Marketing research

This page has been created to foster discussion on the use of Market Research by the Fedora Marketing team. Please contribute to the discussion!

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Schedule / Timeline

First Fedora General User Survey

Proposal: Launch survey at the same time as F12. Get some general feedback / information that can be used / discussed at Fudcon.

• October 1 - 16:
  • Send out proposed questions to previously discussed lists (I need to put that info in here), revise list weekly. This is basically open discussion based on the list I'm working on.
  • Get limesurvey infrastructure running / tested on a publictest machine. Practice building questionaires, work kinks out.
  • Determine best places to "advertise" the survey; don't want to spam, but some traffic from selected mailing lists would be nice, as well as on Fedora Insight, or the FP front page. If we can launch at the same time as release (and potentially FI as well!) then it would be a good way to attract a lot of survey-ees. Need to develop whatever methods we will use for launch and have them ready to go, notify people of when the availability will be up.

• October 20
  • Finalized list of questions posted for marketing meeting. Discuss and find resolutions to any major issues with infrastructure.

• October 21 - 26
  • Populate limesurvey test instance with questions.

• October 27 - November 2
  • Testing. Should probably figure out how to press the load in case of my dream come true, 8 zillion people with feedback!

• November 2 - November 6
  • Any final kinks need to get worked out.
  • Testing stuff needs to be ported over to a "final destination," the database of answers needs to be cleaned out and ready to go.

• November 10 (or maybe 9th... cause the 10th is probably hectic busy)
  • Survey begins

• November 10 - 25 (Wednesday before US Thanksgiving)
  • Survey runs. Ends on the 25th.

• November 26 - Dececember 2
  • Compile hopefully meaningful results. Prep some sort of presentation for someone to give at fudcon.

• Questions!
  • Domain name? survey.fedoraproject.com, or something on Fedora Insight.... how do we do this if we want to?
  • Privacy Policy - need to figure out what we won't save, will save, etc. Do we need some sort of legal someone to do this?

FUDcon survey

FUDcon runs December 5 - 7. It would be, presumably, awesome to have an attendee survey available for attendees either on the last day, or via a follow-up email. Very similar to what was done previously with FUDcon surveys (revisions to the questions are open).

Assuming infrastructure issues are non-issues for the General Survey, putting this together will be a lot simpler.

• November 9 - 12: Deal with getting appropriate questions and / or editing the previous questions used.
• November 13 - 19: Populate limesurvey instance with questions (need to find another domain, or figure something out around this)
• November 20 - 25: Testing
• November 29 - 3: Get ready to launch
• December 7 - 10: Compile results

Goals

• Develop and distribute meaningful, relevant market research materials that can be used to enhance Fedora quality and distribution.

Next Steps

Not necessarily in order of importance...

• Get feedback from the various subgroups in Fedora as to whether market research would be useful to them, and if so, what kinds of research they would like to see, and open the floor for suggestions on types of research, specific questions people would like answered, etc.
• Prioritize what types of research would get the biggest bang for the effort in the near term.
• Develop a schedule, most likely in sync with the wider Fedora development cycle, for delivering research in a timely manner so that it can be used by various groups for development, distribution, etc.
• Determine the best way to educate research "consumers" on how to best apply it to what they are doing.
• Determine if research can / should be used to provide benchmarks, or show improvements made in accordance with survey feedback (ie: "80% of top requested improvements were made!"). Customer satisfaction, if you will.

