Positioning your Open Source Project and Commercial Product for Fun and Profit

Open source businesses commit themselves to building both a vibrant community of open source users as well as a profitable customer base. Sure, the open source project can drive commercial adoption,but the profile and needs of open source users are fundamentally different from the profile and priorities of a good commercial customer. If, as an open source business, you want to effectively grow both community use and revenue, you need to understand the profile, needs and pain points unique to their open source software users as well as the profile, needs and pain points unique to their commercial customers — and understand how the two profiles both overlap and diverge. In this talk, Emily Omier will show attendees how to position their open source project and commercial product(s) so that each one has a unique message and clearly defined ideal user profile, while also developing an umbrella positioning and narrative for the entire company. Attendees will leave with a framework for how to work out the positioning for both open source and commercial products, as well as an understanding of why it matters and what to do once they’ve figured out the positioning basics.