I'll be hosting a Meetup to talk about branding at Apache and at our projects, open source trademarks, and other brainstorming ideas for getting the good message out about the Apache way.

Apache Branding And Trademarks Meetup

Come join me - Shane Curcuru, VP, Brand Management at the ASF - for a meetup to discuss Apache branding and trademark issues. We can cover basic trademark issues and proper use, talk through issues with Apache project brands, brainstorm ideas for better presenting Apache projects and communities to the public.

Wednesday night, 9-November, 8pm - 10pm in Salon F

Add this Meetup to your Crowdvine / Connect schedule on the website.

Interested people: please feel free to add your name below, or simply email trademarks@apache.org if you're interested in attending, or if you have ideas to talk about or topics you'd like to see covered.

See the official listing of all the Meetups in the conference schedule.

Potential Discussion Items

• General discussion: what are trademarks, and why are they important? It's your identity: the only thing that the ASF truly can keep is it's name - our permissive software license ensures that third parties can take virtually everything else we create - the only thing we insist on keeping control of our own brand(s).
• What does/should the Apache brand mean? I.e. what do people think "Apache" means, and how can we tell that story to the world to better improve our ability to provide software for the public good.
• Improve FAQ documentation, to make it simpler for third parties to understand what appropriate uses of our marks are (anything we can explain in our public policies or FAQs make it simpler when asking questions - just send the link)
• Improve / suggest best practice ideas and documentation for our projects - both simplifying and better explaining how to treat trademarks, as well as ideas and potential resources for our projects to better be able to promote their communities.
• Last feedback and review of Corporate Linking requirements guidelines: http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/linking.html
• Use private JIRA instance to track trademarks@ requests and major issues (suggestions appreciated for a specific workflow to use for this - both for PMC issues to trademarks@ and official permissions requests from third parties).
• Ideas for better managing our list of registered trademarks - ensuring we publicize the list (in an easy fashion) for others, and ensuring we manage renewal or application dates
• Ensure main feather graphic has TM on it (in various places)
• Review projects treatment of Project Branding Requirements (i.e. who's still outstanding)
• Find graphics-skilled volunteers who can help organize, improve, and create better versions of project graphics (along with adding TM's to main project logos)