Questions to Answer

1. What questions do we want answered by market research - and how will we incorporate the feedback we get back into the development cycle?
   • Good questions; I don't have a good short answer right now, and think this will take some time to discuss with both the marketing and development teams - is this something we can ramp up on slowly between now and the end of November, and kick off for real during the F13 cycle? What do other people think? Mel Chua 21:53, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
2. Is there a budget for market research?
   • Not from the Fedora coffers. I could imagine getting groups (classes, companies, etc) with budget to do this kind of work for themselves to make their work available and useful to us, though. Mel Chua 21:53, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
3. Is there a simple open-source tool for developing surveys to be posted and aggregating the answers?
   • Yes! I know several people within Fedora have been looking at http://www.limesurvey.org/ for just that reason. Mel Chua 21:53, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
4. Could we get companies to donate free swag (tee-shirts, netbooks, mp3 players, messenger bags, etc.) to provide as an incentive for completing surveys?
   • Possibly, but I'd rather have non-swag incentives when possible, since research has shown that swag is actually demotivating in the long term. We should brainstorm ways to make these surveys give value back to the people who fill them out. Or I may be overly idealistic and we really do just need some swag. Mel Chua 21:53, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
   • I prefer that we use digital swags such as wallpapers and screen savers. For example we create a new wallpaper every other day, once the user finishes the survey he gets his wallpaper. I don't know if we can do that with a program, but we will need the Fedora programmers to help us here. Tareq Al Jurf 19:29, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
5. It would be awesome to have a Master List of conferences / Events where a laptop could be set up for on-site surveys. (Linuxcon, Linuxworld, Linuxwhatever, RH Summit, Linux Symposium, etc.)
   • Great idea! Maybe something to ask the Ambassadors team about. Mel Chua 21:53, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
6. Does Red Hat have any research that could legally be shared with Fedora (maybe a small group of people, or have one person be a gateway - ie: The Gateway person collects questions, and then asks RH market research folks (are there any??) if they can provide answers).
   • I will ask. Mel Chua 21:53, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
   • Update: Not at this time. Also, the research that Red Hat has is not likely to be as relevant to Fedora - the users they focus on are big enterprise customers, rather than individual users, so this may not be a fruitful tree to bark up... however, an upstream open source marketing community may be of interest, in terms of getting RH support. Something else to look into. Mel Chua 03:14, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
7. Does anyone have any contacts at any major PC / Server vendors (the usual suspects - Dell, HP, IBM, Sun, and the like) that would be a good starting point to see if they would participate in surveys about shipments? We would need a good blurb about why it would be important to participate and what they would get out of it (ie, they are good community participants, it helps them develop a broader market, they get access and input to free research, etc.)
   • I will also ask. Mel Chua 21:53, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Activities in the same spectrum - Related to Market Research

1. Benchmarking / ensuring the community is recognizing that someone is taking notice of market research results and doing something with it. ie: "Based on user feedback, Fedora 13 has developed / improved 90% of requested features in the following areas...."
2. Educating Fedora/Other distro developers on (a) what market research is and (b) how to use it or incorporate it into their planning / development. This could be a class, presentation given at conferences, guide, or <insert clever idea here>.
3. Develop a weekly/bi-weekly/monthly/quarterly newsletter dedicated to highlighting other market research resources that are available. (This information could also be tracked / disseminated / portal-ized on Fedora_Insight. This includes things like:
   • Reports done by the Linux Foundation
   • Reports done by anyone else that are free
   • Reports that aren't free but have really nice press releases that give out tidbits of information that could be useful.
   • Research / Survey information done by Fedora project marketing. :)

Proposed Market Research Categories / Projects / Surveys

Overview

1. Fedora-Centric Market Research. This research would answer questions like:
   • How is Fedora doing?
   • Feedback from Fedora-centric events (ie: FUDCon)
   • developer feedback
   • etc.

1. Fedora-Competitive Market Research. (This category could possibly be combined with #3.) This research would answer questions like:
   • (Of end-users): What distro are you using, please rank distros according to your preference, etc.
   • (Of developers): What distros do you make an effort to add your project to, why, please rank distros by their ease of contributions, etc.)
2. Community-Shared Market Research. This category is probably a little more ambitious; the goal here would be to provide market research to the greater Linux community in general, with the overall goal of helping to foster better decision-making, pointing out strength and weaknesses or market gaps with the goal of bringing new solutions / projects to Linux that meet end-user needs. Theoretically this not only brings new projects to Fedora - but helps to improve quality and/or availability of projects in general in the Wider Community. Most start-ups and/or projects do NOT have the benefit of having a boatload of money to spend on market research.

Additionally, and this goes without saying, I suppose, that this information would be published under some sort of open/ CC license. Working with other community distros to find out what questions THEY would like answered would certainly be encouraged and their contributions / analysis of both questions and results should be welcomed.

Fedora-Centric Market Research

The first two items listed are surveys which have been done in the past (in some cases, the very, very long ago past). I think they would be valuable to continue / start up again for input. Additionally, I've added some other suggestions for Fedora-Centric market research. Feedback on my suggestions is requested / welcomed / probably needed.

1. FUDCon Surveys (These could be done onsite or sent out afterwards.)
2. General Improvements Survey - Fedora Community Poll
3. Developer-specific Survey
4. End-user Specific Survey

FUDCon Surveys

Surveys Fedora Community members on their experiences as an attendee at a FUDCon (including questioning those who did not come as to what prevented them from attending). This survey has been done in the past; see Marketing/Surveys/FUDConF9 for the raw questions, or Marketing_surveys for some of the extended results.

