"Subject: Red Hat Releases Fedora 18 Beta"
What the hell is going on here last time I checked it was Fedora's community that released Fedora.
It's time for the board to come clean with the community on what's going on here...
JBG
On 11/27/2012 11:32 AM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" wrote:
"Subject: Red Hat Releases Fedora 18 Beta"
What the hell is going on here last time I checked it was Fedora's community that released Fedora.
It's time for the board to come clean with the community on what's going on here...
Okay, first off: There's nothing for the Board to "come clean" on. There are people on the board - who I count as some of my awesome friends, mind you, with whom I have in the past done my very fair share of conspiracy theorizing - who would absolutely call that kind of thing out in an INSTANT if the Board was involved.
Here is the deal:
Red Hat PR folks have always helped with spreading the word, whether for Alpha/Beta/Final or otherwise. In this particular case, an article *similar* to a press release was posted regarding the Beta to the Red Hat news blog (http://www.redhat.com/about/news/archive/2012/11/fedora-beta-release-for-ver...) but was not an actual press release. I work with them directly to assist them in writing these; in this case, I saw the headline, which reads " Fedora Beta Release for Version 18, "Spherical Cow", Now Available," as well as the body of the article, which fairly clearly states that "The Fedora Project" is doing the release, not Red Hat.
In addition to that, one of the lovely people in the PR department, Anna, contacts the list of reporters and news outlets to ensure that the news is picked up and spread, as well as arranges for yours truly to speak with any members of the press who would like an interview. They receive a copy of the news blog posting (or press release, if that is what is going out). In this case, it appears that the mail she sent to that press list had the subject of "Red Hat releases Fedora 18," but I wasn't aware that it was being sent out with that particular subject line.
Anna is fairly new in this position; however, I have to give her a universe of credit for being the only PR person we've ever had at Red Hat that has worked with Fedora who has invested herself in the community to the ends of showing up for Board meetings on IRC, Marketing meetings on IRC, or participating on/reading mailing lists. If I had known the mail was going to go out with that subject line, it's something I would have explained to her, but I didn't know, she certainly wasn't aware that those types of subject lines are somewhat unkosher, not to mention something that certainly elevates the "tinfoil hat" meter on mailing lists, etc. I honestly think a lot of people don't realize it, unless they've been on this particular list for a long time and have seen the drama unfold before. It was not all that long ago that I was also in the conspiracy theory corner and this type of thing absolutely infuriated me, and in this case, had it been done with malice or ill intent I would be raising absolute hell right now; that said, there's nothing going on behind the curtain, it was a simple, rather easy-to-make mistake (simply from the perspective of "most of the emails PR folks send are short subject lines saying Red Hat does $whatever"), by someone who actually cares about our community, and I'm sure that it will be a lesson well-learned for her that won't be repeated.
As a side note to this conversation - one of the things that I try to do as part of my job *inside* of the Hat is to continually try to educate people about the dynamics - and differences from "traditional products" - of working with the community. Primarily the Fedora Project community, but others as well. It's certainly to our credit that Fedora is one of the most, if not the most, prominent projects that Red Hat helps to support; this also means that, a lot of the time, the ground laid inside of Red Hat to support any type of community activity often is mimicked after us, as we have some years behind us now, and that we are often times the first ones to be doing something.
I think we've made great strides with the PR and marketing folks, both in terms of the fact that we see *nowhere near* as many of these types of mistakes as we saw a number of years ago, as well as the fact that they are willing to share some of their time to support us, arrange interviews, etc.; it's also evident in areas like working with the Finance department, where I have spent a LOT of time working to improve things for Fedora, and continue to do so (note bruise on my forehead, heh), things like having a community presence at Red Hat Summit, and other areas as well. It doesn't mean that it always goes right; I have sent my fair share of pissed-off "this is BS" emails to people, all the way up to the C*O offices, in the pursuit of fixing things.
