Marketing/Resources

From openSUSE

Marketing Resources

Have some reusable content that other marketing team members and openSUSE Ambassadors can use to promote openSUSE? This is the place to store it! We want your slides, marketing copy, event plans, and any other material that will help others to promote openSUSE, Linux, and open source.

Note that materials do not have to be openSUSE-specific -- so if you've created some good materials on promoting Linux in general, or presentations on using things like OpenOffice.org, they may be of enormous help to folks promoting openSUSE.

Presentations

Please upload presentations or point to your presentations here.

openSUSE 11.2

• [German presentation] by Andreas Jaeger

• [Spanish presentation on SUSE Studio (10º Encuentro Linux, Chile)] by Ricardo Varas Santana

Announcement Templates

For localization purposes, we have several templates for announcements.

openSUSE-Project Meeting Template

openSUSE Release Announcement Template

Tips on Presenting and Creating Presentations

New to doing presentations? Don't worry -- it's a piece of cake! Yes, speaking to an audience can seem scary, but it's really no big deal. The audience is not there to judge you, they're there to learn. They want to hear what you have to say, so if you follow a few guidelines, you'll do a great job. Here are a few tips on presenting and speaking to an audience: Whether it's 10 people, 100 people, or 100,000 people these rules apply. And if you can get in front of 100,000 people to talk about openSUSE we want to hear about it!

• Keep your slides simple and designed to focus the audience's attention on you, not the slides.
• Make eye contact with everyone in the room.
• Speak slowly, and be confident!
• Make your presentation a story: Think of your talk not as an information dump, but a story you're telling the audience.
• Be prepared! No one likes a speaker who fumbles with their notes, or doesn't really know the material at hand. You should know your topic well before you get up in front of an audience.
• Practice: Walk through your presentation a few times before you give it. In real time. Practice your timing, your jokes (have jokes!) and be able to give your presentation without reading your slides instead of focusing on the audience.
• Be confident: You're the expert, and the audience will appreciate what you have to say. Come in prepared and be confident!
• Be yourself: This is a very friendly crowd. Just be yourself, and your presentation will be great.

Creating Slides

Rule number one: The audience came to see you and not your slides. Let's repeat that: The audience is not there for your slides, they're there for the material that you present and to see you.

This doesn't mean they're more interested in you, personally, than the topic. It means that they came to see a person speak and help them understand your topic better.

What they don't want is to watch you read slides at them. Look at the audience, not your slides, and don't make the slides a phone book!

Slides should be:

• Simple
• A supplement to your talk: Not the focus of the talk
• Brief: In most cases, only a few words will suffice
• Clear and easy to read

A few online resources that might help when designing your slides:

18 Tips for Killer Presentations

Presentation Zen

Sample presentation slides

SlideShare SlideShare has lots of presentations of all kinds. It's sort of a Flickr for presentations. The presentations are of varying quality, and many are better examples of what not to do than what to do. But you may get some good ideas from the site.

Presentation Templates

Presentation templates can be found here.

Events

Putting on an event is a lot more work than giving a presentation -- but how else do you get enough people together to do a presentation?

Launch Party HOWTO

How do you run a launch party? In part, it depends on you. Who do you want to invite? How big do you want to go? Some launch parties are very casual affairs, while others might include dozens of attendees and include presentations or an install-fest. There's no wrong way to have a launch party, whether you invite 100 co-workers or just a couple of friends.

We won't try to cover all the bases here, but focus on the "average" Launch Party with less than 50 attendees.

• The first step is finding a location. If you're employed and your employer has a conference area or similar, ask if you can use the office facilities for your launch party. If you're a student (or faculty) see about using school facilities for the launch party. See if the local library might like to host an event.
• Promote it! Make sure everyone you want to attend has heard about it as far in advance as possible. Once you pick a location, start promoting it by
  • Blogging about it.
  • Make the event not just a "Launch Party", tell people in detail what they can expect (install fest, presentations, meet certain people, live demonstration of software etc.). The better we can create attention for the event the more people will show up.
  • Inform your local newspaper about the event. This is a perfect route to attract people new to Linux or openSUSE
  • Creating and posting flyers and posters. ( If you need help with creating talk to gnokii )
  • Use EventBrite or a similar service to allow signups (for larger events).
  • Try to find a sponsor. Your employee or a local company may be willing to spend a few hundred $/€ so you can even have some drinks and food.
  • Create a Facebook page and send invites.
  • Write a post for openSUSE News (for larger events).
  • Send out email invites to the local Linux User Groups and other possible interested people (schools, universities, IT departments of companies, IT departments of local authorities)
• You get the idea: Get the word out!
• Burn some media. Since launch parties should be held pretty close to the release, it's not really possible for us to send DVDs to all the launch parties.