2025-06-09 - Marketing Team Minutes

[djacu]

Marketing Team meeting 2025-06-09

Attendance

• Sync
  • @djacu
  • @idabzo
  • @avocadoom
• Async

Previous Tasks

• @avocadoom maintain website per usual
• @idabzo work on copy for branding guide
• @djacu work on color palette

Agenda

• Branding
• Website
• Team Name
• Rainbow logo

Minutes

• Branding
  • @djacu I shared the current thoughts of the color palette with the people in the branding discussion.
  • I contacted @sigmasquadron about updating the matrix logos. They mentioned @doggobit has been working on a color palette for the wiki.
  • I contacted @doggobit to coordinate our efforts for a color palette.
• Website
  • @avocadoom I’ll tinker with the color palette @djacu has provided and see if it fits.
• Team Name
  • @idabzo @garbas created the Marketing Team years ago and most people who have been in the community a while know what the team is about.
  • @djacu to address @fricklerhandwerk’s concerns, do people generally perceive the marketing team as a group trying to sell them something?
  • Generally we all agree that the larger issue is with how we market ourselves and what the team does. So we should definitely improve that.
• Rainbow logo
  • @idabzo Someone in the marketing matrix channel asked if we could make a blog post about the rainbow logo.

    I just noticed that the NixOS logo has been updated, in recognition of Pride Month. I understand that this change is meant to reflect and signal that the Nix community is inclusive and supportive of diversity. Don’t you think it might be a good idea to accompany this visual change with a short blog post (or official statement) ?

    Such a post could briefly explain the reason for the logo update, reaffirm the inclusive values of the Nix community, and outline the stance the project takes on diversity and belonging in open source.

    WDYT?

  • @avocadoom Someone had asked about it on the nixos-homepage repository.
    Is NixOS taking a stance on political issues? · Issue #1775 · NixOS/nixos-homepage · GitHub
  • @djacu I thought it would be cool but I didn’t want to sign anyone up for more work. There was also this string of comments.
    Draft: Add "Seasonal Themes" and "Custom Banners" by thilobillerbeck · Pull Request #1719 · NixOS/nixos-homepage · GitHub
  • @idabzo I’ll work on a post.

Tasks

• @avocadoom will reach out to @fricklerhandwerk and figure out what the next steps are for the website re-design.
• @avocadoom will test the proposed color palette on the website.
• @idabzo will work on a rainbow logo blog post.
• @idabzo will contact @ryantrinkle about funding of the team.
• @djacu integrating @idabzo’s copy into the branding guide.
• @djacu will look at survey 2025.

Backlog

• @djacu will work on the banner post

repo link

[fricklerhandwerk]

@djacu

do people generally perceive the marketing team as a group trying to sell them something?

I can’t tell if generally, but my subjective impression (for which I can’t provide solid evidence) is that there’s a notable portion of the contributor community that is not particularly fond of the buzzword-y side of what’s associated with the term marketing (I won’t lie, myself included). Which is why I’d argue it would be worth discussing whether to align the name with possibly more desirable associations. And there’s some indication we may have challenges with coordinating communication at scale, which is why I proposed to use outreach as a theme the team has been dealing with already: building bridges between the inside with the outside of the Nix crowd.

[djacu]

Yeah we’ve all been talking about it and we discussed it again in today’s meeting. Just feels we don’t collectively have strong positive feelings about any of the new names we talked about.

• Marketing Team is buzzword-y but it has historical precedent and hopefully most legacy contributors know what we do, and if not, that is a problem we need to fix. And it’s a common catch-all for what teams like ours do.
• Outreach Team is a good because it captures a big portion of the effort we are aiming for which is community communications/outreach but it doesn’t capture everything we do. (Is that a problem? IDK).
• We briefly though out the idea of Communications Team. Similar in scope to the Outreach Team but maybe buzzword-y like Marketing?
• ECHO Team… why didn’t we like this name?

[llakala]

Between Marketing, Outreach, and Communications, my favorite is Communications. Outreach feels buzzwordy to me too, just in a different way than Marketing.

[djacu]

Forgot to include this:
ECHO stands for Engagement, Communications, Human Outreach

[truh]

@djacu

do people generally perceive the marketing team as a group trying to sell them something?

I don’t perceive it as such, but it’s heavily implied by the name.

Maybe “Publicity”, but yeah any fitting term will come with some kind of connotation.