Interesting article by David Rosenberg on the fact that there appears to be a shortage of open source marketers. When I joined MySQL, I had a lot of discussions with the founders about how to build a strong team and what type of background would be appropriate for open source marketing. Unfortunately, it was clear that there simply weren't a lot of open source marketers out there. There were only one or two successful open source companies and there was no "deep bench" to draw from. So instead, I recruited from the commercial software industry, drawing from people who had experience marketing to developers and DBAs. From what David reports, and from the number of recruiters who call me looking for contacts, it sounds like there are a lot of openings out there in open source startups. My recommendation to the recruiters is to hire folks who have been successful in new categories, as opposed to ten or fifteen years of traditional enterprise applications. The key attribute is to be able to creatively figure out how to build and promote a business that doesn't conflict with open source values. Sounds easy, right?
- InfoWorld: Where are all the open source marketers?
Just FYI, it's Dave Rosenberg, not Rosenfield. Dave's a great guy and we sponsored the research he did that formed the basis of his Release 1.0 series.
Posted by: Steven Smith | August 24, 2005 at 04:27 PM
Doh! My mistake. I have corrected this.
Posted by: ZUrlocker | August 31, 2005 at 11:30 AM