On Sat, Apr 29, 2017 at 01:52:32PM -0600, Ryan Gorley wrote:
> Hello all,
> I have been in communication with Martin and Maren about assisting with
> some marketing on the project. I am a designer and marketer by profession.
> You can read the conversation
> <http://forum.inkscapecommunity.com/index.php?topic=497.0> that got this
> all started if you're interested, but in short, I feel passionately about
> helping Inkscape succeed.
>
> I am emailing to get your feedback on a survey I would like to begin
> collecting responses for. As I see it, growing users and growing
> contributors are two sides of the same coin for any successful FOSS
> project. This particular survey is focusing on the user side of that coin.
> My intent is to help develop criteria for, and consensus around, who our
> primary markets for Inkscape should be. A free and open application is of
> course for anyone to use for any reason. However, because our resources in
> marketing this application are finite, we really need to clarify and
> prioritize to have any hope for success.
>
> So here is the survey: https://goo.gl/forms/ReZkSjOMokkaoSln2
>
> *Don't spend your time responding (yet)*. I would like to make sure I'm
> covering the right user segments here, so do email me with your thoughts.
> I'm glad to meet you all and thanks for the help!
>
> Ryan Gorley @ Dijt <https://dijt.co/>

Hi Ryan, and congrats on getting your survey out, I hope it gains you
lots of useful feedback.

I wanted to chime in a bit food for thought on how to use the data
effectively to benefit Inkscape.  In particular, you commented:

  That being said most open source project leaders and developers I've
  interacted with genuinely want to create something people will use and
  appreciate.

I like your phrasing here, and notably that you did not say,
"...something that as many people as possible will use..."

For an open source project like Inkscape that makes its product
available for free, a larger audience doesn't translate into increased
income (well, not directly anyway).

Inkscape's value proposition involves time contribution to the project
much moreso than dollars.  So a marketing strategy that drives value to
us -- in the form of larger audiences that can contribute to pushing
development forward -- will have a bigger impact than increasing our
penetration into audiences that would be less likely to participate.

Indeed, as we've recognized in the past that when entering a new use
category it can create a surge of demand for improvements needed to
close gaps in the featureset for that category.  This can lead to a
virtuous cycle of development, but only if we already have project
participants interested and prepared to work hard on closing those
gaps.  If we lack participants able to work on those features, the new
audiences' expectations will be dashed and people will (reasonably)
conclude that Inkscape should not perceived as a serious tool for that
area.

Given this line of thinking, I might suggest that the audience to market
to should not be the broad userbase of a given market segment, but to
the subset of audience in that area who are likely to be doing
development-related activities (which can be not just pure software
coding but also stuff like tutorial writing, toolsmithing, community
hosting, testing/bug reporting, etc.)

Bryce