[consulting] Who exactly is this list for?

[Andrew R. Kelly]

I'm not sure but I think you just agreed that maybe another list is
warranted :).

Its more than evangelism and marketing though, to be specific:

1.  General marketing conversations.  What types of markets are there for
Drupal solutions?  How to penetrate them?  What sales strategy works?
2.  General competitive conversations.  Drupal by its very nature competes
in several markets, and we're all small shops with very little bandwidth to
do competitive analysis.
3.  Development of "kill sheets" for other products (joomla, jive
clearspace, MS Sharepoint, etc)
4.  Sharing of security audit fodder (difficult to complete and can be a
deal-breaker for open source solutions in the enterprise)
5.  FUD-defense ("Drupal is not scalable, Drupal isn't secure, yadda yadda")
6.  Sales/Mktg Collateral (Drupal-based sites, Drupal popularity, etc).
7.  Value of Integrations.  The salesforce conversation last week was
interesting, what would be the market value of salesforce integration? Where
can we go to sell that capability?
8.  Contract stuff (license agreements, how to establish give-back to the
community from your clients, etc).  This might overlap with this list.
9.  Partnering info - Often times 1+1 = 3 if you have the ability to bring
in the right skillset at the right time.
10.  I can't think of one but didn't want to end at 9.

The qualifier of whether or not you belong on that list is whether or not
you cringe at the phrase "kill sheet".  If you smile at it you can be a
moderator :).

Andrew

-----Original Message-----
From: consulting-bounces at drupal.org [mailto:consulting-bounces at drupal.org]
On Behalf Of Domenic Santangelo
Sent: Wednesday, March 04, 2009 3:58 PM
To: A list for Drupal consultants and Drupal service/hosting providers
Subject: Re: [consulting] Who exactly is this list for?

On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 12:29 PM, Andrew R. Kelly <arkelly at cognisync.com>
wrote:
> Drupal solution providers are in their infancy

I guess that depends on how you define "infancy". Aren't Aquia,
Lullabot, WorkHabit, et al "Drupal Solution Providers"? I don't think
I'd say they're all in their infancy.

> and its clear that this audience isn't the right one to talk about how to
> build this business.

Build what business? Are you talking about:
> I would love to see this list essentially act as the consulting arm of
Drupal, Inc.

? If so, you should look up the above mentioned companies, especially
Aquia, as they're as close to an "official" shop as it gets.

I think you might misunderstand the breadth of people who hang out on
this list, or who would consider themselves Drupal consultants. There
are employees of shops (like me, and others in the thread), as well as
independent consultants.

The reason you're getting pushback, Andrew, is because you're talking
to a bunch of consultants who (mostly) aren't married to one platform.
It just happens to be that Drupal works in some business cases for
them, sometimes not. You're talking more about evangelizing and
marketing.

-D
_______________________________________________
consulting mailing list
consulting at drupal.org
http://lists.drupal.org/mailman/listinfo/consulting