So I have been looking at forex for nearly a year. I have tried to read and understand the concepts. Lately I have been convinced of needing professional help and getting a broker.However there is also a lack of trust on just handing money out to someone that you are not confident of his credentials. However sometimes is the nature of the beast, and the beast pays off.Getting through this first fear can be challenging but I think the best step is to look for people that are in the same position as one. The next step is also to understand that this is the same as a stock or bond. Except there is a larger risk.After all I hope that the market keeps going up but I think if this is not the case forex could be a good way to keep making money even if crisis hits hard. The strategy however is to get people more knowledgable than you and start getting into this world.So far I have taken some steps that include using the tools that I already got to find out about forex and forex brokers. First stop was the linkedin answers site. A site I trust to have better advice on how to get more professional help. Then is the al mighty google with  sites that could get my foot on the door. Finally there is the forums from forex noobs and other amateurish forex sites and e-books.I think that in the end all this reasources doesnt pay off if there is no first step. Here is where you need to say enough and jump in. Once in, then the real work can start learning first and earning later.
New Media and Free Software
With the proliferation of New media and the need of more official channels to be communicate the project and innovation to the people out there. First you got big media campaigns that make also a good PR case for many of the vendors like IBM Blue commercials, Apple switch adds and also Microsoft infamous Jerry Singfield commercials.
Mac vs. PCOther vendors that have taken video on a different phase is Google, making tons of videos available on it’s own channels — google video and youtube. Google has been able to constantly make headlines, demos and many other ways to grab the attention of the crowd consistently.These prove to be fairly popular however they also are very expensive. Open source on the other side have tried to make some efforts like Novell’s monikers of Apple switch commercial with a Spin.Mozilla also very interesting videos including Mozilla Japan constant videos about the products, news and tutorials. They have innovate marketing wise in different ways. Unfortunately the videos haven’t resound as much since they were done in japanese. You can still see a huge traffic coming from those videos.OpenOffice.org have had interesting videos being produced now and then, as well as Videos produced by users that have talked about OpenOffice.org. However to make it really take off there should be a more consistant roadmap that marketing wise it can generate value for specific areas. Either the community, the product and or the brand should be consistantly represented.Is being proven that if we can generate value consistantly overtime we could generate some better understanding of the community. Having a clean vision can make the difference between delivering a good result. Here is where a leader in the community will play a big difference but also good creative tallent will be important as well.OpenOffice.org advantages are clear for internal members of the community, however outsiders might not be aware of the service, that this community brings to everyone.Having this service consistantly delivered and promoted will make OOo really step above the current stage.
deadlines, deadlines deadlines….
The year has just started but a lot of efforts are already finalizing. So we have a couple of big deadlines. One for the documentation and the other for the product. The product being the OpenOffice.org product you use at your house. The OpenOffice.org spanish just finalize the pootle tree earlier this noon. The next step is to upstream it and wait for the second cycle of the localization somewhere in february.Things learned during this cycle? Well we definetly need to put our strenght on the translation memory and get some glossary of our own. This might help many and make it easier to localize. Sungloss is ok but is not open enough and maybe having our own Sungloss might make it more usable. The next deadline is for the OOoAuthors project. This makes the OOoAuthors now our primary project to finalize before January 15th.The list includes more than 15 documents. Some people came back to claim their documents back but this still had most of the documents orphans.
2009 for OpenOffice.org
At the end of 07 I decide to point most of my energe to the OpenOffice.org project. Increasing my presence and entreprising new things. I put a goal after coming back from Barcelona. To have the Open for business project a reality. A few days before OOoCon2008 with the release of OOo 3.0. The Open for business project was launched.Right after I left to europe to start enterprising the idea and presenting it to governments. This generated a great relationship with many countries in South america and Spain. Right now we are still about to get our first relationship officialized but work has already started with some projects and I think this will be benefitial to everyone.Also I start pushing to become a leader or co-leader of other openoffice.org projects like the BizDev project and the Education project. Both projects have been very benefitial for the rest of us.The first stage is to improve the visibility of the site, make it more appealing to browse and concentrate on providing better content. After these is settle the next step should be about having programs and processes to increase the level of volunteers and communicators. Making it easy to stay in touch and scheduling activities to understand the liveliness of the community.At the moment the site has increase their look and feel and soon we will also have better content to browse.Having project surveys might be another way to go about it but at the end of the day visibility is where is at. Â Being in touch with the podcasting community as well as having a good strategy to promot our project is a great way to start. Having newsletters digged and slashdotted is also a great way to gain attention. Since then I have gather a marketing team to help us settle the framework for this visibility and help us achieve better workflow of the new members.I think the future is really bright in 2009 with a lot to do but hopefully with finally a large amount of profitability.
Ideas, thoughts and Free Software 