[TYPO3-UG US] TYPO3 Americas: Update on thoughts

[Michael Cannon]

Not much is happening yet as I've been on business in Israel and am  
still in Russia since T3CON finished a couple weeks ago. Never fear,  
here's an update on my current thoughts for TYPO3Americas.org and  
combining with TYPO3.us.
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I'm approaching the US TYPO3 efforts from a North, Latin, and South  
American aspect. The reason I'm doing this, is that American  
businesses are slowly learning there's a global market out there that  
they can reach. Additionally, the 3 Americas combined is a very  
strong marketplace in which many TYPO3 providers can exist in.

In the Netherlands alone, there's over 100 TYPO3 agencies, the  
Netherlands are about as big Florida. We've got 50 states and many  
provinces, yet there's barely 10 US agencies that I know of. Folks  
are even backing out of TYPO3 in the US due to lack of awareness and  
support for it.

TYPO3.us and TYPO3Americas.org are to become one and the same. Since  
TYPO3.us is pretty well populated, I'll look to move  
TYPO3Americas.org to it and become the base domain. As we fill out  
TYPO3Americas.org with additional content, content clean up, and more  
community building features such as blogs, mailing list linked  
forums, usergroups, etc., we'll also ask for assistance to create  
French, Spanish, and Portuguese translations of the website.

I don't want to see any agency specifically sponsored by  
TYPO3Americas.org, but a central showcase linking to agencies and how  
folks can contact them is fine. For general leads to  
TYPO3Americas.org, they'll be driven back to the typo3americas  
mailing list. The typo3americas mailing list is something that I  
envision as a more active means for suppliers to communicate with  
each other and to demonstrate the active community and support  
options to consumers.

Leadership in Europe, defined a Kasper and Daniel, states that it's  
the agency responsibility to promote TYPO3 to consumers. The TYPO3  
Association is responsible for the developer community. As such, I  
envision TYPO3Americas as the sponsor of the TYPO3 Marketers  
Association whose responsibility is to promote TYPO3 worldwide. True,  
our focus will be the Americas as that's what's local to us.

Ideas for marketing TYPO3 in the Americas include translating T3N  
into English and other languages in the Americas, local and national  
usergroups, online and offline supplier and consumer conferences. Of  
course, traditional print media might be used, but TYPO3 seems to be  
most successful through some form of viral marketing. Though last  
years viral marketing presentation at TYCON3 seemed a bit of a flop  
to the developers present, it still has possibilities for success.

The reason TYPO3Americas.org was launched was Rueven Cohen, of  
Enonamly, and I were tired of waiting for TYPO3.us and upon hearing  
Michelle was backing down, we talked before and during T3CON and  
launched the site in two days just to get something started. Since  
rc1.typo3.us has come out, we've got something new to start really  
with and we can finally move ahead. We also went the direction we're  
taking based upon the feedback of many small and big movers and  
shakers in the TYPO3 community such as Sander of Netcreator, Deigo of  
Webformat, Erik of TYPO3.no, and Kasper.

We're a community and your thoughts are not only wanted, but needed.

Michael

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Michael Cannon
President of Cannonbose, LLC
Tel    : +1 (603) 294-4418         Fax : +1 (802) 609-2776