[Typo3-marketing] OSCOM update and opinion about consultancies

[Michelle Heizer]

Hi everyone,

I spent the last month gearing up for the OSCOM presentation, but
unfortunately became very ill near the end of the month (I was also moving
into a new house as well) so I couldn't attend. My boss, Jennifer Lynch,
attended and I'll will be providing a full report next week. From the
initial reaction, TYPO3 was very well received, but it still appears that
there is much work needed to promote T3. We will be posting the presentation
online and I'll send out the URL. Also, it was videotaped so I think that
will be posted on the Web as well.

There were several people from all over the world at OSCOM, with many from
colleges and universities. They are interested in having an open source
all-in-one solution for their schools.  I have been working with Georg
Kuehnberger and Kurt Dirnbauer on integrating Moodle with T3. Here at UMR we
use Blackboard as do many universities in the United States. Unfortunately,
like many users of Blackboard, we  are not very happy with it. It's a very
buggy product (and we pay a large amount of money for it). I believe once we
have the edu.typo3.com site up, we would be able to get sponsors for
projects from colleges and universities since they expressed interest in
doing so. If we give them this type of solution, they are more than willing
to pay for services such as customization, training, support, design and
architecture. My question is: can we offer them this? My freelance company
has worked with other colleges and universities. I'm not sure how many other
consultants are willing to handle them as customers since they are rather
large customers and could take a lot of time. It seems like the only reason
why schools would be reluctant to use T3 and other open source products is
because they are concerned about support, etc.

This leads to another thing Daniel was talking about. He mentioned raising
the bar for consultancies. This is definitely something that needs to be
revisited. One of the things I've learned from OSCOM is that a consultancy
for TYPO3 can be varied and so it will be very hard to judge them.

Example 1: Let's say a college or university wants a T3 consultancy to
completely map out their site, install TYPO3, customize it for their site,
integrate e-learning solutions, a Web calendar, set up each subdomain, train
their editors, train their IT department on how to administer it, and
provide support whenever possible. This is a huge project and would require
months of planning and implementation. You wouldn't believe how large and
disjointed a university site can be. A large corporation could ask for the
same type of time commitment.

Example 2:  A small company wants a T3 site for a small amount of pages but
they are very interested in having news and newsletters (and some other
extensions). They have much smaller needs then the first example.

Example 3: Someone wants to use TYPO3, but all they want are their templates
turned into typoscript. They want to do the rest. These are usually Web
designers who do not have the time or do not "want" to take the time to
learn typoscript.

Example 4: A company offers TYPO3 hosting packages. They do not design the
site for anyone but offer T3 already set up with good service and support.
They represent TYPO3 in a different way by allowing users to quickly start
setting up their T3 sites.

Example 5: People are interested in using TYPO3 and just want consultation
about the project. They may just want some questions answered on whether
TYPO3 is right for them and how to go about starting up their site.

Example 6: A company wants to hire a programmer to build some custom
extensions for their site and integrate it with TYPO3.

These examples show that a good T3 consultant could be doing a variety of
things. I doubt any one company could do all those things and do them well.
This is what I have been struggling with. Since we put up the UMR site, I
have been asked by other colleges and universities to do example 1 and even
6, but I've been doing example 2, 3, 4 and 5 as part of my freelance
company. I just haven't had the time to devote yet to building extensions.
Although, I am hoping to add one or two more people to my consultancy. I am
considering redefining my company and maybe moving into pure educational
solutions. 

So why is it important to judge a consultancy? Well, from what I've been
told from OSCOM, for T3 to be a viable alternative to a commercial CMS,
people need to be able to trust a consultancy and use a consultancy.

The only problem is that there could be several types of consultancies:
large scale companies, small scale companies, single person consultancies,
and Web hosting companies. I think it would be good to categorize the
consultancies further and maybe require different things based on the
groups. For example, I don't think we should require a Web hosting company
to build extensions. Instead, it would be good to have a place where users
could rate the Web hosting companies on their service and customer support.
That would probably be more effective.

For example, at my freelance company, we received emails from people who
have emailed a few other T3 web hosting companies found in the consultancy
database but did not get any email back. There was also another US
consultant who took on a T3 project and then could not finish it, but the
person had made it sound like they could do it. These are not good things
for T3's reputation.

I think, especially for colleges, universities and large corporations to use
TYPO3, there will need to be more large scale T3 consultancies. Of course,
this is something far down the road. :)  But I really think we need to
categorize the consultants better so that people know whether they are
getting someone that will "fit" their project.

Anyway, I just wanted to share the good news from OSCOM and will speak more
of it next week. Sorry my letter got a little long. :)

Michelle