John Dragoon’s Blog

It’s been a little over a year since our launch of SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 and it’s an understatement to say that a lot has happened. In fact we’ve had over 26 million page views of www.novell.com/linux and over 1.8 million downloads of SLE 10 in the last year alone. When we launched SLE 10 we proudly proclaimed “Your Linux is Ready” and properly acknowledged our partnership with the community in creating a desktop to data center platform that was enterprise ready.

As part of our initial promotion for SLE 10 we used “actors” to portray the open source community in both our print and online video ads. The ads were very well received but we did receive some comments about why not use real community advocates to talk about Linux. Well we are now.

Yesterday, July 30, we launched a new Linux microsite “Your Linux is Ready” that provides a first hand view into four exciting dimensions of Linux growth, opportunity and differentiation including discussions on Linux innovation and leadership in desktop, server, virtualization, and security. Not only does the microsite offer exciting content in a Web 2.0 format through interesting videos and blogs but more importantly does so through four well known and respected open source community participants (who also happen to be Novell employees).

Nat Friedman, Gerald Pfeifer, Kurt Garloff and Crispin Cowan are passionate leaders and contributors in the open source community and through their voices and experiences they share their knowledge on the areas described above. The site also offers that latest news and events, podcasts, blogs and cool solutions. In particular I’ll call your attention to a white paper available on the site called “The Future of Linux”. Yes it’s a bold title and we’ve by no means a monopoly on the vision of where Linux is headed but as passionate participant in the movement we thought we’d share our views.

Additionally, for those seeking to migrate Unix workloads to a low cost and high performing Linux platform we’ve launched a second site specific to Unix to Linux migrations.

Lastly, we’ll be talking and demonstrating first hand the future of Linux in San Francisco next week at LinuxWorld San Francisco. My colleague Jeff Jaffe provides a preview on his blog. Stop by if your in town, we’d love to see you.

And let me know what you think of the new microsites.

John

There are a number of books and articles on “the conversation”, a concept not novel to markets or their creation (ask Marco Polo how he blazed a path through Eastern Europe and Asia) but one well advanced and updated by the 2000 release of “The cluetrain manifesto”. More recently, 100 authors and web 2.0 aficionados came together to virtually create the “Age of Conversation”.

The common thread in all of this conversation about conversation is simple. If you are not participating actively in the dialog with your customers, prospects and markets, your competition is and your being left behind. Fair enough.

But it takes two (at least) to have a conversation. I’ve long past moved on from interpreting comments on my blog as personal assaults and look for the opportunity in all feedback – good, bad and indifferent. After my last blog – which I confessed was overdue, I received the following post from “Ned Kelli”.

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Name: Ned Kelli | E-mail: nkelli@home.com Date: July 17, 2007

Nice – it takes Novell’s Marketing Officer three months to post, and when he does, it’s about nothing.

What exactly do you do for Novell?

What exactly have you DONE for Novell?
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It’s understandable that Ned was left wanting on the content of the last blog. Ned’s fascination with my job description and performance plan is an opportunity for conversation. So I tried. I thanked Ned for taking the time to post, told him he asked reasonable questions and responded accordingly. Problem is that while my side of the conversation was open and transparent, Ned hid behind an anonymous email. I responded to Ned personally to open a dialog and answer the questions he posed. Not that I felt a need to defend myself but because Ned’s questions are ones we should all be asking ourselves.

What do you do and does it matter.

When my email came back to me because Ned’s was invalid I regretted the missed opportunity to connect with Ned.

I get a lot of opinions about how to react to comments on the blog. If the comments are given in the same transparent, open and direct way I try to communicate, I say let the conversation begin.

To Ned I say, if you are ever at one of our events or at Brainshare, please come up and introduce yourself. If you have some ideas for marketing initiatives we should consider, let me know.

John

Inertia is a funny thing. That said, I’m sure not even Sir Isaac Newton himself thought that it would take an eternal 80 days to create my next blog post. Not that the world was waiting for my latest epiphany mind you. I’m delinquent but not delusional.

Turns out those folks at Technorati who track all things blogs are right about the sustainability of keeping a blog going. Easy to create, harder to maintain. It’s why I’m so impressed by the folks who stay at it and post away. Some of them are good. Very very good and I’m learning a lot by reading their musings. There are a lot of good and diverse marketing blogs, many by marketing professionals on the advisory service side.

Last week Peter Kim of Forrester Research wrote about both the advisory side and client side of marketing blogs. While I was honored and surprised to be on his nascent list of most popular client side blogs by marketing professionals (he himself admits that there are more marketing consultants and vendors writing than commercial marketers) , it was a stark reminder to me that I’ve been dormant for a while. His key message was what matters most is being passionate and creating a dialog. A great reminder indeed. Going forward, I’ll continue to view this blog as an opportunity to communicate what’s going on at Novell, our industry and the profession of marketing. As always, I’ll post all feedback that’s not anonymous and not personal.

So….Sir Isaac….I’m about to get in motion again. There’s certainly more than enough material.

Thank you Peter for the catalyst we all need from time to time.

John