By Sandra Decoux on 2018-08-31 15:35 in Marketing & Communication

At the end of my 1st term, I would like to share a brief assessment of my 20 months contributing in the department teams, both as a member of teams and as DC since October 2017.

As a side note, one year ago, I faced the most destructive and violent hurricane the Atlantic has ever had. My island and my life have been destroyed. So for the last year, I have had to manage - all at the same time - the consequences of the hurricane, trying to save my company, and helping to get a functional department up and running. I’m not someone who gives up easily, and even if it could of course have been better, and even if there’s still a lot to do, the balance is not bad.

Social Media Team

At the end of 2016, I was asked to join the Social Media Team to help improve the communication on the Joomla Channels. At that time, the Social Media Team was mostly sharing only Joomla news titles. We decided to widen the range of communications by promoting all our official properties, giving more exposure to Joomla Events and improving the copywriting of the posts.

We onboarded new members in the team, Hans Van Der Meer and Davide Messia, who together with Alison Meeks our Team Lead, are doing a great job. Mike Veekmans and Shirat Goldstein also helped us with copywriting and graphics.

Even if there’s still a lot to do to continue improving our communications, in one year, we have already covered a lot and seen good progress. We are still looking for designers and SM copywriters to continue on our plans. I invite you to check our dedicated GitHub Repository.

We recently issued a call for volunteers on VolunteerMatch. We are currently onboarding several volunteers willing to help the Project.

Marketing Team

At the end of 2016, the Marketing Team had no active members. I wasn’t at that time an official member of the team - I was mostly in charge of translations for the landing pages. At that time, 3.7 was soon to be released, I felt that it was my duty not to give up and to step forward and take marketing on my shoulders.

Since that time, we succeeded in rebuilding a team leadership. We now have a new marketing strategy, the Marketing Team Lead, Noreen Cesareo,  is a recognized marketer, assisted by a great assistant, Hervé Boinnard, helping in making this team fully functional.

In 20 months, we published more articles than the team did during the previous period. We also released several landing pages to present the versions, improved some content of jorg, and so on.

We created a great team dedicated to Joomla 4 design, and they are achieving a fantastic work. The design of the landing page and dedicated newsletters are ready.

The material for Joomla 3.9 is nearly ready too and we will have as usual a teasing campaign, a multilingual landing page, some social media ads and (I hope) a proper press release.

I also have had help from volunteers from outside the team, like Mike Veekmans, Ashikur Rahman, Stefanie Thielmann and several members of the Production Department.

We still have a lot to achieve but we are on the right way.

As a side note, I sent a private message to the other nominee for the DC position right after the announcement of the result of the department elections - with the approval of my team leads and assistants - to invite her to join the Department and help us improve Joomla awareness. I didn’t receive any answer (yet).

Community Translation Team

We (Michael, Marc-Antoine and I) created this team nearly 2 years ago to improve the localization of our official websites, extensions and many other projects for the benefit of local communities, and to organize the work of our translators. Before that, our translators were working without an official structure.

The team now has a new Team Lead who took over following JWC 2017 - Mike Brandner who is doing a great job.

In 2 years, this team achieved a lot and is fully functional.

User & Research Strategy Team

This team is facing the same issue as most team in the Project: lack of volunteers. While doing user research is something which is important for the project, this can’t be done by only one individual. So if you’re interesting in contributing to this team, please contact Parth Lawate.

The next steps for the department

The next step is of course to apply the new marketing strategy.

• Joomla 3.9 marketing
• Paid campaigns on Social Media to promote versions and Joomla
• Professional copywriters to provide articles to publish on targeted media (as well as on our properties) to increase awareness
• Launch of J4
• Continue the work initiated to create a functional marketing team
• Property promotion on Social Media: Find designers for graphics and SM addicts to help with copywriting (check our GitHub repository)
• Assist better the Production Department
• Continue to increase internal communication between departments/teams
• Continue to provide as many translated materials as possible
• Create a new design for slide template publicly available and provide general content (one to present Joomla features and one for J4) (we are looking for designers and copywriters)
• Improve our brochure (we are looking for designers and copywriters)
• Launch a new RFP for the Joomla Shop to provide better products and prices, as well as advantages to the community
• Continue the work on “work packages” to provide clear tasks on our 2 GitHub repositories
• And many more!

Honestly speaking, I wasn’t interested in running for the Marketing & Communication DC this time, but then neither was I interested for the 1st time. I never pretended to be a marketer nor to be the right person for this role. However, someone needed to do it.

I really hope that a new Joomla Volunteer will show interest into leading the Department and continue the great work which has been initiated.
I hope, for next election cycle, we can also have candidates, and not only people being blindly nominated without even knowing if they could be interested or not. Like that, the community would be able to nominate someone according to their program/ideas, and not just on their name. I hope it can provide a more ‘sane’ process, with more involvement of the community and with several nominees for each role.