[Catalyst-dev] Catalyst Marketing Plan Draft

[hkclark at gmail.com]

On 10/17/06, John Wang <johncwang at gmail.com> wrote:
> The Catalyst project has created a marketing team in addition to the dev and
> doc teams. Currently jshirley and I are in marketing and anyone else who is
> interested is welcome to join. Marketing serves to promote the product
> (including docs) so it's important everyone is on the same page. My
> intention is for marketing tasks to be defined the Marketing Plan and agreed
> upon with the dev and doc teams. Once there is agreement, marketing can
> start executing against the plan.
>

Hi John & jshirley,

Many thanks for doing this -- it's a great idea.

I have been lurking on the thread trying to collect my thoughts on the
subject.  Here is what I have so far:

* I think a big part of the initial interest in Rails was generated by
the really good demo movies they came out with.  I think we should
come up with at least one of those with a similar degree of polish.  I
volunteer to help.

* I think the recent reports about Catalyst being significantly slower
than Rails could be a real deterrent for new users.  Yes, I know that
there are many other factors that need to be considered besides raw
transactions per second, but if word gets out that "Catalyst is slow"
it could really hinder Catalyst adoption (how many of our clients want
us using a framework that's is both "less hyped" *and* slower?).  I
think there are two main parts to addressing this:
  1) Code: Look for was to optimize Catalyst and reduce bottlenecks.
  2) Analysis: Drill down into the analysis to answer questions such as:
        - What types of things are faster in Rails?
        - What types of things are faster in Cat?
        - Does one favor larger vs. smaller vs. other types of apps?
        - What about if database ORM is taken into account (could DBIC make
              up for "slowness" in Cat to get things back on par)?
Unfortunately, I don't know enough Rails to add much value to this item.

* I agree with others on the thread who state: while the flexibility
of Catalyst should be emphasized, there should be a "recommended way
of doing things" for most applications.  To much talk of options up
front will turn people off before they ever ramp up.

* Articles, books, blogs, and talks.  The Rails team is a "machine"
when it comes to this area.  I know this has been talked about
previously in this thread, but I figured it was worth restating.  For
example, I think we should approach O'Reilly again about a Catalyst
book.  Also, would it be possible to get some high profile Catalyst
folks to participate in the No Fluff, Just Stuff tour?  I know we
already have some coverage at the various YAPCs, but one can never do
too much of that.

* I liked the idea of having some canned VMWare images where people
could grab the image and instantly get going with trying out Catalyst
(http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/community).  There
was some talk about this around 6 months ago, but I don't think it
ever went anywhere.  I think I could help with a CentOS image.

Just my 2 cents,
Kennedy