ApacheCon Report

The core MarkMail development team (Ryan Grimm, John Mitchell, and myself) just returned from the ApacheCon conference in Atlanta. In between some fabulous meals, we schmoozed and spread the word about MarkMail hosting the full Apache mail archives.

We found an inventive way to get the word out. We printed a series of T-shirts, a different design for each of the most active Apache projects. The top of each shirt says "list:apache" or "list:tomcat"; something different for each project. Underneath we put the histogram chart you see on MarkMail if you perform that list-constraining search. The design looked like this:


Now, marketing people will tell you that T-shirts are an expensive give-away and something most people just throw to the back of their closet and forget about. Our theory (hope?) was that by making these shirts personal, as much about the receiver as the giver, they might be more meaningful. Happily, that's exactly what happened. People were excited to wear their project histories proudly on their chest. It sparked conversations, memories, and buzz.

Santiago Gala

We're still looking for a way to do reasonably-priced, high-quality, short-run printing. I'd love to give each person a shirt showing their own traffic histogram. "from:you"!