Quick summary of fast ideas

[Louis Suárez-Potts <Louis.Suarez-Potts@oracle.com>]

We had a brief—merely two hour—meeting Tuesday 16 November, more or less as scheduled. We didn't put words to page, as we had wanted, but we did come up with some things that we think ought to be done. Don will, I hope, include those elements in his minutes. He also asked me to put to this list a précis of my wants, and to avoid prolixity :-)

* We need to have a broad message that can be nuanced per audience by the promoters.*

—The message ought to be positive: ODF increases productivity because it removes limits. So:

	— Positive Argument: The user/customer/client can take advantage of Web 2.0 options. Applications from desktop office suites to terminal content management systems to mobile devices all linked to Clouds or servers or both can present documents for concurrent collaboration or later work seamlessly and accurately. No vendor lock in means market choice.	

	Example to use: The video narrative of the Budapest 2010 ODF Interop 1.2 Plugfest, which showcased the variety of ODF presences as demonstrated by nine different implementations and a nearly equal number of vendors. ODF is not about productivity suites; it's about making a kind of data available for manipulation by a range of devices.

** We do not expect and do not want for the ODF Adoption TC to be the summa of ODF promotion** 
	
	— But we do believe that the ball has to start rolling. The ODF promoters work independently—not bad, but it means that we have no strategy, no real goals, no communication, no coherent message. 


* We need to contact the promoters and work with them for our message and its distribution. 

	— And we need to have a means by which the effects of this message—nuanced to the audience—are seen. Having a message without seeing its effects is almost silly.


* I suggest we set a deadline (or deadlines, in the plural) for putting out our message and its delivery strategy. The plugfests have been the most effective forums for our meetings, and so… a day in which we meet and discuss the language and actual strategy at a plugfest would be good.

Finally, we need to understand who is now an ODF promoter. There is this TC, but there are also new ones, such as—to name but one other-- the Japanese centred OpenOffce.org and OpenDocument Format Promotion Group, Japan (ODPG), which NTT Comware has helped initiate and which includes many other regional companies.

best
Louis