I do my best to share those lessons learned, and even point to "how we do it," as far as "how Fedora's interactions with internal Red Hat departments" go. Perhaps in this case it would be worthwhile for marketing to document some tips and "things to remember" as far as working with the Fedora community for the Red Hat PR folks - in conjunction with Anna - so that it isn't something that is known by "just one person." Things like - where you can always find Fedora's mission statement, the schedule, etc., as well as "please don't do this" type of stuff - such as the case that instigated this mail. :)
All that said - and in spite of my "tinfoil hat" comments - I do appreciate your calling out of things like this, Johann, as well as anyone else who sees things like this - there is always opportunity for further education and refining of processes, and really, it just keeps things honest and frank.
-robyn
JBG
On 11/27/2012 09:26 PM, Robyn Bergeron wrote:
On 11/27/2012 11:32 AM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" wrote:
"Subject: Red Hat Releases Fedora 18 Beta"
What the hell is going on here last time I checked it was Fedora's community that released Fedora.
It's time for the board to come clean with the community on what's going on here...
Okay, first off: There's nothing for the Board to "come clean" on. There are people on the board - who I count as some of my awesome friends, mind you, with whom I have in the past done my very fair share of conspiracy theorizing - who would absolutely call that kind of thing out in an INSTANT if the Board was involved.
Here is the deal:
Red Hat PR folks have always helped with spreading the word, whether for Alpha/Beta/Final or otherwise. In this particular case, an article *similar* to a press release was posted regarding the Beta to the Red Hat news blog (http://www.redhat.com/about/news/archive/2012/11/fedora-beta-release-for-ver...) but was not an actual press release. I work with them directly to assist them in writing these; in this case, I saw the headline, which reads " Fedora Beta Release for Version 18, "Spherical Cow", Now Available," as well as the body of the article, which fairly clearly states that "The Fedora Project" is doing the release, not Red Hat.
In addition to that, one of the lovely people in the PR department, Anna, contacts the list of reporters and news outlets to ensure that the news is picked up and spread, as well as arranges for yours truly to speak with any members of the press who would like an interview. They receive a copy of the news blog posting (or press release, if that is what is going out). In this case, it appears that the mail she sent to that press list had the subject of "Red Hat releases Fedora 18," but I wasn't aware that it was being sent out with that particular subject line.
I'm pretty sure if she actually was participating in the Fedora community she would not have made this *mistake* but why did not you your self as the FPL, Jaroslav Reznik as the FPM or anyone from the market community follow the beta announcement sop and send an announcement instead of having Red Hat disgrace the community, the community's hard work and cast shadow to all those Red Hat employees that go that extra line to make Fedora as awesome as it is with an subject line where it claims to release Fedora?
They sponsor the project that's it, no more then nike sponsor every other athlete in the world or there about Red Hat does not own us and you yourself know that the first thing you read is the subject line of an mail in your inbox.
Where was our announcement?
JBG
On 11/27/2012 07:28 PM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" wrote:
I'm pretty sure if she actually was participating in the Fedora community she would not have made this *mistake*
Have you ever been new in a community? Have you ever done something you thought better of later?
but why did not you your self as the FPL, Jaroslav Reznik as the FPM or anyone from the market community follow the beta announcement sop and send an announcement instead of having Red Hat disgrace the community, the community's hard work and cast shadow to all those Red Hat employees that go that extra line to make Fedora as awesome as it is with an subject line where it claims to release Fedora?
Disgrace the community? Really? You're caught up on an email subject line that you never would have seen if it weren't for the way lwn posts such things rather than the actual content that lauds the community.
They sponsor the project that's it,
And as sponsor, they do awesomely helpful things like support us, whether that's by paying an FPL to do a hard job or by sending out press releases to a long-standing press list with a Red Hat name behind it, which gets more eyeballs. That's a nice thing. And it's not ownership, and there's nothing about the announcement that implies otherwise.
Ruth
On 11/28/2012 01:03 AM, Ruth Suehle wrote:
On 11/27/2012 07:28 PM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" wrote:
I'm pretty sure if she actually was participating in the Fedora community she would not have made this *mistake*
Have you ever been new in a community? Have you ever done something you thought better of later?
