Best way to announce things?

[Jonathan Roberts]

Hi all,

I'd like some ideas from people. Fedora does *loads* of cool stuff
that isn't just development work, but community enabling work. While I
think the interviews work well to promote the development, and FWN
does a great job of documenting how the development happens and all
the internal goings on in the community, I think we need another
mechanism for letting people know about cool infrastructure and
community enabling stuff that goes on.

Things I have in mind needing some kind of attention are the new
collaboration server; fedorapeople.org; the open build tools;
transifex; publican etc etc etc

For publican we put up a "press release" on red hat's press blog, and
hopefully when we get news.fedoraproject.org sorted we can put those
sorts of announcements on there too. But is this the best way to do
things? Or is there another approach we could take? There's no need in
my mind for two approaches to be mutually exclusive either, one could
compliment the other. But I want to make sure we're doing the best we
can and getting the most attention we can for all the *awesome*
extra-development stuff that goes on!

Hope everyone is having a nice day!

Jon

[Marc Wiriadisastra]

On Thu, 2008-02-21 at 11:38 +0000, Jonathan Roberts wrote:
>  Hi all,
>  
>  I'd like some ideas from people. Fedora does *loads* of cool stuff
>  that isn't just development work, but community enabling work. While I
>  think the interviews work well to promote the development, and FWN
>  does a great job of documenting how the development happens and all
>  the internal goings on in the community, I think we need another
>  mechanism for letting people know about cool infrastructure and
>  community enabling stuff that goes on.
>  
>  Things I have in mind needing some kind of attention are the new
>  collaboration server; fedorapeople.org; the open build tools;
>  transifex; publican etc etc etc
>  
>  For publican we put up a "press release" on red hat's press blog, and
>  hopefully when we get news.fedoraproject.org sorted we can put those
>  sorts of announcements on there too. But is this the best way to do
>  things? Or is there another approach we could take? There's no need in
>  my mind for two approaches to be mutually exclusive either, one could
>  compliment the other. But I want to make sure we're doing the best we
>  can and getting the most attention we can for all the *awesome*
>  extra-development stuff that goes on!
>  
>  Hope everyone is having a nice day!
>  
>  Jon
>   
I remember ages ago that there was discussion of a wiki page that
pointed to a whole heap of e-marketing links or something. I'm not sure
if that page has ever been created.

Regards,

Marc

[Jonathan Roberts]

>  I think we should use news.fp.o extensively and integrate it into
> the
>   front page via a RSS feed. Other major announcements can go to
>   fedora-announce list. Things like publican for example. We should
>   probably drop mails to journalists directly which we have not been doing
>   yet. 
I was wondering more about the format they should take rather than
where - though I totally agree with your comments here :)

I'm not sure what other formats we could consider to a press release
tbh, but I just wanted to make sure we were using the best methods at
our disposal...

Jon

[Rahul Sundaram]

Jonathan Roberts wrote:
>  Hi all,
>  
>  I'd like some ideas from people. Fedora does *loads* of cool stuff
>  that isn't just development work, but community enabling work. While I
>  think the interviews work well to promote the development, and FWN
>  does a great job of documenting how the development happens and all
>  the internal goings on in the community, I think we need another
>  mechanism for letting people know about cool infrastructure and
>  community enabling stuff that goes on.
>  
>  Things I have in mind needing some kind of attention are the new
>  collaboration server; fedorapeople.org; the open build tools;
>  transifex; publican etc etc etc
>  
>  For publican we put up a "press release" on red hat's press blog, and
>  hopefully when we get news.fedoraproject.org sorted we can put those
>  sorts of announcements on there too. But is this the best way to do
>  things? Or is there another approach we could take? There's no need in
>  my mind for two approaches to be mutually exclusive either, one could
>  compliment the other. But I want to make sure we're doing the best we
>  can and getting the most attention we can for all the *awesome*
>  extra-development stuff that goes on!
>  
>  Hope everyone is having a nice day! 
I think we should use news.fp.o extensively and integrate it into the 
front page via a RSS feed. Other major announcements can go to 
fedora-announce list. Things like publican for example. We should 
probably drop mails to journalists directly which we have not been doing 
yet.

