[Typo3-marketing] OSCOM update and opinion about consultancies

[Sander Vogels ( Netcreators )]

Hi Folks,

There's so much said so fast it's hard to keep up with this discussion. But
let me try to give 'some' points.
The consultancy issue;
I've also made an example how everybody could fill in his/her own listing.
It's made according to criteria of the Dutch government and they think it
gives enough information for a company, NGO or whatever to decide which
firm(s) they're gonna call first. So I assume it's a good start for us party
people..
http://test.netcreators.nl/Consultancyform-eng.htm
Cause my point is, don't let us, a commission or money decide, just give
potential customers a good choice.

A new topic I like to ad to the consultancy discussion; can we also form
partnerships with eachother in a kind of workpit/marketplace for bigger
jobs?
I know that sometimes companies get requests for projects that are way over
their head but because they're afraid to lose it when they ask another
Typo-company for help, because there's nothing arranged for co-working on
projects. What happens then is that they try to find out stuff themselfes,
the client feels the insecurity and pulls back, often completely from Typo3.
Also difference in culture can be a problem with international jobs.
So what we could do is, once we have the consultancy thing clear, is making
internal agreements about what we cost for eachother, how and who is doing
the communication with the client, how we represent this cooperation and so
on. I really would like this and present it as some kind of international
Typo3 consultancy firm with branches in countries all over the world. This
could also do good for breaking up markets like the US or Asia and look
really trustworthy for big companies and organisations. In my enthousiasm
I've already registered www.typo3consultancy.com and
www.typo3consultants.com which could be good domains for this purpose.
I've talked about this in Switserland already with guys like Olivier and
Georg and they did surely like it. It also covers the problem of getting a
request for a niche market like education for which you don't have the
experience, cause then you can manage it with a partner who has the
speciality.
Example; Netcreators at the moment has request for jobs from Germany and the
US which we can't do alone, we don't have enough people and I think there
really should be a local company/consultant involved for cultural
differences and better communication. What could be more nice for me that I
could say to my customer that I'll send our local consultant? Then we can do
the job together. And when all companies involved save lets say 5% from each
co-project for marketing, we can go to big events like OSCOM together,
produce hand-outs and other marketing material.
Well?

The Education issue;
Daniel, Blackboard is a kind of electronic learning environment which is
developed in American Universities and now has gone commercial
(www.blackboard.com). You can do in class projects with it and schools are
paying for the amount of projects it handles via their website. Altough on
one side it's gaining momentum, on the other hand there are already lots of
disapointed customers looking for an alternative because, beside of the
bugs, it's not flexibel and if there's one thing you can't manage with it
it's the costs!

In Switserland and in the document I did send to the list (and did not get
any reaction at all) I already mentioned the open-source PHP programmes we
should incorporate in our Typo3 ELE distribution to give Blackboard the bud;
Scorm, IMS Project (content packaging), Teletop, Moodle, Claroline, PhpTest,
Swiki, Tiki, WebCalander, weBLOGbook. Once we have this done and connect
autentication via LDAP with schooladministrations, we are almost suit for
the educational market.
It's great Georg started with Moodle, I would suggest to take WebCalander as
a second.
As you know we're working with several schools and are able to raise some
sponsoring for it. We work here in cooperation with the Technical University
Twente in developing an electronic learning environment for colleges. It's
called The Plotinos Project. In time I will translate the projectplan for
the community.
They have a lot of knowledge about the subject and have offered to help not
only us but every Typehead in Europe who's working on the subject. So anyone
who likes to take up one one of the above programms to make them into Typo3
extentions, just give me a call.

Cheers everybody,

Sander
sander at netcreators.nl





----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Hinderink" <daniel at typo3.com>
To: <typo3-marketing at lists.netfielders.de>
Sent: dinsdag 3 juni 2003 11:46
Subject: Re: [Typo3-marketing] OSCOM update and opinion about consultancies


Hi Michelle,

Thank you very much for the Update!

> 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.

Cool. Good to know you are getting well. Please give my regards to Jennifer
and say thanks from all of us!!

> 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.

That surely is a question that is important for the US. In Europe there are
several consultancies with edu-references and open for more.

Please let me know some more about the edu-specific applications.
What is Blackboard and Moodle? What's the tech basis (Language/DB), range,
price?


> 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.

See my other reply.

> 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.

Yes, good notion. May be it would be interesting to change typo3.com listing
all together and make listing dependent on a variety of info that the
consultancies have to give.

Founding Date, employees, Customer size, industries served, number of
publicly accessible typo3-projects, emphasis of services (along your list of
1 thru 6).

>
> 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.

This happens all the time. If you take a close look, there might be ten to
twenty people in Germany who are really proficient with typo3. A large group
is doing HTML-templates and has never created an extension of some
complexity. The rest has no references, probably also no clue but just tried
to jump the train. On the other hand there are people like Ingmar Schlecht
or Luite van Zeist or even René Fritz who are definitely among the most
knowledgeable TYPO3-people, but judging from the consultancies and
references you would never think of asking them for a quote.

>
> 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.

There is also a number of larger consultancies offering TYPO3-services who
are pretty clueless as well, so that alone is no criterium.

>
> 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. :)

Thank you again! Great job, as always. And I like the website about your new
house. Too bad you and Alex are nowhere to be seen :-)

Cheers

Daniel

--
TYPO3 - get.content.right

Daniel Hinderink
Marketing, Press Relations, Strategy
http://www.typo3.com


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