Yes and then I do what is in my power to fix it will Red Hat do the honorable thing and contact all the media it sent that to and have those that got it wrong correct that mistake? ( Not that they can once the digital wave is on the move there are few if any that can change it course )
but why did not you your self as the FPL, Jaroslav Reznik as the FPM or anyone from the market community follow the beta announcement sop and send an announcement instead of having Red Hat disgrace the community, the community's hard work and cast shadow to all those Red Hat employees that go that extra line to make Fedora as awesome as it is with an subject line where it claims to release Fedora?
Disgrace the community? Really? You're caught up on an email subject line that you never would have seen if it weren't for the way lwn posts such things rather than the actual content that lauds the community.
Yes when it gets sent to one of it not the most technical online news site in the world and I also notice headlines like these "Red Hat's Fedora 18 "Spherical Cow" Beta Now Available" [1] which should say "Red Hat's sponsored Fedora 18 "Spherical Cow" Beta Now Available" or something more along those lines cropping up all over the internet.
When that happens I feel our community and our community members aren't getting the credit they deserve for their work within the project.
They s"ponsor the project that's it,
And as sponsor, they do awesomely helpful things like support us, whether that's by paying an FPL to do a hard job or by sending out press releases to a long-standing press list with a Red Hat name behind it, which gets more eyeballs. That's a nice thing. And it's not ownership, and there's nothing about the announcement that implies otherwise.
"The post you point to is nearly a week old, not a release announcement for the beta. Perhaps there is a better choice for a community-generated release announcement (though I didn't see one in a quick look), but what you point to is not it, I'm afraid. We generally prefer those kinds of announcements over press releases (with proper or improper subjects), fwiw." jake one of LWN editors.
In short if we would have made an announcement they would have published it over the press releases ( which says even more about the quality of the news site ) so why was our FPL first and foremost not focusing on getting our own announcement out the door instead of theirs?
Who is ultimately responsible for ensuring release announcements go out the door?
Will we be seeing the same thing happening again with final?
JBG
1.http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Red-Hat-Fedora-Beta-Spherical-Cow-Linux,193...
On Nov 27, 2012 5:58 PM, Jóhann B. Guðmundsson johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
On 11/28/2012 01:03 AM, Ruth Suehle wrote:
On 11/27/2012 07:28 PM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" wrote:
I'm pretty sure if she actually was participating in the Fedora
community she would not have made this *mistake*
Have you ever been new in a community? Have you ever done something you
thought better of later?
Yes and then I do what is in my power to fix it will Red Hat do the
honorable thing and contact all the media it sent that to and have those that got it wrong correct that mistake?
( Not that they can once the digital wave is on the move there are few if
any that can change it course )
but why did not you your self as the FPL, Jaroslav Reznik as the FPM or
anyone from the market community follow the beta announcement sop and send an announcement instead of having Red Hat disgrace the community, the community's hard work and cast shadow to all those Red Hat employees that go that extra line to make Fedora as awesome as it is with an subject line where it claims to release Fedora?
Honestly? It looks like a case of "ball dropped." And if someone had raised *that* flag this morning - it would have been helpful then - but that didn't happen. I don't think it's a too-late situation though, but others may opinion otherwise.
Disgrace the community? Really? You're caught up on an email subject
line that you never would have seen if it weren't for the way lwn posts such things rather than the actual content that lauds the community.
Yes when it gets sent to one of it not the most technical online news
site in the world and I also notice headlines like these "Red Hat's Fedora 18 "Spherical Cow" Beta Now Available" [1] which should say "Red Hat's sponsored Fedora 18 "Spherical Cow" Beta Now Available" or something more along those lines cropping up all over the internet.
When that happens I feel our community and our community members aren't
getting the credit they deserve for their work within the project.
They s"ponsor the project that's it,
And as sponsor, they do awesomely helpful things like support us,
whether that's by paying an FPL to do a hard job or by sending out press releases to a long-standing press list with a Red Hat name behind it, which gets more eyeballs. That's a nice thing. And it's not ownership, and there's nothing about the announcement that implies otherwise.
"The post you point to is nearly a week old, not a release announcement
for the beta. Perhaps there is a better choice for a community-generated release announcement (though I didn't see one in a quick look), but what you point to is not it, I'm afraid. We generally prefer those kinds of announcements over press releases (with proper or improper subjects), fwiw."
jake one of LWN editors.
