I was watching the news and blogosphere lately and it seems that some people have the opinion that OpenSimulator /could/ have done something interesting but didn't move fast enough to capitalize on the first mover advantage... Additionally, I've had people tell me personally that there hasn't been much news lately on OpenSimulator.. so it must be loosing steam.
The problem with these statements.. is they're entirely false. There's been a TON of new press about OpenSimulator during 2008, 2009 and several important press items in 2010 already. So, why the disconnect between perception and reality?
One potential candidate for the disconnect.. is the OpenSimulator site itself. Many people probably looked at the site, clicked the News link and seen that it hadn't been updated since September of 2008! I have a google alert set up for news and blog items about OpenSimulator and I literally get 3 to 10 new blog posts or articles a day. People are writing about OpenSimulator. People are using OpenSimulator.. maybe it's time to update the news page.
So, I've updated the news page with a quick selection of news and press items. A few items from 2009 that stuck out in my head as most important
The problem, of course, is we're all developers, engineers, scientists. We're not PR people.
This means that our effort is split like this:
- 97% - Code
- 3% - PR and Community Management
It also means that we probably let many opportunities to promote OpenSimulator pass us by. In the past, I don't remember there being this disconnect of perception vs reality. Then again, sdague was consistently updating the various news, public relations pages, and the community. He used various techniques to communicate with the community.
- IRC
- Mailing Lists
- News and Information pages on OpenSimulator.org
- The Planet.us blog entry RSS feed aggregator
I guess, if I looked at the News page alone, I might make the same conclusion as the people who are telling me that nothing new is coming out of OpenSimulator.
Another way that we can improve this perception is engaging the community. The more they're engaged, the more they tend to be interested and promote OpenSimulator through word of mouth.
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