Changes to the Joomla Mission Statement

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cnielsen
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Changes to the Joomla Mission Statement

Post by cnielsen » Fri Feb 07, 2014 12:44 am

How do we take the ideas discussed in the marketing skype chat into a process for revising our Mission and positioning statements?
I proposed breaking this down into 3 segments:

[1:29:02 PM | Edited 1:29:34 PM] Christopher Nielsen:

Part 1 mission: "We inspire technology to empower businesses and online communities through collaboration and innovation."

Part 2 How we do it: "We do this through a value system built on trust, equality, the freedom principles of open source and understanding the needs of our users"

Part 3 our Users: "Our users find Joomla to be more than a content management system. They discover opportunity through using this technology. They become inspired by possibilities and attracted to the freedom at their fingertips. When they participate with the Joomla community they become part of an extended global family that opens doors to better understanding of the world and diverse cultures with common purpose."

Post your ideas on what can give our message and mission some ZING and synery!

FYI Here is the current mission statement: http://www.joomla.org/about-joomla/the- ... alues.html
Last edited by ooffick on Fri Feb 07, 2014 6:13 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Reason: Mod Note: Changed the title of the Forum topic

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Re: Changes to the Joomla Mission Statement

Post by JacquesR » Sat Feb 08, 2014 6:09 am

hi Chris

What's the background to your wish to change the Joomla! Mission Statement?


Jacques Rentzke
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Re: Changes to the Joomla Mission Statement

Post by carson3511 » Tue Feb 11, 2014 4:16 am

Hi Chris,
As an OSM Board Member (and I speak only for myself here) I am a bit puzzled by this post and the focus around marketing. Especially since Mission and Vision Statements are an organization's guide the actions of the organization. They are not supposed to be a marketable buzz term, but a core foundation of who they are and why they do it. It would have also been nice of you to have approached leadership before blindsiding us with a forum post since after all this is a responsibility of leadership and not the marketing working group.

Having said that and moving on...
I highly agree that these things need to be reviewed and updated to reflect the project's current and future status in the CMS marketplace.

RE: Mission
A Mission Statement should have three primary parts to it and most of the time be only one sentence long. It should state who our target is, what we are providing to them, and why we are distinctly different. The Mission Statement should define the fundamental purpose of the organization in a simple short statement. I think our mission statement is missing the "who and "why" of what a mission statement should have. So I think we need to define those two things to complete the Mission Statement.

RE: Vision
I do not believe a Vision Statement to be something that would be used for marketing. Vision Statements determine the future direction of the organization. Marketing direction is a part of an organization's vision, not the other way around.
I believe that the original Vision Statements, although still very relevant, could use some updated wording and terminology.

There are really only two major parts that this project can have a vision for, and that is the software and the community that surrounds it. So if we can define 3 or 4 visions around those two topics I think we would have a very good update for the Vision Statement.

RE: Values
I really see nothing here that could possibly be changed or updated.

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Re: Changes to the Joomla Mission Statement

Post by jessicadunbar » Tue Feb 11, 2014 6:55 am

Hey Mike
I understand how Marketing may have surprised you. The last thing we want to do is to piss off other teams, by overstepping boundaries.

Just for clarity, This conversation came out of watching an inspiring video from mozilla. After one conversation, the marketing team already shared ideas and put together document with a bunch of fun taglines.

I suggested Chris post publicly to get a discussion started, because, as a community, it should be open for discussion.

Chris’s intentions were simply to start robust conversation with the community. Why not encourage those comments on here where others can be part of the conversation?

Sorry for the confusion mike.
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Re: Changes to the Joomla Mission Statement

Post by carson3511 » Tue Feb 11, 2014 4:30 pm

Jess,
I am not saying you pissed anyone off, it just would have been nice to have been considerate to the leadership teams and not blindside us with an initiative we knew nothing about.

And as I previously stated, these things are not something that are a marketing gimmick. They are the core foundations of an organization. Therefore they should not be portrayed as "fun taglines".

I am in fact glad that this topic has been raised because it did show me personally that the Mission and Values should be updated. So I am not disagreeing at all if it should happen or not. I believe it needs to happen. I am against this being turned into a marketing gimmick, which is exactly where this was headed. That's all.
I think it should be looked at much more seriously than just a play on words for a few marketing campaigns.
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Re: Changes to the Joomla Mission Statement

Post by JoeJoomla » Tue Feb 11, 2014 5:28 pm

Hello all,

I agree with Mike that mission statements and visions are something that should be revisited from time to time.

There’s a lot of enthusiastic activity going on with new volunteers in regards to marketing. We are really fortunate to have these people.

From my experience whenever new marketing initiatives start up or new people get involved they like to examine everything. This is generally a good thing. :-)

Mission statements are like a compass or an anchor to keep an organization focussed and not drift off it’s intent or purpose. Any suggestions or recommendations that may come out of this we should reflect on and discuss. In my opinion change just for the sake of change is not productive but change that helps us be better is welcomed.
Joe Sonne
JoeJoomla.com | JoeSonne.com | The Joe Sonne Group | Former Board Member of Open Source Matters, Inc. | Capital Committee Member

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Re: Changes to the Joomla Mission Statement

Post by instance » Wed Feb 12, 2014 5:07 pm

Although the topic could have been introduced more gracefully, I'm not sure that informing leadership teams of every discussion in advance would achieve anything other than swamping them with half baked ideas. Anyone is free to develop a detailed plan to do something like rename Joomla to "Wakkachukka"; leadership is free to suppress a laugh while saying no.

If the post announced a new set of statements as fact, well then that's a problem. So far, no problem.

As for the mission statement itself, we have so many constituencies that I am not sure that anything but an unexciting statement would wind up being accepted by most of them. At the same time, it's difficult to find something that is specific enough to be meaningful without being too limiting. Take "to achieve great things with open source software" for example. That's the mission, but at the same time it's utterly devoid of real meaning.

This is more challenging than it appears. Corporate mission statements usually deal with dominating or leading a field of endeavour; not exactly a great fit for us. Volunteer mission statements usually focus on the needs of a pretty specific target group; also not particularly applicable.

So from a "product" perspective the mission for CMS is to deliver high quality open source applications to anyone who wants to build a website//////// online presence. The mission for Framework is to provide open source software that facilitates the rapid development of PHP applications. How do we marry those into one while not slipping into pablum?
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