In short if we would have made an announcement they would have published
it over the press releases ( which says even more about the quality of the news site ) so why was our FPL first and foremost not focusing on getting our own announcement out the door instead of theirs?
Who is ultimately responsible for ensuring release announcements go out
the door?
For Alpha and Beta, as long as i can remember, release engineering has done the announcement. For final, the FPL does the announcement. That said, this may be some sort of "historical knowledge of how it happens" thing and not actually an SOP- in looking through releng's sop's i didnt see anything there, and the marketing sop is not completed.
But at the end of the day - yeah, that's me in the ultimately responsible spot. I ddin't notice the lack thereof, nobody yelled, i screwed up. It happens. It's not a case of me "prioritizing" one over the other, though.
Will we be seeing the same thing happening again with final?
I sure as heck hope that we do have a bit of lessons-learned mentality around here.
JBG
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Red-Hat-Fedora-Beta-Spherical-Cow-Linux,193...
-- marketing mailing list marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
----- Original Message -----
"The post you point to is nearly a week old, not a release announcement for the beta. Perhaps there is a better choice for a community-generated release announcement (though I didn't see one in a quick look), but what you point to is not it, I'm afraid. We generally prefer those kinds of announcements over press releases (with proper or improper subjects), fwiw." jake one of LWN editors.
In short if we would have made an announcement they would have published it over the press releases ( which says even more about the quality of the news site ) so why was our FPL first and foremost not focusing on getting our own announcement out the door instead of theirs?
Who is ultimately responsible for ensuring release announcements go out the door?
For Alpha and Beta, as long as i can remember, release engineering has done the announcement. For final, the FPL does the announcement. That said, this may be some sort of "historical knowledge of how it happens" thing and not actually an SOP- in looking through releng's sop's i didnt see anything there, and the marketing sop is not completed.
But at the end of the day - yeah, that's me in the ultimately responsible spot. I ddin't notice the lack thereof, nobody yelled, i screwed up. It happens. It's not a case of me "prioritizing" one over the other, though.
Well, it's also my fault - not rechecking the true state of things :( As currently it's the part of Readiness meeting, checking the logs - "Beta announce will be firmed up for Tuesday (reported by rbergeron) (jreznik, 19:38:53)". So, what's the state of Marketing sop right now?
Also what we need is to educate the news, bloggers etc. as it's quite common Fedora is referred as Red Hat product and for people not directly involved in Fedora Project it could look like that and it's harder to understand the relationship. Do we have any guide (on Wiki) we could point people to? In case we saw this and to try to fix it?
It still means we need it out asap - anybody from Marketing around? We have https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F18_Alpha_release_announcement but not for Beta :(
Second action item is to explain "in marketing way" the delays behind F18 release (where the slip announcements are not very useful) to community. Ambassadors already asked for that... I'm willing to help with it (or both).
Jaroslav
Will we be seeing the same thing happening again with final?
I sure as heck hope that we do have a bit of lessons-learned mentality around here.
JBG
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Red-Hat-Fedora-Beta-Spherical-Cow-Linux,193...
-- marketing mailing list marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
-- marketing mailing list marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
----- Original Message -----
----- Original Message -----
"The post you point to is nearly a week old, not a release announcement for the beta. Perhaps there is a better choice for a community-generated release announcement (though I didn't see one in a quick look), but what you point to is not it, I'm afraid. We generally prefer those kinds of announcements over press releases (with proper or improper subjects), fwiw." jake one of LWN editors.
In short if we would have made an announcement they would have published it over the press releases ( which says even more about the quality of the news site ) so why was our FPL first and foremost not focusing on getting our own announcement out the door instead of theirs?
Who is ultimately responsible for ensuring release announcements go out the door?
For Alpha and Beta, as long as i can remember, release engineering has done the announcement. For final, the FPL does the announcement. That said, this may be some sort of "historical knowledge of how it happens" thing and not actually an SOP- in looking through releng's sop's i didnt see anything there, and the marketing sop is not completed.