Rahul

[Nicu Buculei]

Jonathan Roberts wrote:
>  I'd like some ideas from people. Fedora does *loads* of cool
> stuff
>  that isn't just development work, but community enabling work. While I
>  think the interviews work well to promote the development, and FWN
>  does a great job of documenting how the development happens and all
>  the internal goings on in the community, I think we need another
>  mechanism for letting people know about cool infrastructure and
>  community enabling stuff that goes on. 
Please define "people", is about the people in the Fedora world or 
general public, people who don't follow the happenings in Fedora?
The approach to take may differ depending on the target.

-- 
nicu :: http://nicubunu.ro :: http://nicubunu.blogspot.com
Cool Fedora wallpapers: http://fedora.nicubunu.ro/wallpapers/
Open Clip Art Library: http://www.openclipart.org
my Fedora stuff: http://fedora.nicubunu.ro

[Jonathan Roberts]

On 21/02/2008, Nicu Buculei <nicu_fedora(a)nicubunu.ro&gt; wrote:
>  Jonathan Roberts wrote:
>   > I'd like some ideas from people. Fedora does *loads* of cool stuff
>   > that isn't just development work, but community enabling work. While I
>   > think the interviews work well to promote the development, and FWN
>   > does a great job of documenting how the development happens and all
>   > the internal goings on in the community, I think we need another
>   > mechanism for letting people know about cool infrastructure and
>   > community enabling stuff that goes on.
>
>
>  Please define "people", is about the people in the Fedora world or
>   general public, people who don't follow the happenings in Fedora?
>   The approach to take may differ depending on the target. 
Sorry - first use was intended to refer to the people reading this
list. Second use was intended to refer anybody not already following
carefully the goings on of the fedora project: that is general public
and press/lay press...

Does that help?

Jon

[Rahul Sundaram]

Jonathan Roberts wrote:
> > I think we should use news.fp.o extensively and integrate it into
> the
> >  front page via a RSS feed. Other major announcements can go to
> >  fedora-announce list. Things like publican for example. We should
> >  probably drop mails to journalists directly which we have not been doing
> >  yet.
>  
>  I was wondering more about the format they should take rather than
>  where - though I totally agree with your comments here :)
>  
>  I'm not sure what other formats we could consider to a press release
>  tbh, but I just wanted to make sure we were using the best methods at
>  our disposal... 
I don't prefer press release like announcements in community forums. We 
should be casual, highlight not only the work done but also the people 
doing the work and let Red Hat do the official press releases. No need 
to duplicate that effort.

Rahul

[Karsten Wade]

On Thu, 2008-02-21 at 12:28 +0000, Jonathan Roberts wrote:
>  > I think we should use news.fp.o extensively and integrate it
> into the
>  >  front page via a RSS feed. Other major announcements can go to
>  >  fedora-announce list. Things like publican for example. We should
>  >  probably drop mails to journalists directly which we have not been doing
>  >  yet.
>  
>  I was wondering more about the format they should take rather than
>  where - though I totally agree with your comments here :)
>  
>  I'm not sure what other formats we could consider to a press release
>  tbh, but I just wanted to make sure we were using the best methods at
>  our disposal... 
You are asking about format, which means:

* Style of writing
* Tooling (file format)

For the style of writing, I agree with Rahul's suggestion of a casual
tone.  We seem to be going down that direction quite well.

For tooling, we have a very cool and very simple to use method for
writing 'press releases' that can be translated.  Getting global
coverage is going to require translation, at a minimum.  Some
announcements might need to be rewritten from scratch in other languages
because of idioms, etc.

Anyone feel like learning to use this press release tool, then writing
up how-to on the wiki?

If you don't have a CVS account you can use anonymous access:

export CVS_RSH=ssh 
export CVSROOT=:pserver:[e-mail]:/cvs/docs
cvs -z3 login
cvs -z3 co press-release docs-common

Actually, you might not need docs-common, I disrecall.  It uses it's own
custom DTD, so it has a very small set of tags.  It is mainly plain text
that can easily be pulled in for translation. :)

The point would be to follow a rough process like this:

1. Collaborate on a list of what to highlight (ongoing)
2. Collaborate via the wiki to write up draft => ready to release
3. Copy and paste into a press-release shell
4. Finish conversion into press-release and keep these in a version
control system

- Karsten
-- 
Karsten Wade, Developer Community Mgr.
Dev Fu : http://developer.redhatmagazine.com
Fedora : http://quaid.fedorapeople.org
gpg key : AD0E0C41