Questions (some have been shortened for the sake of being slightly more brief) included:

1. Did you attend FUDCon/F9?
2. When did you arrive in Raleigh for FUDCon?
3. What was your mode of travel to/from home?
4. When did you depart the conference?
5. Who paid for your attendance at FUDCon?
6. Which one of the following categories represent your relationship with Fedora? (select all that apply)
7. Please indicate, using a scale of 1-5, how important each of the following factors was in your decision whether to attend FUDCon: Cost of the conference, overall cost of attendance, where conference was held, meeting and networking with other attendees, hackfest sessions, BarCamp sessions, FUDPub and other extramural outings, physical closeness to a Red Hat facility
8. Please indicate, using a scale of 1-5, or 6 (did not attend), your satisfaction with each portion of the FUDCon event: Cost of the conference, overall cost of attendance, city where conference was held, meeting and networking with other attendees, hackfest sessions, BarCamp sessions, FUDPub and other extramural outings.
9. Which schedule do you prefer? (choose one) BarCamp on Saturday, Hackfest on Friday + Sunday; BarCamp on Friday, Hackfest on Saturday + Sunday
10. What did you like most about the conference? (short answer)
11. What did you dislike most about the conference? (short answer)
12. Based on your attendance at this event, would you attend another like it? (Yes/No)
13. If the answer to the previous question was "No," why not? (short answer)
14. Was there anything you would like to see at the next conference that you did not this time? (short answer)
15. Please include any additional comments about the conference you would like us to know. (long answer)

General Improvements Survey - Fedora Community Poll

1. Describe your primary role in the Fedora project. (Developer, Tester, Documentation Writer, End User/Fedora Deployment, Translation or other internationalization, Other/None of the above)
2. If other, plz. describe
3. How long have you been involved with Fedora?
4. How many bugzillas have you entered? (None, 1-10, 11-25, 26-60, More than 50)
5. Please sort the items in this list in priority order based on what you suggest is the most important area for Red Hat to focus on in order to make improvements in Fedora. Survey tool instructions: 1 is top priority, 12 is lowest. You can select each column only once. ie, you can only designate a single item as priority 1. Skip any items you think are not in need of improvement. (Provide free CDs, infrastructure enhancements to improve development of Fedora extras packages, infrastructure to enable non-RH people to directly check in changes to Fedora Core packages, Reduce the number of packages in FC by moving more to extras, focus on implementing new features in the core Fedora distro, increased visibility into FC development schedules and status, improve bugzilla responsiveness, single CD install, improve docs and release notes, improve overall stability of FC, internationalization - add more languages and improve input methods, increase participation as reviewers for Fedora extras.)
6. Please rate your opinions on Fedora *Core's* (not Extras) performance in the following areas. For questions that you haven't had experience with, or do not have a strong opinion on, please do not specify a response. (Overall quality, system performance / responsiveness, timeliness / delivery on schedule, ease of use, documentation, download infrastructure, availability of free CDs, appropriate placement of packages in core vs. extras, development infrastructure - developers only pls, bug reporting infrastructure - bug reporters only pls, bug report responsiveness - bug reporters only pls)
7. How frequently should Fedora Core releases occur? (More frequently than 6 months, every 6 months, every 9 months, once per year, less than once per year)
8. Please rate your opinions on Fedora *Extras'* (NOT core) performance in the following areas. (Overall quality, completeness/diversity of packages, ease of obtaining developer sponsorship - contributing developers only pls, responsiveness of reviewer comments - contributing developers only pls)
9. How do you think Fedora is doing overall - please rate your opinions in the following areas. (Fedora is a healthy and growing initiative, Fedora is doing better than other community distros at meeting the participant's needs, Red Hat is doing a good job of balancing the needs of the community, Redhat has been receptive to input on how to best conduct Fedora, Fedora is doing the right thing by not including packages with suspected legal issue - ie various audio and video decoders / players)

Helping Fedora software project maintainers / participants do research specific to their projects

Assist project maintainers / participants out with market sizing, developing user / developer surveys specific to their projects, helping them tie results to benchmarking, project planning, etc.

Community-Shared Market Research

(Please note that the lists of questions for these categories are not comprehensive, they are just used to give a general idea of what would be asked if it was decided that this was a Good Idea. )

PC / Server Market Sizing. This can be split out by ALL PCs / Servers sold, or by just PCs and Servers sold which shipped with Linux as the primary OS.

• Shipments - total
• Shipments by Region
• Shipments by pricing
• Shipments by Form Factor (ie: PCs would be split out by Desktops, Notebooks and Netbooks, Servers would be split by Traditional vs. Bladed, or whatever.)
• Shipments by OS
• Shipments by channel - business vs. consumer

Linux Developer Surveys

• What category does your development work fall under
• Preferred development environments
• What distros do you strive to have your project added to, which are easiest
• Demographics (where are you, how long have you been a developer, etc)
• What OS
• What processors
• Languages used
• Source control methods used, preferred, familiarity, ease of use, etc.

Purchaser / Business decision maker Surveys.

• Spending plans, OS plans, etc. Are they aware of open-source solutions, what are their opinions, etc. Budgets for servers, PCs, software, support, etc.

Archives

Archive:Marketing surveys contains some (extremely old and out of date) historical references on prior Fedora surveys.