But at the end of the day - yeah, that's me in the ultimately responsible spot. I ddin't notice the lack thereof, nobody yelled, i screwed up. It happens. It's not a case of me "prioritizing" one over the other, though.
Well, it's also my fault - not rechecking the true state of things :( As currently it's the part of Readiness meeting, checking the logs - "Beta announce will be firmed up for Tuesday (reported by rbergeron) (jreznik, 19:38:53)". So, what's the state of Marketing sop right now?
Also what we need is to educate the news, bloggers etc. as it's quite common Fedora is referred as Red Hat product and for people not directly involved in Fedora Project it could look like that and it's harder to understand the relationship. Do we have any guide (on Wiki) we could point people to? In case we saw this and to try to fix it?
It still means we need it out asap - anybody from Marketing around? We have https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F18_Alpha_release_announcement but not for Beta :(
Second action item is to explain "in marketing way" the delays behind F18 release (where the slip announcements are not very useful) to community. Ambassadors already asked for that... I'm willing to help with it (or both).
Ok, based on F17 Beta/F18 Alpha and "that" announcement - I started the Beta one [1] - please take a look - or extend it with more moo-ish as for Alpha ;-) Would be great to get it out asap. What are the places we send Beta announcement?
And it could be a nice place where to mention the delays, I'll try to write it there too - again, any help from real writers and marketing people welcomed :)
Jaroslav
[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F18_Beta_release_announcement
Jaroslav
Will we be seeing the same thing happening again with final?
I sure as heck hope that we do have a bit of lessons-learned mentality around here.
JBG
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Red-Hat-Fedora-Beta-Spherical-Cow-Linux,193...
-- marketing mailing list marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
-- marketing mailing list marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
-- marketing mailing list marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 4:36 PM, Jaroslav Reznik jreznik@redhat.com wrote:
Ok, based on F17 Beta/F18 Alpha and "that" announcement - I started the Beta one [1] - please take a look - or extend it with more moo-ish as for Alpha ;-) Would be great to get it out asap. What are the places we send Beta announcement?
announce, test-announce and devel-announce lists are the usual places where I saw previous ones.
-- Gianluca Sforna
http://morefedora.blogspot.com http://identi.ca/giallu - http://twitter.com/giallu
----- Original Message -----
On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 4:36 PM, Jaroslav Reznik jreznik@redhat.com wrote:
Ok, based on F17 Beta/F18 Alpha and "that" announcement - I started the Beta one [1] - please take a look - or extend it with more moo-ish as for Alpha ;-) Would be great to get it out asap. What are the places we send Beta announcement?
announce, test-announce and devel-announce lists are the usual places where I saw previous ones.
The question was more about the external entities - if it's more luck it gets a good coverage or we have a proper distribution channel for announcements to media. And that Fedora announcement precedes RH one (as it was explained in LWN comments).
Jaroslav
-- Gianluca Sforna
http://morefedora.blogspot.com http://identi.ca/giallu - http://twitter.com/giallu -- marketing mailing list marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
On 11/28/2012 09:50 AM, Jaroslav Reznik wrote:
----- Original Message -----
On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 4:36 PM, Jaroslav Reznik jreznik@redhat.com wrote:
Ok, based on F17 Beta/F18 Alpha and "that" announcement - I started the Beta one [1] - please take a look - or extend it with more moo-ish as for Alpha ;-) Would be great to get it out asap. What are the places we send Beta announcement?
announce, test-announce and devel-announce lists are the usual places where I saw previous ones.
The question was more about the external entities - if it's more luck it gets a good coverage or we have a proper distribution channel for announcements to media. And that Fedora announcement precedes RH one (as it was explained in LWN comments).
We only ship things to those lists. Most of the media who pay attention are subscribed to at least announce list, though many are also subscribed to the marketing list as well for news.
The press@fp.o mailing address is basically "incoming only."
Direct outreach/contact has always been handled by someone at RHT in the PR department, in conjunction with the FPL, because they have the extensive database of contacts and etc. that is meticulously pruned and kept up to date, have access to press wire, etc.
