Hey everybody
I have followed this thread guite some time and I guess that we are basically on the same page here. We need to develop a brand identity and at the same time we need to keep the momentum to keep on developing a great product. I got the feeling that the first step would be trying to articulate what is already there, emotionally, social and technical. This can be the base for other discussions to come.
As we want to relaunch neos.io with a new structure and design we used this as a vehicle to get the brand discussion started again. We created some questions that were answered by the community. The answers along with some more information will be handed over to an agency (ZWEI14) to create a basic and minimalistic visual identity for the new webpage, that can later easily adapt to branding changes.
This is how I did the questionaire:
- I received a list of questions from the agency, mostly market and brand related
- We reused some of their questions and added some more, we thought to be important
- The community answered the questions
- I removed redundant answers …
- and distilled some general themes as a summary
The result you can find here. I guess some discussion would be nice 
Happy digging 
Neos Questions
— Neos in General —
What is Neos (in 4 Words)?
- multi-purpose content creation platform
- application and content management platform
- framework for content-centric web-applications
- innovative, ambitious, rebellious, modern
- A CMS people love
What does Neos do (in 1 sentence)?
- allows to easily create, manage and output content
- allows different input and output channels
- provides an excellent technical infrastructure and guidelines
- is easy to integrate with other systems and processes
- provides a good user experience for editors and developers
Why does Neos matter (in 1 sentence)?
- It is built upon a great amount of knowledge and experience
- has great concepts concerning development and integration
- has a simple web technology stack
- provides developer happiness and makes it fun to develop and integrate with
- has great concepts for creating and curating content
- provides a great user experience and therefore is fun to create and manage content with
- makes your day a little better and easier
- can be a gamechanger for the CMS world
What do you want Neos to be in the future (in 1 sentence)?
- a snappy, rock solid and highly flexible content application platform with strong conventions, good architecture and great user experience for editors & developers
- a healthy market share
- a suitable replacement for CMSs like TYPO3 CMS and Wordpress
- a foundation for enabling and embracing creativity
- a CMS with the biggest community and users
What emotion describes your relationship with Neos as a product?
- joy
- love
- passion
- friendship
- happiness
- ease
- inspiration
- pride
- trust
- fun
- ambition
- curiosity
- excitement
- motivation
- challenge
- uncertainty
— Neos for Customers —
What type of customers are currently using Neos as a product?
- clients with a need primarily for a web application coupled with some CMS functionality
- clients with fairly simple CMS needs without many editors
- previous TYPO3 CMS clients wanting a simpler editor experience
- mid sized agencies for small to medium sized websites
- Agencies and individuals that think "out of the box“
- customers having editors with non-technical or little technical background
- clients with a bad experience with other CMSes
What type of customers need to be addressed in the future?
- big customer with need for integration in other systems and processes
- web agencies and developers wanting to sell Neos and spread the word
- large brands and enterprises in order to build trust and strengthen the brand and thus get better funding
- publishers and newspapers
- gov
- companies that don’t have proper content strategy
- customers tired of current counter intuitive CMS solution
What is the easiest customer to sell Neos to and why?
- with the need for content dimensions and content delivery
- customers with the need for easy content editing via inline editing
- customers who have made bad experiences with the content editing in other CMSs
- if the customers understands that not much training is needed to edit content with Neos
- one-time projects with lower risk are easier to sell
- customers that want to work with a raw content mode
— Neos as a Product —
What are the 3 most important reasons, why a customer chooses Neos?
- editing experience and user experience
- less training for editors
- flexibility, scalability and extensibility
- “grows” with the customer
- no license cost / open source
- content dimensions
- flexible rendering to different channels
- modern and sophisticated code base
- easy to integrate with existing infrastructure and systems
- cost-efficient development
- customer trusts the trust the agency
- ability to preview and publish on multiple channels
- the association with TYPO3
What are the 3 most important reasons, why a customer does not choose Neos?
- stability issues
- editing bugs
- missing features
- missing extensions
- difficult installation
- missing trust
- young project
- small user base
- high risk because not many agencies work with Neos
- lack of name recognition
- uncertain future
- fear of maintenance costs, no LTS
- the association with TYPO3
- not having enough resources to assure stable development of Neos projects
What are other products Neos has to compete with?
- every CMS and Web Application Framework
- Drupal, TYPO3, Wordpress, Adobe CQ / AEM, prismic.io, Contentful, Magnolia, eZ publish, Sitecore, Umbraco, Sharepoint, Joomla, Pimcore
What differentiates Neos from these other products, what makes it different?
- a full fledged application framework
- more modern codebase
- open source, no license costs
- Is faster to implement and has lower implementation costs
- content repository concept
- clean, flexible
- highly focussed on editor experience and developer happiness
the community
- helping companies doing better content strategy
- gives more control over different publishing channels
- content dimensions allow A/B testing
- Neos has a lot to build upon, the others have a lot to tear apart
— Neos as a Community —
What is the Neos community (1 sentence)?
- small, dedicated, energetic, innovative, self-organizing, humble, pleasant, friendly, open-minded, motivated, extremely skilled
- developers, designers, devops, integrators, non-techies
- constantly pushing the limits
- some are developing Neos and some are interested in using it
What do you like most about the Neos community?
- common goal to create something great
- friendship
- friendly
- open-minded
- skilled
- professional
- pioneering spirit
- constructiveness
- solving difficult problems with other community members
- open discussions and transparency concerning development workflows
- even when working remotely together inspiring atmosphere
- constantly learning new thingss
- newcomers are starting to become active
What are the most important values and guidelines of the Neos community?
- trust
- openness
- constructiveness
- excellence
- being humble
- striving for the best solution
- responsibility
- helpfull
- collaborative
- reliability
- curiosity
- respect
- direct contact to (mostly) the whole community
- stay international
What is needed for a successful global Neos community?
- a shared goal of building a global community
- breaking out of the mostly German centric market
- a successful product, with a lot of
- people and projects using it transparency / guidance and clear
- processes for the production of Neos inspire and guide new
- contributors, mentoring keep the personal touch articles, blogs good
- entry points an active Neos lobby, individuals that are really
- motivated to spend a lot of energy in starting events/user
- groups/talks abroad more documentation open and welcoming atmosphere (online and offline)
You made it all the way to the bottom
