After five years of being involved in Pharo, mostly by developing Moose, I recently joined officially the Pharo Board. This is a responsibility I take seriously.
One of the points I will focus on, and likely stress everyone with, is Pharo marketing. I believe Pharo has reached the point at which marketing is crucial. It is already a sustainable and flourishing project mainly fueled by highly motivated and skilled innovators and some early adopters. The time has come to think about how to cross the famous chasm towards the majority of developers.
Marketing, like any other meaningful thing, requires design. Design requires feedback. And feedback requires time. That is why this endeavor is better started sooner rather than later.
And, yes, marketing can be meaningful, but only when we live what we sell. Pharo does offer a fantastic opportunity because when people talk about it, you can clearly see their eyes blinking. This reveals both value and values that are packaged deep in Pharo.
We just have to capitalize on that, and I want to start by making explicit what makes Pharo unique and valuable. We might think of various things, but we do not yet have a concerted message. This message, and I will aim at one single message, has to transpire in everything we do: from the way we design the code, to the concepts we adopt in the language, to the frameworks we build on top, to the developer and user experience, and to the stories we tell about Pharo.
This is exciting, but it requires team effort. This is where you come in. We want your energy outside of pure coding. Stories are particularly important, because at the end, this is what marketeers do. They sell through stories. If you are a Pharo contributor you are very likely a marketeer given that you just cannot stop talking about it. And demoing it. We look for Pharo stories that make your eyes blink. We want to know what you think is important to talk about.
More concrete proposals will come in the near future, but until then, please feel free to chip in your ideas.