Jaroslav
-- Gianluca Sforna
http://morefedora.blogspot.com http://identi.ca/giallu - http://twitter.com/giallu -- marketing mailing list marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
On 11/28/2012 05:31 PM, Robyn Bergeron wrote:
We only ship things to those lists. Most of the media who pay attention are subscribed to at least announce list, though many are also subscribed to the marketing list as well for news.
The press@fp.o mailing address is basically "incoming only."
Direct outreach/contact has always been handled by someone at RHT in the PR department, in conjunction with the FPL, because they have the extensive database of contacts and etc. that is meticulously pruned and kept up to date, have access to press wire, etc.
Any reason why our own marketing community cant start creating and maintaining our own extensive database of contacts so on and so forth and we simply stop dealing with/through Red Hat PR or any other third party or sponsor?
JBG
On 11/28/2012 01:08 PM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" wrote:
Any reason why our own marketing community cant start creating and maintaining our own extensive database of contacts so on and so forth and we simply stop dealing with/through Red Hat PR or any other third party or sponsor?
Are you volunteering to be a part of that effort? Or to help write the announcement for GA? Or to help do any of the things that thus far you've just complained about?
On 11/28/2012 06:24 PM, Ruth Suehle wrote:
On 11/28/2012 01:08 PM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" wrote:
Any reason why our own marketing community cant start creating and maintaining our own extensive database of contacts so on and so forth and we simply stop dealing with/through Red Hat PR or any other third party or sponsor?
Are you volunteering to be a part of that effort? Or to help write the announcement for GA? Or to help do any of the things that thus far you've just complained about?
I could cook up something if necessary it wont be pretty thou ;)
JBG
On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 12:08 PM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
Any reason why our own marketing community cant start creating and maintaining our own extensive database of contacts so on and so forth and we simply stop dealing with/through Red Hat PR or any other third party or sponsor?
One guess: no one so far thinks it is worth their time to duplicate the work already being done by a sponsor who is willing to let us leverage the work they do continuously.
I'd love to see a more independent and more aggressive marketing community in Fedora but that requires folks with time, interest, and skills. While we get many fine people coming through marketing I think the amount of work just to get the more mundane products out the door each release is probably about all they have been able to handle historically.
One way to confront shortages in contributors is to send our cool Fedora contributors out to where they congregate. So I wonder if there are some marketing events that might provide us an opportunity to do just that? I suspect most marketing events are very business oriented but perhaps there are some with more of a community slant out there.
John
On 11/28/2012 06:28 PM, inode0 wrote:
On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 12:08 PM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
Any reason why our own marketing community cant start creating and maintaining our own extensive database of contacts so on and so forth and we simply stop dealing with/through Red Hat PR or any other third party or sponsor?
One guess: no one so far thinks it is worth their time to duplicate the work already being done by a sponsor who is willing to let us leverage the work they do continuously.
I'd love to see a more independent and more aggressive marketing community in Fedora but that requires folks with time, interest, and skills. While we get many fine people coming through marketing I think the amount of work just to get the more mundane products out the door each release is probably about all they have been able to handle historically.
Perhaps the reason why people aren't more willing to participate is because task are being delegated to RH PR instead of allowing the community tackle those task and learn and grow with them each release cycle.
I recommend people subscribed to this list to jump right in.
Ask infra for a track instance for the community, form and finish the SOP's and start sharing ideas.
Basically don't hesitate to dive in.
JBG
On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 12:28:04PM -0600, inode0 wrote:
On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 12:08 PM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
Any reason why our own marketing community cant start creating and maintaining our own extensive database of contacts so on and so forth and we simply stop dealing with/through Red Hat PR or any other third party or sponsor?
One guess: no one so far thinks it is worth their time to duplicate the work already being done by a sponsor who is willing to let us leverage the work they do continuously.
[...snip...]
There is cachet that comes from Red Hat's involvement here which is valuable to journalists as well, i.e. a symbiotic relationship. Unfortunately that sometimes results in an error, but overall this has been getting steadily better over the last several years.
