Brand building in the open source community begs a different strategy than we often apply for our clients in developing their brands. Frequently we leave the branding and marketing as an afterthought, as we push forward on the engineering side to develop new and innovative tools for our clients. Too much emphasis is placed on word of mouth marketing, and hoping your reputation will organically precede you. Building an Open Source company’s reputation intentionally is crucial, not only from a business development perspective, but also as a mechanism for attracting new talent. A strong cohesive identity attracts candidates with passion for your company’s mission and self-selects out candidates who are not strong cultural fits.

That’s all well and good, but how can you adopt the marketing 101 playbook to the open source world -- where traditional heavy-handed tactics are gauche and you don’t really own your software or even it’s brand. (Hello big blue drupal drop!) Join us to learn some lessons pulled from both marketers and reputation professionals fighting in the open source trenches, as well as lessons learned from the nonprofit sector where soft reputation is king.

Learn how to formulate an effective and differentiating message about “Who you are” and a reputation you are proud of, can stand behind, and that resonates with your clients. We’ll walk through a process for realizing your own, true identity, and outline steps for bringing that message both to the outside world and the open source community.