Call to action - volunteers for openHAB "marketing"

[Oliver2 (Oliver)]

List of volunteers, areas of engagement:
@stamate_viorel, all areas
@bartus, videos
@timo12357, positioning and other areas
@jlemmer , description of openHAB

Ideas:

• rework website to address new users by providing our USPs, guide them in the process from the first visit, retrieving first information on possibilities, installation, customisation

@bartus

Youtube Shorts / IG stories - 1 or 2 minute clips showing (quickly) step-by-step how to do simple beginner (or more advanced) tasks in openHAB, i.e. setting up a Hue light, connecting OH to GHome, building a quick widget into a new dashboard, etc - without getting too in the weeds of descriptions or caveats. Pros: Relatively simple to make by anyone, lower effort than full-length videos, reach a larger audience quickly, highlight best features of OH, usable as “Getting Started” clips on OH homepage. Cons: May not get into all the details of set up, but should still allow the viewer to get started down the path, with support from the forums.

@bartus

Idea #2 - Outreach via our subreddit (www.reddit.com/r/openHAB ) - use it to post ideas, how-tos, showcase your setup, but more importantly, interact with existing posts via comments and replies. Cross-post openHAB related content to r/smarthome and other home automation subs, in order to get more “eyes” looking at OH.

@jlemmer

The homepage does not really show that OH has a vivid community and what are people do and achive with OH. I love the weekly newsletter with some featured postings from the forum. But to get this newsletter you have to subscribe to it first. How about featuring the postings from the newsletter on the homepage, too and write some testimonials, short overviews on already implemented solutions, have some pictures of dashboard users created with a short description what they are used for and rotate them, so that a new visitor sees, that OH is widely used and covers all aspects of home automation you can think of?

@jlemmer

More complex would be “showcases”, like already discussed in the other thread, based on a little set of often used bindings and addons that fulfill some typical basic needs, described and accompanies by a step-by-step guide leaving out everything not necessary to score the goal but always recalling that e.g. instead of a z-wave device a Homematic or Zigbee device could be used, too, and that the concept of OH has the advantage that, as we are talking about items in the end, the goals from this guide could also be achived when using another technology following it from the point where the necessary items are defined.

Collection of USPs

• vendor-independent home automation solution, 100% royalty-free, no monthly fees
  (this means the user gets a platform which is open to new other brands as opposed to a closed shop solution like Bosch where they might try to avoid supporting their competitors)
• single point of control for more than 4000 devices and services from numerous vendors.
  (we already support 3100 things plus can be added more as we have a generic http binding where you can literally integrate an unlimited number of webservices
• platform independent (Server runs on Raspberry Pi OS, Linux, Windows, macOS, Docker, Synology, etc., App available for Android and iOS)
• low system requirements, a Raspberry Pi 4 (4GB) will do
• automatic installation for Pi to reduce manual interaction to almost zero
• pre-defined GUI for a quick start
• highly customizable GUI for all device types (PC, tablet and mobile phone)
• Wizard for creating simple rules (“when X or Y happen, do A and/or B”)
• support of common scripting languages (Blockly, JS, Ruby, Python, Groovy, Java, Node-Red) to create complex rules
• cloud access free of charge
• Fully respects your privacy (no telemetry or data collection, no ads, no hidden backdoors.
• 100% open source, built by home automation enthusiasts for the love of home automation, not for profit)
• Rigorous/standardized process in creating 2 releases per year, updates and adding new features
• highly motivated and responsive community, detailed documentation available
• …

ACTIONS:
@Oliver2 : add guide for new users to our home page which covers in an easy way and less technical language the whole „onboarding process“ from installation, to adding bindings/things/items and finally end with GUI rule. This guide will by intention not cover various possibilites (that is already done by our existing doc). It will cover just one, which is the easiest one.
At the end of the guide there will be a section “What next?” which helps the user understanding other features of openhab (persistency, scripting, etc) and can be seen as the glue to our documentation.