Some marketing tips from Linux magazine

[Jonathan Roberts]

Hey all,

I had the opportunity to ask Joe Cassad from Linux Magazine about how
they come across ideas for stories and articles, and what Fedora can
do to make it easier for them to find stories about Fedora. The most
important part of the response I got was this

Me:
>   * In an ideal world, how would you like to go about getting
>  information about a project like Fedora when trying to find material
>  for new articles? Essentially, what can Fedora do for you to make your
>  job easier!?
>  
Joe:
I'm not sure where you are on this now, but one thing I have noticed in
the past is that it is difficult to get good documentation on Fedora
until after the release. If I don't get to see a detailed description
of highlights or new features until the release notes appear, this task
of finding good article topics can't start until the release. It then
takes a couple months to get an article and a couple more months to
edit and print the magazine. If there were a way to get better
documentation before the release, that would help a lot. I don't know
if you're having to content with non-disclosure strategies here, so
maybe this isn't possible.

Me:

>  Do you know about our FeatureList page?
>  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/9/FeatureList
>  
Joe:
OK. That's useful to know about. I'll watch that list. The important
part is the description. Some of these features have useful
descriptions some are not as easy to understand at a glance.

---------------

What do people think? Maybe the SSS could help us here? And the
FeatureList could be promoted more/cleaned up by marketing or docs
people?

Best wishes,

Jon

[Rahul Sundaram]

Jonathan Roberts wrote:

>  Joe:
>  OK. That's useful to know about. I'll watch that list. The important
>  part is the description. Some of these features have useful
>  descriptions some are not as easy to understand at a glance.
>  
>  ---------------
>  
>  What do people think? Maybe the SSS could help us here? And the
>  FeatureList could be promoted more/cleaned up by marketing or docs
>  people? 
Which descriptions don't make sense either in the summary or after 
reading the specification. I think these are fairly good descriptions 
considering they are essentially developer specifications.

Rahul

[Jef Spaleta]

On Thu, Mar 6, 2008 at 2:20 PM, Rahul Sundaram
<sundaram(a)fedoraproject.org&gt; wrote:
>   Which descriptions don't make sense either in the summary or
> after
>   reading the specification. I think these are fairly good descriptions
>   considering they are essentially developer specifications. 

How about this as a compromise....
What if we leave the feature process development driven.. but we hook
in a way for someone who is perusing the feature summaries to easily
drop a comment or a note if they want a layperson explanation.  The
notes would go to a marketing group..maybe even this list...an answer
is formulated and sent back to the person who asked the the
explanation and additionally linked in to the feature summary on the
feature list without disturbing the development oriented information
there.

This might even be useful in figuring out where the next developer
interview opportunities are.

-jef

[Karsten Wade]

On Fri, 2008-03-07 at 11:20 -0900, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
>  On Thu, Mar 6, 2008 at 2:20 PM, Rahul Sundaram
>  <sundaram(a)fedoraproject.org&gt; wrote:
>  >  Which descriptions don't make sense either in the summary or after
>  >  reading the specification. I think these are fairly good descriptions
>  >  considering they are essentially developer specifications.
>  
>  
>  How about this as a compromise....
>  What if we leave the feature process development driven.. but we hook
>  in a way for someone who is perusing the feature summaries to easily
>  drop a comment or a note if they want a layperson explanation.  The
>  notes would go to a marketing group..maybe even this list...an answer
>  is formulated and sent back to the person who asked the the
>  explanation and additionally linked in to the feature summary on the
>  feature list without disturbing the development oriented information
>  there.
>  
>  This might even be useful in figuring out where the next developer
>  interview opportunities are. 
+1 ... sort of like a press inquiries address, but offered as part of an
already useful document?  That way we are asking for targeted questions
and not inviting wide-open requests that are mainly covered in the
features pages.

We could also find a way to cross-tie the SSS with specific features, so
one has a press-friendly approach and there is a reciprocating link to
find the deeper developer-oriented content.

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

[Jonathan Roberts]

On 08/03/2008, Karsten 'quaid' Wade <kwade(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
>   On Fri, 2008-03-07 at 11:20 -0900, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
>   > On Thu, Mar 6, 2008 at 2:20 PM, Rahul Sundaram
>   > <sundaram(a)fedoraproject.org&gt; wrote:
>   > >  Which descriptions don't make sense either in the summary or after
>   > >  reading the specification. I think these are fairly good descriptions
>   > >  considering they are essentially developer specifications.
>   >
>   >
>   > How about this as a compromise....
>   > What if we leave the feature process development driven.. but we hook
>   > in a way for someone who is perusing the feature summaries to easily
>   > drop a comment or a note if they want a layperson explanation.  The
>   > notes would go to a marketing group..maybe even this list...an answer
>   > is formulated and sent back to the person who asked the the
>   > explanation and additionally linked in to the feature summary on the
>   > feature list without disturbing the development oriented information
>   > there.
>   >
>   > This might even be useful in figuring out where the next developer
>   > interview opportunities are.
>
>
>  +1 ... sort of like a press inquiries address, but offered as part of an
>   already useful document?  That way we are asking for targeted questions
>   and not inviting wide-open requests that are mainly covered in the
>   features pages.
>
>   We could also find a way to cross-tie the SSS with specific features, so
>   one has a press-friendly approach and there is a reciprocating link to
>   find the deeper developer-oriented content. 
What we need to do is get this stuff in place and let people know it exists.

I know FeatureList is aimed at developers, but Joe didn't know it
existed and I'm sure many others don't either. Even in it's current
form I'm 99% sure it's a useful document to people in that position as
it's hugely useful to me and others in doing interviews and preparing
Release Notes/Overviews.

The question is, and I guess this is the question we're meant to be
answering in Strategies and Tactics, is how do we do it!

Best wishes,

Jon

[Ian Weller]

On Thu, 6 Mar 2008, Jonathan Roberts wrote:
>  Joe:
>  I'm not sure where you are on this now, but one thing I have noticed in
>  the past is that it is difficult to get good documentation on Fedora
>  until after the release. If I don't get to see a detailed description
>  of highlights or new features until the release notes appear, this task
>  of finding good article topics can't start until the release.
>
>  ---------------
>
>  What do people think? Maybe the SSS could help us here? And the
>  FeatureList could be promoted more/cleaned up by marketing or docs
>  people? 
Maybe an official news blog-type-thing, most likely on the front page,
would help get news out to other larger Linux news sites.  (I'm not
necessarily sure if this has been attempted before already.)

Are press releases also an option?

Both could be used when announcements are made about features, new
alphas/betas are available, etc.

-- ian

[Karsten Wade]

On Thu, 2008-03-06 at 17:25 -0600, Ian Weller wrote:

>  Maybe an official news blog-type-thing, most likely on the front
> page,
>  would help get news out to other larger Linux news sites.  (I'm not
>  necessarily sure if this has been attempted before already.) 
news.fedoraproject.org is in the works, mainly for just that job.

>  Are press releases also an option? 
Yes, but best is press.redhat.com; it's a blog output, several of us in
the Marketing SIG can post to it as "the Fedora team", and it is watched
by a growing number of technical and other press.  It's somewhere I'd
"post also", that is, output a press release to news.fp.o and make sure
a copy gets to press.r.c.

>  Both could be used when announcements are made about features, new
>  alphas/betas are available, etc. 
Maybe as we get into Alpha, John could post about accepted features to
the news.fp.o blog?  Seems like a good fit for the Feature Wrangler. :)

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