Fedora 9 Alpha Release Notes WAS Re: Fedora 9 Marketing plan?

[Jonathan Roberts]

Right,

I think I've finished doing all the integration I can face right now
between those two documents. Karsten, I've tried to restyle it a bit
to your proposal for the "One summary to rule them all" idea and I've
tidied up the language where possible.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/JonathanRoberts/F9AlphaNotes

At the minute it's very text heavy, some screenshots from people
running rawhide would be very cool. Also, I think the following
sections probably still need work:

"Applications" - It might be good to either expand on what's new in
Firefox 3 or to find some more applications that we'd like to draw
attention to upgrades?

"Anaconda Installer Improvements" - perhaps somebody who knows more
than I do could explain why people should care about these? Basically,
I'd like to find some friendlier language to describe these
improvements...

"Kernel" - Same as Anaconda really, any chance we can make this friendlier?

The other thing I think we could do with is a consistent way to link
to both feature pages and upstream pages so readers can easily find
more info.

OK, besides that I'm quite happy with the shape it's in, but I don't
know what other people think?

Best wishes,

Jon

[Karsten Wade]

On Mon, 2008-02-04 at 13:53 +0000, Jonathan Roberts wrote:
>  Right,
>  
>  I think I've finished doing all the integration I can face right now
>  between those two documents. Karsten, I've tried to restyle it a bit
>  to your proposal for the "One summary to rule them all" idea and I've
>  tidied up the language where possible.
>  
>  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/JonathanRoberts/F9AlphaNotes 
Sorry I arrived late in this discussion.  I did a final edit of the
Releases/9/Alpha/ReleaseNotes this morning.  Had you already merged in
your changes?  Your namespace draft and the one I edited appear at a
glance to be the same.

>  At the minute it's very text heavy, some screenshots from people
>  running rawhide would be very cool.  
We could, but let's also let folks do that and blog about it directly.
I don't want to get into the habit of providing too many screenshots for
the release notes.  A little bit is good marketing value, but a highly
significant part of our userbase cares more about a correct feature list
first and identification of major improvements/changes.

>  Also, I think the following
>  sections probably still need work:
>  
>  "Applications" - It might be good to either expand on what's new in
>  Firefox 3 or to find some more applications that we'd like to draw
>  attention to upgrades?
>  
>  "Anaconda Installer Improvements" - perhaps somebody who knows more
>  than I do could explain why people should care about these? Basically,
>  I'd like to find some friendlier language to describe these
>  improvements...
>  
>  "Kernel" - Same as Anaconda really, any chance we can make this friendlier?
>  
>  The other thing I think we could do with is a consistent way to link
>  to both feature pages and upstream pages so readers can easily find
>  more info.
>  
>  OK, besides that I'm quite happy with the shape it's in, but I don't
>  know what other people think? 
We can continue to edit it from here, that is one reason we use the wiki
for Alpha and Beta release notes.

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

[Jonathan Roberts]

>  Sorry I arrived late in this discussion.  I did a final edit of the
>  Releases/9/Alpha/ReleaseNotes this morning.  Had you already merged in
>  your changes?  Your namespace draft and the one I edited appear at a
>  glance to be the same. 
Yeah the changes had already been merged...
>  > At the minute it's very text heavy, some screenshots from people
>  > running rawhide would be very cool.
>
>  We could, but let's also let folks do that and blog about it directly.
>  I don't want to get into the habit of providing too many screenshots for
>  the release notes.  A little bit is good marketing value, but a highly
>  significant part of our userbase cares more about a correct feature list
>  first and identification of major improvements/changes. 
OK that's cool by me :)

>  We can continue to edit it from here, that is one reason we use the
> wiki
>  for Alpha and Beta release notes. 
Super duper -

Best wishes,

Jon

[Jesse Keating]

On Tue, 05 Feb 2008 09:31:34 -0800
"Karsten 'quaid' Wade" <kwade(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:

>  We can continue to edit it from here, that is one reason we use the
>  wiki for Alpha and Beta release notes. 
Note that to avoid killing the wiki on release days, we really need to
make that content static for the day or 3.  And it needs to happen
before I send the release announcement.

I completely failed in arranging this for the Alpha release, we'll do
better for Beta.

