Posted by
David E. Jones on
Jun 28, 2006; 1:07am
URL: http://ofbiz.116.s1.nabble.com/Tag-Lines-and-Summary-Text-mission-statement-for-OFBiz-tp168961.html
As part of the new identity (logo, web site, other marketing collateral) for OFBiz we need to set down some of the general principles and ideals of the project. Si mentioned this in his email a few days ago (on the 23rd) in topic #3 and this can drive a lot of the visual elements and organization of the site and other stuff. I appreciate Tim Ruppert who has been pushing some of this along (including pushing me along, thankfully) for identifying this as a to do and conversation point for this mailing list.
I guess there are 2 main parts of this to brain-storm on (meaning nearly anything goes at this stage...):
1. a tag line (short motto, whatever)
2. a project summary, perhaps even more like a mission statement
For #2 I saw some interesting guidelines for a mission statement, namely some questions to as ourselves:
1. What is the best thing the project/community does?
2. What do you want do to?
3. What would my customers value most?
4. What should we do?
In addition to those the goal should be to keep it short and to the point, much shorter than the typical "elevator pitch". This might be a good starting point for a more conversational elevator pitch, BTW.
The new logo has kind of a power button motif, and that fits pretty well with OFBiz for a tag line like "Turn On You Busines" or "Power On Your Business". Or we could cozy up to the line a little and use something like "Turn On Your Developers" because OFBiz is so great for empowering developers and increasing their productivity. Too bad we're not in the video game industry, that would go along great with a spokes-model. ;)
But seriously, something more business oriented related to power on or turn on seems pretty good. Of course, this in brain storming, so don't take my ideas too seriously!
For the mission statement my thoughts are to include something to emphasize the community oriented nature of the force behind the project; the flexible, powerful and customization orientation of the software and architecture; the business oriented functionality to make things directly applicable to your business; and so on.
There is kind of a mission statement, more of a project description though, at the top of the ofbiz.org home page in the "Introduction: What is OFBiz?" box, but I think we can do a lot better than that. There is also some reasonably good content and ideas on the Philosophy page that I wrote a long time ago (with feedback and ideas from various people, many of whom probably won't even get this email), and those could be a good source of ideas too.
The Strategic Plan is a few years old and needs some updating for changes in the last 4 years ;o) , but the same basic stuff there still applies very much to what OFBiz is all about from a business perspective. This is really the core of how OFBiz has moved forward. Here is the URL:
http://www.ofbiz.org/strategic-plan.htmlSome of my more recent thoughts on this are something along the lines of:
"The Open For Business Project harnesses the power of a loosely coupled community and a collaboration empowering open source license (the Apache 2.0 license) to bring to you the best in loosely coupled enterprise software that can be molded to the needs of your changing organization."
We might want a bit more than that and maybe have different items that address different stake holders in the project.
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After a bit of discussion on this I'd like to put in on the OFBiz.org New Site Plan page on docs.ofbiz.org, which is here:
http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBIZ/OFBiz.org+New+Site+PlanThanks in advance for all of your feedback, help and ideas!
-David