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I want to try to pick this community's brain a bit.

Suppose you're a USer, and a somewhat-active member in some large FOSS project, but that project is actually not that popular in the US: It has a bunch of users, sure, but less than elsewhere in the world; and more importantly - no US developers, no people doing QA, almost nobody from the US active on forums/reddit, no presence for the project in any FOSS events etc.

How would you go about trying to increase the visibilty/awareness-of your project, its ranks of "active users", perhaps some contributors, and maybe get some kind of user group(s) started?

Notes:

  • Assume the project has some financial resources to support such activity, and that it's very English-friendly, i.e. all resources are available in English, project business is conducted in English, project events take place mostly in English (but not in the US) etc.
  • Assume the project is not associated with any anti-US resistance, it's just that the US is a geogrphical area of weakness for it.
  • The actual project motivating this question is LibreOffice, but I wanted to make the question a little more general, so don't assume you need to be very familiar with it in order to answer.
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    What kind of people do you want to attract to the project/product? Do you want more users (and hope that some of them will become active in the community), or do you specifically want to attract programmers? Commented Sep 11 at 7:43
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    I think that plenty of users will lead to developer interest. Do you already have an analysis of the motivation of users, why they use the FOSS program, and would this apply in the same way to US users? Free training (Zero Dollar licenses for commercial alternatives to education/schools/students) might have caused bias, which is difficult to overcome. Before you decide for any promotion activities you need to understand the reasons for the current situation! Commented Sep 11 at 7:44
  • @BartvanIngenSchenau: I don't want to attract users to use the software; that's of course useful, but it's not the problem. For my specific case, all Linux users basically have it installed and it's their default office suite... but other than end-users, I want anything and everything: active community members of all kinds, from just complaining and jabbing about it online through people who would help further promote its use all the way to developers. Commented Sep 11 at 9:00
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    I must say I thought Martin's comments were pretty insightful (and perhaps should've been an answer?) but most of all "before you decide for any promotion activities you need to understand the reasons for the current situation". You may be right that users are immaterial; Martin may be right that users lead to everything else. But I think it's beyond contention that you probably can't fix something you don't understand. Knowing where you are now, and why, has got to be step one, to my mind. I have my suspicions, but they're really only that: suspicions. Data are better. Commented Sep 11 at 9:03
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    Why is the specific choice of country relevant here, if the specific project isn't? Commented Sep 12 at 10:21

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In order to understand what the project could do to increase its footprint in USA, you need to analyze the reasons why the project has not picked up the same momentum as it has in other countries. Reasons might include (just guessing):

  • FOSS might be preferred in other countries because it is free, while in USA the retail price has less impact. (There might be many different reasons for that)
  • FOSS might be preferred in other countries due to transparency and privacy reasons (data transfer abroad), while in the US users are not concerned about that issue (e.g.: The data MSFT collects anyhow stays in USA, is not transferred abroad).
  • FOSS might be preferred in other countries due to education programs (use in schools), while in USA there might be free or heavily discounted education/student licenses of commercial alternatives.
  • There might be more like 'Interoperability', 'Legal Requirements' (often result of long-term lobbying), 'Native Language Support Forums', 'Live Chat Support in the right time zone', etc. etc.

These items might seem to be overly user-oriented. But with the surge of users the project will see increasing numbers of active users (in user groups) and developers.

Without proper research of the reasons why your FOSS project is lagging behind in certain regions, you will not be able to understand what made it successful elsewhere, and then find an angle to translate this to the desired target audiences (including, without limitation, developers) in USA. And maybe none of the success factors for RoW is applicable to USA and you need to come up with something completely new. Or even add features that might be missing.

So if your project has money to spend, then you should start spending it on market research (and not on random activities).

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    I acknowledge this suggestion, but - it seems to focus more on the reasons for people adopting the FOSS project as users, rather than being active in its community. And while use of the project could stand to increase as well, what I'd need to look into is why users who have chosen it (or gotten it by default) don't become more activated. Anyway, +1. Commented Sep 11 at 18:34
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    @einpoklum I modified the answer to put more focus on active users and developers. The bottom line, however, stays the same: Start with proper research. Commented Sep 11 at 21:03
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    Einpoklum, I note that you have eight standing questions on this site, of which only two have accepted answers. Accepting the best answer to a question, after a suitable period to see if better come along, is part of the social compact when you ask a question (and you can always change which answer is accepted if a better one comes along late). I urge you to consider more than just an upvote, especially if Martin's edits have addressed your comment above - and perhaps it's time to revisit your existing questions? Commented Sep 12 at 7:13

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