http://code.google.com/p/google-highly-open-participation-drupal/issues/...

An elevator pitch (or elevator speech) is an overview of an idea for a
product, service, or project. The name reflects the fact that an elevator
pitch can be delivered in the time span of an elevator ride (say, thirty
seconds or 100-150 words).

Do some research on Drupal and its strengths, and come up with five
elevator pitches for Drupal, to help sell it, for example to the following
groups of people:

* Developers, looking for a flexible platform on which to build their
websites.
* Managers, looking for a low-cost and powerful solution on which to
build their next major project.
* Web administrators, looking for an easy way to deliver their content
(of any type).

Elevator pitches should be posted to the Drupal Marketing group at
http://groups.drupal.org/marketing-drupal for review upon submission.

To practice your pitch, try it on one of your friends who has never heard
Drupal and see if it's enough for them to grasp why they'd want to use it.

Resources:

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator_pitch

Estimated time:
2-3 days

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Comments

webchick’s picture

Status: Active » Postponed (maintainer needs more info)

This task has been claimed by darkmongoose (couldn't find drupal.org username)

webchick’s picture

Title: #5: Create two 'elevator pitches' for Drupal » GHOP #5: Create two 'elevator pitches' for Drupal
Project: Google Highly Open Participation Contest (GHOP) » Documentation
Component: GHOP Task » Marketing
webchick’s picture

Status: Postponed (maintainer needs more info) » Active

darkmongoose unclaimed this task, so it's back up for grabs.

webchick’s picture

Status: Active » Postponed (maintainer needs more info)

Now claimed by birdmanx35

birdmanx35’s picture

FileSize
616 bytes
554 bytes
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I have finished the elevator pitches; sorry it took so long (I haven't been at a computer for several days). I misunderstood the task and created THREE elevator pitches for the suggested types, but that shouldn't be a problem ;).

The files are attached separately so you can check the word count- they are all around 100 words.

Feel free to edit them and fix them as you wish- they probably aren't perfect, but I think they definitely get the job done.

aclight’s picture

Status: Postponed (maintainer needs more info) » Needs review

setting to code needs review

Amazon’s picture

I think we should review these.

In particular the developer one doesn't really address most of the reasons that web developers actually use Drupal.

* Not having to write your own website software allows you to get more done, and do it faster.
* A web application development framework with good APIs allows you to extend Drupal to meet customers needs
* Lots of features you can download and add that you don't have to maintain
* Very strong community of programmers that provide a two way conversation in the development and design of your site

I'll respond to the other two later.

aclight’s picture

Hm...the title says create 2 pitches, but the task description says to create 5. You created 3. I'm not sure what we do--maybe we split the difference and just accept 3?

birdmanx35’s picture

Status: Needs review » Postponed (maintainer needs more info)

If you give me a couple days more, I can add two and fix the problems addressed. The title did say two, but I don't mind adding a couple more.

birdmanx35’s picture

FileSize
1.26 KB

I just fixed the developers one, thanks Amazon. I've never been a developer (only used Drupal as an administrator), so thanks for the perspective on that.

The attached file includes the original and the revised version.

If there are similar suggestions for the others, I can repeat the process- this fixing only took a few minutes.

webchick’s picture

Status: Postponed (maintainer needs more info) » Needs review

Marking "needs review" -- not sure how we missed that before. Also pinging the Marketing group to take a look.

bedrock@drupal.org’s picture

Quote from Managers.txt elevator pitch:

>Drupal is a free, open source content management system that many intelligent companies are using today
>to provide for their needs. It's easy-to-use mindset means that anyone with a little time can set up a powerful
>and efficient website. Drupal's many features and add-ons allows it to be used for a variety of website needs;
>perhaps for marketing, internal communications, informational websites, or for social networking purposes.
>Overall, Drupal is a good choice for today's companies of any size because it is free, easy, and incredibly flexible.

Some comments:
1. "many intelligent companies are using today" - tries to establish credibility, but fails to make a specific case for drupal (many companies use something else)
2. "easy-to-use mindset" - what is it, and why haven't I seen it in the two years i have been looking at drupal for my organization?
3. "a little time .. powerful and efficient" - I believe drupal requires quite some capacity in Php and templating/css to do something useful
4. "free, easy and incredibly flexible" - all cms's claim such

My suggested edits in haste:
drupal is a widely used open source content management system. Its power lies in the hundreds of modules and the active community which together build fast, stable and secure websites for any need.

me is marcomms manager - thanks to the drafter, and to the developer I work with who said "drupal is much more powerful" - why get a Smart when you can get a Hummer? ;)

((confusion whether manager is website manager or the marcomms manager who controls the budget?))

Amazon’s picture

Birdmanx35, nice improvements to developers one. Read it out loud to any technical people you know and see what they think.

I'll review the other two for you.

Amazon’s picture

Feedback on managers 'elevator pitch'

Managers like Drupal because.

  1. The Drupal community has a vibrant marketplace of ideas. Managers greatly value that they can have a two way conversation with the community to share, refine, and implement their ideas. This is typically not possible with commercial software for modest budgets.
  2. It's free to use and has no license fees, which allows the their business to growth without painful restrictions.
  3. It support multiple sites so they can keep adding new sites easily and only have to maintain one installation
  4. There is a strong community of developers they can rely on, so they can replace their own internal programming projects and reduce their risk and cost of keeping their website up.
  5. Drupal has fine grained access control so they can control what privileges users have. In particular, they can control access to content for business roles from anonymous users to chairwoman of the board of directors. In short, Drupal works the way their business works.
  6. The growth in popularity of social software means everyone in the organization has a new business idea. Drupal's module system for features means it's likely that new features are already available for download or can be developed inexpensively.
birdmanx35’s picture

I'd like to edit that, and I certainly could, into it- however, at what point should I just hand this off to the marketing group to fix it? I mean, these changes aren't just changes, they are transformations.

Webchick, should I make the changes, or what? I certainly can, I just don't know if that's okay or not.

birdmanx35’s picture

FileSize
1.22 KB

Attached is a revised Managers.txt that includes the original and a revised version with some of the suggestions included.

birdmanx35’s picture

Status: Needs review » Closed (fixed)

Closed, as per the task.

BioALIEN’s picture

Thanks birdmanx35, having read through all of your pitches, I couldn't resist posting to stamp my +1

Sorry I couldn't be of help earlier in the task!

Caleb G2’s picture

Good work. Besides the obvious benefit of having simple, concise, and targeted 'elevator pitches' to put in promotional materials/discussions, thinking about Drupal from the perspective of benefits-it-has-for-varying-audiences -- is very likely to have the trickle down effect of helping to keep Drupal's development cycles more user-driven than it would be otherwise. :-)

As an aside, I've had good results from referring to Drupal as a "framework" rather than a "Content Management System (or even worse a "CMS"). The people I'm talking with seem to more immediately comprehend what Drupal is this way. I'm guessing because "framework" is a concept they already understand, whereas "Content management system/CMS" is not. A seemingly small thing, but it's allowed me to dive right into explaining Drupal itself rather than having to remedially "educate" people about what a "content management system" beforehand.

ugerhard’s picture

If added a handbook page for these elevator pitches at http://drupal.org/node/220314