RE: website: say what Guix is at the very top

["Cook, Malcolm" <MEC@stowers.org>]

Pjotr, that was excellently put!

I entirely agree that with the right educational materials you are going to see have the possibility of appealing to other groups/cultures/biases.

Having a section for each of the 2**3 type of user might be the perfect compromise.

Perhaps try to appeal to each audience not with "the first foo to bar" language, but rather the language of use cases, such as:

	As an administrator of a general purpose HPC cluster, I can focus on networking optimizations ("the last mile", I/O, CUDA, performance, permissions, interesting massively parallel  etc) rather than keeping up-to-date with every last scientific application.

	Guix's garbage collection capabilities remove the guess-work from deleting "old" versions of libraries from my installation!

	As an system administrator, solving the dependency hell of end-user applications should not be my problem!  Guix puts this problem where it belongs - in the hand of application specialists.

	As an sysadmin administrator, with guix I am removed from the politics of when to update an application!

	Documenting what applications are installed used to be a separate problem from that of installing them.   With GUIX, performing the installation makes them appear in my software catalog.  No more worries about inconsistencies!

	As a user of advanced scientific applications, I am now in a position to deploy which applications I need as I see fit, and have the upstream community support to share the tooling. 

	As a bioinformatics developer, the same tools I use to install application environments can be used to deploy advanced workflows with the same level of confidence.

Does this strike a sweet spot?

~malcolm_cook@stowers.org

 > -----Original Message-----
 > From: Guix-devel [mailto:guix-devel-bounces+mec=stowers.org@gnu.org]
 > On Behalf Of Pjotr Prins
 > Sent: Monday, January 29, 2018 1:37 AM
 > To: myglc2@gmail.com
 > Cc: guix-devel@gnu.org; sirgazil <lizagris@protonmail.com>
 > Subject: Re: website: say what Guix is at the very top
 > 
 > On Sun, Jan 28, 2018 at 11:14:15PM -0500, myglc2@gmail.com wrote:
 > > > I’m not a fan of sales messages and that kind of language
 > > > (“introducing”, “the first foo to do bar”, etc); I also don’t like that
 > > > these are all worded negatively, which is something we should avoid.
 > >
 > > OK but keep in mind that we have very little time to capture a
 > > prospective user's attention. You normally do this by saying what is
 > > unique about a product and what problem it solves.  This is my attempt
 > > at points that might convince a sysadmin and/or user to try
 > > Guix/GuixSD. We can make it less salesy. But are the points wrong?  Is
 > > something missing? Are there better points to make?
 > 
 > The case is a bit complicated here. Not only do we present two
 > products we also have multiple audiences. The current website (in the
 > true GNU spirit) addresses hackers. That works because Guix was WIP
 > and needed more of those. The hacker spirit has served us and still
 > serves us.
 > 
 > But to popularize Guix we have at least two other audiences. The first
 > one 'sysadmins' and 'devops' is an important one because we need to
 > get Guix on systems they control. This proves to be a hard sell in my
 > experience.  Mostly, I think, because sysadmins are not aware of the
 > benefits - or simply don't want to be aware. No kidding, I have
 > encountered that a few times.
 > 
 > Then there are end-users and developers who can use Guix for their
 > purposes and it would liberate them.
 > 
 > The net benefit for all is gaining control, reproducibility and
 > (hopefully) saving time.
 > 
 > I.e., to have a successful sales pitch you'll need to address 2*3=6
 > targets.
 > 
 > I have a suspicion that we are inclined as hackers to go by merit.
 > I.e., Guix is superior so we'll win. History has proven this is
 > usually not the right stance.
 > 
 > I am happy George wants to address this. I think we should be fully
 > receptive.
 > 
 > Maybe we should add new pages:
 > 
 > 1. Guix for sysadmins and devops
 > 2. Guix for end users and organisations
 > 
 > And take them by the hand.
 > 
 > Pj.
 > 
 > --