[Catalyst-dev] Catalyst Marketing Plan Draft

J. Shirley jshirley at gmail.com
Mon Nov 6 17:46:03 GMT 2006


On 11/6/06, hkclark at gmail.com <hkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
>

Hey Kennedy,

I'm working on some screencasts now and have the test apps pretty
stable (msg me on IRC if you want to see them).  I'm waiting on the
next maintenance release, and the new site design until they go out.
I'll possibly get them put together, but I wanted to do a screencast
on installing Catalyst along with it, but I may not wait for that,
since I think the screencasts showing the usage of Catalyst are more
important.

Neil, the author of iShowU graciously donated a license for iShowU to
the Catalyst project as well.  Let me know if you want the information
to start doing your own casts (although the software is OSX only)

-Jay


-- 
J. Shirley :: jshirley at gmail.com :: Killing two stones with one bird...
http://www.toeat.com - http://code.toeat.com/~jshirley



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