Managing Research Software Projects: Marketing

<div align="center" style="padding-top: 2rem;">
  <p>Managing Research Software Projects</p>
  <h1>Marketing</h1>
  <p>
    <img src="../files/codebender.svg" alt="logo" width="20%" />
  </p>
</div>

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## Recalibrating

- Jess now needs to redefine "productive"

1. What do we need?
   - And who is "we", exactly?
2. How are we going to build it?
3. What *aren't* we going to build?
4. Who's going to do the work?
5. How will people know?

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## The Good News

<div class="flex-row">
  <div class="flex-col">
    <p align="center">
      <img src="../files/managers-path.jpg" alt="The Manager's Path cover" width="50%" />
    </p>
  </div>
  <div class="flex-col">
    <ul>
      <li>You don't have to invent this yourself</li>
      <li>[<a href="../bibliography/#Fournier2017">Fournier2017</a>]</li>
      <li><a href="https://www.askamanager.org/">https://www.askamanager.org/</a></li>
    </ul>
  </div>
</div>

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## On Beyond Engineering

<p>
<table>
  <tr>
    <th>Department</th>
    <th>Also Called</th>
    <th>What It Does</th>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Marketing</td>
    <td>Awareness</td>
    <td>Making people aware of who you're trying to help and how</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Sales</td>
    <td>Adoption</td>
    <td>Getting people from "this looks interesting" to "we're using it"</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Support</td>
    <td>Success</td>
    <td>Removing roadblocks and providing help</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Human Resources</td>
    <td>Community</td>
    <td>Peer support and gathering feedback</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Product Management</td>
    <td>---</td>
    <td>Translate user pain into feature lists</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Project Management</td>
    <td>---</td>
    <td>Who should be working on what right now and what's stopping them</td>
  </tr>
</table>
</p>

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## Another Way to Look At It

<p>
<table>
  <tr>
    <th>Department</th>
    <th>What Risk It Addresses</th>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Marketing<br/> </td>
    <td>People don't know we exist or how we can help</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Sales<br/> </td>
    <td>It's too hard to start using what we build</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Support<br/> </td>
    <td>It's too hard to <em>keep</em> using what we build</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Human<br/>Resources</td>
    <td>We don't have the right people to do the work</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Product Management</td>
    <td>We're building the wrong thing</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Project Management</td>
    <td>People aren't working on the right things or aren't working well together</td>
  </tr>
</table>
</p>

---

## Marketing

> Making sure that the people who ought to know
> how you can make their lives better
> actually do know.

- If what you offer isn't actually useful, this relies on psychological tricks
  - Manufacturing desire
- If what you offer *is* useful, the challenges are:
  1. Thinking like someone else
  2. Being heard above the noise
- Your actual product is your grant proposals [<a href="../bibliography/#Kuchner2011">Kuchner2011</a>]
  - That's what people give you money for
- Your papers are "just" proof that you're worth funding
  - Because funders have a signal-to-noise problem too

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## You Are Not Your Users

- Person writing a paper:
  - Are the error bars right?
  - Do my co-authors agree with the conclusions?
  - Will this be accepted before someone else gets the same result?
- Person reading a paper:
  - Did the authors cite my work?
  - Does this paper support my current research direction?
  - Can I use their data or software to speed up my work?

---

## Personas

A made-up surrogate for part of your community

> Dalha, 58, is a professor in geophysics and the Dean of Science at Euphoric State University.
> She is evaluated annually on (a) how many high-citation publications faculty produce,
> (b) whether research funding is increasing year-on-year, and
> (c) how many of the university's PhD graduates are offered tenure-stream positions at top-10 schools.
> Dalha is passionate about getting more young women into STEM,
> and worried by the number of faculty and grad students
> who are leaving the university for industry.

---

## Crafting Your Message

<p> </p>
<div align="center">
  <table width="100%">
    <tr><td>For</td><td><em><u>description of target audience</u></em></td></tr>
    <tr><td>who want</td><td><em><u>statement of their needs</u></em>,</td></tr>
    <tr><td><em><u>project name</u></em></td><td></td></tr>
    <tr><td>provides</td><td><em><u>statement of key benefits</u></em>.</td></tr>
    <tr><td>Unlike</td><td><em><u>alternative solution</u></em>,</td></tr>
    <tr><td>we</td><td><em><u>key differentiator</u></em>.</td></tr>
  </table>
</div>

---

## Crafting Your Message

<p> </p>
<div align="center">
  <table width="100%">
    <tr><td>For</td><td>post-docs, junior faculty, and industry equivalents</td></tr>
    <tr><td>who want</td><td>to manage research software projects,</td></tr>
    <tr><td>this workshop</td><td></td></tr>
    <tr><td>provides</td><td>an introduction to key non-technical skills.</td></tr>
    <tr><td>Unlike</td><td>orientation sessions for new faculty and project management courses in industry,</td></tr>
    <tr><td>we</td><td>focus on topics particularly relevant to open science.</td></tr>
  </table>
</div>

---

## Personas and Pitches

Create personas and pitches for any two of the following

- Student: "What am I going to do with my life?"
- Junior researcher: "How am I going to get a permanent position?"
- Senior researcher: "How can I land my next big grant?"
- Funder: "How can I have the most impact for the least risk?"
- Provost: "How can I attract the best talent?"
- Reporter: "How can I find stories people will pay to read?"
- General public: "How can I get answers I understand?"
- Policymaker: "How can I make the right decision quickly?"