Re: [marketing] Talking points and the future of talking points

[Justin W. Flory]

Hi Ben, thanks for starting this conversation. I CC'd other lists as
well to get wider feedback on this topic.

On 4/12/19 4:41 PM, Ben Cotton wrote:
>  For F31 and beyond, I want to start a conversation about how we want
>  to produce this (or if we want to continue doing it). Do we know
>  how/if people are actually using the talking points document? My
>  observation is that Eduard and others spend a lot of time and effort
>  trying to drag content out of the working groups and it's not clear
>  that we get much value from that effort.
>   
To understand the added value of talking points, understanding why this
work happens and where people look today for this information is a
pre-requisite.

Talking points inform Fedora contributors about new things happening in
a release. Traditionally, talking points reflect priority areas of
Fedora engineering efforts. For example, in Fedora 15, we talked about
the GNOME 3 desktop and systemd[1] because those were HUGE parts of F15.
That importance was also echoed in the F15 release notes[2]. Today,
talking points seem "out of sync" with Fedora's current priority areas.

Talking points should be narrative "stories" around the technology areas
Fedora is focusing on. For the last ~10 releases or so, talking points
read more like a detailed changelog. This seems to repeat what the
Fedora Docs already produces each release. For example, consider the
distribution-wide changes section of the release notes[3].

Eduard, current Marketing Team members, and past team members have gone
to great efforts to producing these every release, but I feel like the
Project changed on the Marketing Team in the last ~10 releases.

Since the Marketing team is driven by volunteers and not paid staff, it
is easy to repeat a familiar process when there are Fedora release
deadlines to meet and you are also working another full-time job and/or
studying in school. Time spent reflecting on what is working and what is
not is cut short. The Mindshare Committee aspired to move strategic
planning from the Marketing Team and guide the team towards executing a
common marketing strategy determined by Mindshare. But I have not seen
those conversations in the Mindshare Committee yet.

The Marketing Team needs external support to be more relevant in Fedora
today. This guidance could take form of evaluating ways to better return
on value of volunteer time.

For example, what if instead of producing wiki page talking points, we
shifted to Fedora Magazine "feature profiles" that hinted at what is
coming in the next Fedora release? This would fit the "storytelling"
aspect better and requires creative skills to share this story more
widely. (This happens already in Fedora, since these types of articles
appear on the Magazine regularly. Perhaps the Marketing Team could
better tap into that process as it currently happens.)

One way to generate more ideas is to consider asking Ambassadors /
Advocates how they keep up with Fedora news today. Have we ever asked
our contributor community this? What if we designed a short
questionnaire to help inform a better strategy to guide the Marketing
Team's work and get the most value out of volunteer contributor time?

>  On a related note, the design team produces a digital ad that is
>  displayed in Red Hat offices for Fedora releases[1]. Mo asked how we
>  should get the content to them and I answered[2] that it should be
>  part of the talking points process; we should open a ticket with the
>  design team to provide the wording as we product the talking points.
>  Any disagreement or other comments?
>  
>  [1] https://pagure.io/design/issue/621
>  [2] https://pagure.io/fedora-marketing/issue/288#comment-565425
>   
I agree that this work is useful but I disagree that it should be the
responsibility of the Marketing Team to push this work. I believe this
role should be taken by the Mindshare Committee. Consider this
excerpt[4] from Mindshare responsibilities:

  Communication between teams (outreach teams rely on the work of other
  groups). Mindshare ensures all information from technical teams will
  get out in time to all outreach teams, working out also a common
  strategy with Marketing of how to communicate them outside and how to
  manage them within all outreach teams.

I think assigning this responsibility to the Marketing Team requires
that common strategy to be in place. What and how does the Marketing
Team need to communicate to the Design Team for this to happen and for
the work to be utilized by Ambassadors / Advocates? For this reason, I
think this responsibility lies within the Mindshare Committee to
coordinate between outreach teams.


This ran a little long, but I hope the feedback is useful and
constructive. Most of this comes from the benefit of hindsight for the
couple of years I led the Marketing Team and also my term serving on the
Mindshare Committee.


[1]  https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_15_talking_points
[2]  https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F15_one_page_release_notes
[3]
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora/f29/release-notes/sysadmin/Di...
[4]
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/mindshare-committee/#_responsibilities

-- 
Cheers,
Justin W. Flory
jflory7(a)gmail.com

[Mindshare] Re: [marketing] Talking points and the future of talking points

[Ben Cotton]

Justin,

Thanks for the well-considered reply. I'm going to reply out of order
delete a lot of quote for readability's sake, but I hope I address the
main substance.

On Sun, Apr 14, 2019 at 6:05 PM Justin W. Flory <jflory7(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

>  One way to generate more ideas is to consider asking Ambassadors /
>  Advocates how they keep up with Fedora news today. Have we ever asked
>  our contributor community this? What if we designed a short
>  questionnaire to help inform a better strategy to guide the Marketing
>  Team's work and get the most value out of volunteer contributor time?
>  
I'm not aware of such a survey, but I'm not sure we even need to go to
that length initially. If someone can step forward and say "I use the
Talking Points in this way" then that's something to start with. It's
not currently clear that anyone is consuming the talking points.

>  The Marketing Team needs external support to be more relevant in
> Fedora
>  today. This guidance could take form of evaluating ways to better return
>  on value of volunteer time.
>  
Yes and no. The team does need external support, but I don't think
guidance about how to better use volunteer time is very useful until
we have volunteer time to spend. Eduard, Alberto, and others have done
great work, but from what I can tell, haven't been able to devote much
time for the last few months. The lack of meetings, mailing list
traffic, and ticket traffic say to me that we don't really have any
volunteer timne to spend. A better starting point for Mindshare to
provide support would be to help recruit more contributors to the
team.

>  For example, what if instead of producing wiki page talking points,
> we
>  shifted to Fedora Magazine "feature profiles" that hinted at what is
>  coming in the next Fedora release?
>  
That might work, assuming we have people to work on them. (Arguably, a
change in focus might make contribution more appealing). But that's a
more public-facing deliverable, whereas the the talking points are
geared largely toward "internal" audiences. So we can discuss the
relative priorities of the two tasks, but it's not really a matter of
one replacing another.

>  I agree that this work is useful but I disagree that it should be
> the
>  responsibility of the Marketing Team to push this work. I believe this
>  role should be taken by the Mindshare Committee.
>     (deletia)
> What and how does the Marketing
>  Team need to communicate to the Design Team for this to happen and for
>  the work to be utilized by Ambassadors / Advocates? 
Assuming "this work" refers to the internal Red Hat ad section you
replied to, I disagree with your disagreement. Mindshare should be
setting the overall strategy, but the decision about what words should
go on the ad — and sending that along to the design team — should
belong with the marketing team. We can start with marketing opening a
design ticket, since that's how the design team has said they like to
work. If at some point Mindshare decides they want it to work another
way, then that's fine, but this seems like something that marketing
and design can agree on together.

-- 
Ben Cotton
Fedora Program Manager
TZ=America/Indiana/Indianapolis
Pronouns: he/him