Does anyone know if the Red Hat PR person who was assisting in this case (I'm sorry, stuck in an interface without access to name right now) hangs out on this mailing list? I wonder if the tenor of this conversation at numerous points would have been inhospitable to a newcomer. I also hope this person knows we all make mistakes from time to time and the good effort deserves notice. I'm drawn once again to the community tenet "Assume good intentions." Have we done that?
Hi Paul (and everyone),
Stephanie from Red Hat corp comms here. We are on the distro, and have been reading everything. You've hit the nail on the head re: the symbiotic relationship. And as both you and Robyn have reassured everyone, there was certainly no malintent here. It was a mistake, and it won't happen again.
And yes, Anna Eusebio, who manages Fedora PR efforts is also on this thread. She weighed in earlier, responding to this string, but in case it didn't get through to everyone, here's what she said:
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: "Red Hat Releases Fedora 18 Beta" Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2012 10:06:44 -0500 (EST) From: Anna Eusebio <aeusebio@redhat.com> Reply-To: Fedora Marketing team <marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org> To: Fedora Marketing team <marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org> Hey everyone, I have been following the marketing thread since yesterday, and I apologize again for sending our reporters a subject line that was misinterpreted. I was excited to make sure the Beta release received a lot of good coverage, and I will definitely make sure the same thing doesn't happen again, especially with the upcoming GA. Sincerely, Anna Eusebio
-Stephanie
On 11/28/2012 10:35 PM, Stephanie Wonderlick wrote:
Hi Paul (and everyone),
Stephanie from Red Hat corp comms here. We are on the distro, and have been reading everything. You've hit the nail on the head re: the symbiotic relationship. And as both you and Robyn have reassured everyone, there was certainly no malintent here. It was a mistake, and it won't happen again.
This was not the first time this happened so excuse me if I take that statement with a grain of salt.
I personally think it's in the best interest of the community that it handles this on it's own from now on and works up to build the distributions own contacts list of reporters and news outlets and handles the announcements and other things and work on them openly and in collaborate fashion in the community spirit.
If no one objects I can start organizing and set the necessary bits in the marketing community for that I however a) have no marketing experience b) am not very good writing in English and c) am not a subtle person so when it comes to actually writing marketing material I am less than qualified to handle that.
You yourself and Anna as well as anyone else from RH PR are ofcourse are welcome join and participate in that as is anyone else who reads this.
Lurkers dont just stand there and read start participating, share ideas etc ;)
JBG
On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 3:24 PM, Paul W. Frields stickster@gmail.comwrote:
I wonder if the tenor of this conversation at numerous points would have been inhospitable to a newcomer.
IMO, yes. I've found parts of this thread to be discouraging toward contributing to the Fedora project and community. If I were new to the community, I'd now be hesitant to write any marketing materials, documentation, wikipages, etc. because if I make a mistake - technical, grammatical, or historical - I'm going to be personally disparaged in public and my apologies ignored. Putting such pressure on community members to be perfectly right all the time is going to bottleneck participation and suck the enthusiasm out of contributors.
I joined this community because I met passionate and compassionate Fedora contributors at a FUDCon who didn't discount my ideas even though I don't have a degree in computer science and can't remember more than two vi commands at a time. Since then numerous Fedora community members have patiently nudged me through the Ambassador process (after I made tons of mistakes trying to contact them). I've mucked up expense tickets - the FPL and others, once again, patiently helped me sort those out. When manning the Fedora booth at events I've been unable to answer tons of questions (is Ubuntu faster than Fedora? Is version x of y in F17? How is a release name voted on? What packages does Fedora contain relating to cloud services? Why does maven make me want to start shooting bees?) but fellow community members have happily stepped in to educate me. No one has ever told me that I'm not a 'real' community member because I don't know about every feature in Fedora, how the community operates, or the milestones in the project's long history.
Please, please don't judge another community member's 'realness' or dismiss their value to the project because you've never personally interacted with them or because they make a mistake.
I hope this community can continue to be the welcoming, patient, and fun learning environment that I know it as.