-- 
Jesse Keating RHCE      (jkeating.livejournal.com)
Fedora Project          (fedoraproject.org/wiki/JesseKeating)
GPG Public Key          (geek.j2solutions.net/jkeating.j2solutions.pub)

[Karsten Wade]

On Tue, 2008-02-05 at 12:50 -0500, Jesse Keating wrote:
>  On Tue, 05 Feb 2008 09:31:34 -0800
>  "Karsten 'quaid' Wade" <kwade(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
>  
>  > We can continue to edit it from here, that is one reason we use the
>  > wiki for Alpha and Beta release notes.
>  
>  Note that to avoid killing the wiki on release days, we really need to
>  make that content static for the day or 3.  And it needs to happen
>  before I send the release announcement.
>  
>  I completely failed in arranging this for the Alpha release, we'll do
>  better for Beta. 
Darn, forgot about that.

We can have it freeze ~12 hours before Alpha and Beta release, then
convert it to a static page.  We can give out that static page link as
fixed, then manage what appears there.  For example, after a few days,
it could redirect back to the wiki.  Or <iframe> the wiki. :)

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

[John Poelstra]

Karsten 'quaid' Wade said the following on 02/05/2008 11:14 AM Pacific Time:
>  On Tue, 2008-02-05 at 12:50 -0500, Jesse Keating wrote:
> > On Tue, 05 Feb 2008 09:31:34 -0800
> > "Karsten 'quaid' Wade" <kwade(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
> >
> >> We can continue to edit it from here, that is one reason we use the
> >> wiki for Alpha and Beta release notes.
> > Note that to avoid killing the wiki on release days, we really need to
> > make that content static for the day or 3.  And it needs to happen
> > before I send the release announcement.
> >
> > I completely failed in arranging this for the Alpha release, we'll do
> > better for Beta.
>  
>  Darn, forgot about that.
>  
>  We can have it freeze ~12 hours before Alpha and Beta release, then
>  convert it to a static page.  We can give out that static page link as
>  fixed, then manage what appears there.  For example, after a few days,
>  it could redirect back to the wiki.  Or <iframe> the wiki. :)
>  
>  - Karsten
>   
Hmmm... sounds like a natural chain of events that might work well in a 
schedule :)

And yes, I'm volunteering to create the Marketing schedule if someone 
will lay out more of the tasks and their durations as already done above.

John

[Karsten Wade]

On Tue, 2008-02-05 at 11:33 -0800, John Poelstra wrote:
>  > 
>  
>  Hmmm... sounds like a natural chain of events that might work well in a 
>  schedule :)
>  
>  And yes, I'm volunteering to create the Marketing schedule if someone 
>  will lay out more of the tasks and their durations as already done above. 
I stubbed out a page here:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing/Schedule

... to give us something to throw stuff at.

What sort of tasks do we see being done against which release
milestones?

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

[Colby Hoke]

Karsten 'quaid' Wade wrote:
>  On Tue, 2008-02-05 at 11:33 -0800, John Poelstra wrote:
>    
> > Hmmm... sounds like a natural chain of events that might work well in a 
> > schedule :)
> >
> > And yes, I'm volunteering to create the Marketing schedule if someone 
> > will lay out more of the tasks and their durations as already done above.
> >     
>
>  I stubbed out a page here:
>
>  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing/Schedule
>
>  ... to give us something to throw stuff at.
>
>  What sort of tasks do we see being done against which release
>  milestones?
>
>  - Karsten
>     
Perhaps another meeting early next week?

-- 
Colby A. Hoke

Corporate Marketing
[ Producer ]

919.621.8802

[Karsten Wade]

On Wed, 2008-02-06 at 10:25 -0500, Colby Hoke wrote:
>  Karsten 'quaid' Wade wrote:
>  >
>  > What sort of tasks do we see being done against which release
>  > milestones?
>  >
>  > - Karsten
>  >   
>  Perhaps another meeting early next week? 
Not knowing a more delicate way to put this ... meetings best serve us
by giving us a fixed time to make sure we have actions completed by.  A
sort-of built in weekly auto-nag.  Mailing lists are where work gets
done, although you can do a lot of active collaboration over IRC/IM.
So, let's see what we can get done on-list?

For milestones, we have:

* Planning begins (day of release N-1)
* Alpha freeze
* Alpha release
* Feature freeze
* Beta release
* Translation freeze
* Final devel freeze
* Preview release
* RC1
* Final release

At least, those seem like the ones to build noise around, presuming we
want to interest the contributor, upstream, downstream, and end user
communities.

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