Where we are not able to provide what is already expected, we demonstrate our care for those who arrive there and assist them as well as we can manage.
>
> If we don't accomplish that, protecting the brand becomes irrelevant.  No matter what, people ultimately respond to what we do, not what we say, not what we claim.  Maintaining goodwill requires good deeds.  Brands are perishable.  Customer loyalty has to be earned every day.
>
>  - Dennis
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dennis E. Hamilton [mailto:dennis.hamilton@acm.org]
> Sent: Monday, July 11, 2011 17:57
> To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org
> Subject: RE: OpenOffice.org (was Re: Ooo blog)
>
> +1
>
> That works for me, conceptually.  I don't have any history with OpenOffice.org, the project, however, so I intend to stay neutral on how this gets thrashed out.
>
>  - Dennis
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Carl Marcum [mailto:cmarcum@apache.org]
> Sent: Monday, July 11, 2011 16:54
> To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org
> Subject: Re: OpenOffice.org (was Re: Ooo blog)
>
> It seems to me that a lot of the problem arises in keeping the
> development project and the product brand names exactly the same.
>
> If there are indeed going to to be 2 websites, OpenOffice.org which is
> where end users go to get the product, help, etc. and the
> <tbd>.apache.org where the development project resides.
>
> I understand the need to maintain the product brand.
>
> +1 to keep OpenOffice.org the product (at least near term).
>
> I think the Apache brand strenthens the project development and that's
> one reason I'm here.
>
> +1 for Apache OpenOffice the project.
>
> Looking at the people listing, it's possible not all members are here
> because of OpenOffice.org the product, but common development of the
> code base.
>
> Best regards,
> Carl
>
>