release notes: allegheny students

[Daniel Eiben]

Here are some of our ideas for the one page release notes.

please comment!

[Paul W. Frields]

On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 12:03:11PM -0400, Daniel Eiben wrote:
> Here are some of our ideas for the one page release notes.
>
> please comment!

Daniel, thanks for posting this.  I saw your notes in the document,
and wanted to respond to them.  However, I realized that if I
responded in that document, no one reading my email back to you would
see them -- unless they download the doc and read it.

It's much easier to simply write an email containing your notes, and
let people respond directly by email.  It lowers the bar for
participation, which means you'll get more people replying and feeding
off your ideas.

I'll post the relevant sections below to make this an easier process.

* * *
> "Automatic printer driver installation lets you connect a USB
> printer and install the printer drivers automatically.
>
> -this should probably just be mentioned briefly"

This is *somewhat* the case now.  The print driver installation is
part of a larger theme of "better hardware enablement" in F13 which is
the feature profile that Robyn (?) is working on.  That profile can
combine this feature with our free 3D video driver support, color
management, and other enhancements (webcams and/or iPod/iPhone.  In
the interviews I'm starting to give to journalists in my role as
project leader, rather than call out print driver installation as a
superlative feature on its own -- even though it's very cool -- I'm
tying it together with these other hardware enablements to make a
better unified story about the work that Fedora does to make the
overall user experience better in the F13 release.
> Fedora and its sponsor Red Hat are dedicated to improving the
> quality and coverage of completely free accelerated video
> drivers. While we support user choice and do not prevent use of
> closed, proprietary drivers, we also recognize that these drivers
> sometimes conflict with and cause problems in the software written
> by FOSS community members.
>
> -Fedora 13 features and contributes to experimental 3D support for
>  many NVidia video cards using the 100% free software Nouveau driver
>
> since I'm not really a developer or administrator I'm less sure what
> should go in these next sections, recommendations from the more
> experienced community members would be great

You might benefit from comparing the Fedora 12 talking points to the
Fedora 12 one-page release notes.  The talking points are designed for
our community members and Ambassadors, and since they understand
Fedora deeply, the talking points focus on features.  The one-page
release notes are designed to be more "glossy" and appeal directly to
end users.

If you look at the F12 versions, you can see how our talking points
get transformed from a statement of "Here's a cool feature" into the
one-page release notes statements of "Hers's what YOU can do with
Fedora" -- making the user the focus, as opposed to the technology.

Here are the links you'll want to look at:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F12_talking_points

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_12_one_page_release_notes

Hope this helps.

[Mel Chua]

Daniel & team, thanks for the kickoff (and to Paul for the first round 
of comments!)

I've added our notes to a wiki page 
(https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Talk:F13_one_page_release_notes) so it's 
easier (hopefully!) for you to migrate it over to the main page 
(https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F13_one_page_release_notes) when you 
start writing the final text - I think you're certainly ready to begin 
your drafts in that space now.

Your original text: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Mchua

Paul's edits: 
https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AF13_one_page_release_note...

My edits: 
https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AF13_one_page_release_note...

Finally, I think Paul's tips are right on. This is also what I suggested 
to the team on IRC on Tuesday - look at the talking points and see if 
you can figure out the relationship between them and the one page 
release notes for F12. We haven't necessarily gotten it *right*, but 
it's what we've done so far, and it's something you can probably improve 
upon. ;)
> You might benefit from comparing the Fedora 12 talking points to the
> Fedora 12 one-page release notes.  The talking points are designed for
> our community members and Ambassadors, and since they understand
> Fedora deeply, the talking points focus on features.  The one-page
> release notes are designed to be more "glossy" and appeal directly to
> end users.
>
> If you look at the F12 versions, you can see how our talking points
> get transformed from a statement of "Here's a cool feature" into the
> one-page release notes statements of "Hers's what YOU can do with
> Fedora" -- making the user the focus, as opposed to the technology.
>
> Here are the links you'll want to look at:
>
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F12_talking_points
>
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_12_one_page_release_notes
>
> Hope this helps.

One of the things that would be great is - as you're going along, think 
about how you would explain what you're doing to a team doing this for 
the next release cycle (6 months from now). Actually, you're already 
doing this - the questions you're asking and the drafts you're making 
are pointing out to us the kinds of resources and answers we need to 
have available to people making these in the future .

--Mel