As for the issues, questions, and possible solutions regarding marketing the Fedora OS that have been brought up in this thread - AWESOME! I've compiled them in a list for the marketing meeting (every Thursday at 3pm EST (8pm UTC) in the #fedora-meeting channel). List: http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/marketing/2012-November/014678.html
If you have any additional ideas, questions or concerns, please attach them to the agenda and/or come to the meeting. You don't need any experience in marketing or PR to participate, so please don't hesitate to join us!
Cheers, Sarah graphite6
On 11/29/2012 10:51 AM, Sarah White wrote:
On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 3:24 PM, Paul W. Frields wrote:
I wonder if the tenor of this conversation at numerous points would have been inhospitable to a newcomer.IMO, yes. I've found parts of this thread to be discouraging toward contributing to the Fedora project and community. If I were new to the community, I'd now be hesitant to write any marketing materials, documentation, wikipages, etc. because if I make a mistake - technical, grammatical, or historical - I'm going to be personally disparaged in public and my apologies ignored. Putting such pressure on community members to be perfectly right all the time is going to bottleneck participation and suck the enthusiasm out of contributors.
Then you misunderstood: what was talked here was not about the Fedora community, if the announcement would have made inside the community, the problem would have been corrected. So if you, Sarah, write a marketing material, put it on the wiki, pass it to the list for review and send it out after that (a normal community process), all is fine. But if you, whoever you may be, write a marketing material, make a big mistake in it and send it out on your own without community review... expect the reactions to be not so nice. What happened here was the later situation. We are a community, everybody makes mistakes, but if the work is done inside the community then in the end problems will be solved.
Please, please don't judge another community member's 'realness' or dismiss their value to the project because you've never personally interacted with them or because they make a mistake.
Note that it wasn't about a community member, the person joined the mailing list only after the incident. When the announcement was sent she was just an employee of our sponsor. She is new and inexperienced but being here she will hopefully learn more.
On 11/29/2012 07:50 AM, Nicu Buculei wrote:
Note that it wasn't about a community member, the person joined the mailing list only after the incident. When the announcement was sent she was just an employee of our sponsor. She is new and inexperienced but being here she will hopefully learn more.
I'm pretty sure that's not true since I have a reply from her about a message to the list back in September. She's also been to quite a few of the IRC meetings in the last few months, which most of the people jumping on her can't say. So can we now drop this thread that pretty much entirely consists of attacks on an active member of the marketing team by people who are not?
I look forward to seeing you all at today's meeting to discuss actual work. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/marketing/2012-November/014678.html
Thanks. Ruth
On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 7:28 AM, Ruth Suehle rsuehle@redhat.com wrote:
On 11/29/2012 07:50 AM, Nicu Buculei wrote:
Note that it wasn't about a community member, the person joined the mailing list only after the incident. When the announcement was sent she was just an employee of our sponsor. She is new and inexperienced but being here she will hopefully learn more.
I'm pretty sure that's not true since I have a reply from her about a message to the list back in September. She's also been to quite a few of the IRC meetings in the last few months, which most of the people jumping on her can't say. So can we now drop this thread that pretty much entirely consists of attacks on an active member of the marketing team by people who are not?
By my count 3 or 4 of the 30+ posts in this thread could arguably contain some content that could be characterized as an "attack" although even those could more generously be characterized as containing "tenor inhospitable to a newcomer." Assuming good intentions should lead to the latter characterization. The vast majority of this thread was not an attack on anyone but it is probably pointless to continue trying to contribute anything more to it at this point.
I look forward to seeing you all at today's meeting to discuss actual work. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/marketing/2012-November/014678.html
Last time I visited the marketing meeting it was to suggest we do something to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Fedora Community which happens to be this month. I felt after that meeting like I feel today. Dismissed.
John
On 11/29/2012 11:30 AM, inode0 wrote:
Last time I visited the marketing meeting it was to suggest we do something to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Fedora Community which happens to be this month. I felt after that meeting like I feel today. Dismissed. John
Well, in that meeting we said we really should be celebrating next year and discussed doing a series of interviews with contributors. (http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2012-08-16/fedora_marketing....)
We're a little behind the intended schedule (and enthusiasm of that moment), but I still think that interview series is a good idea. Do others agree?
Other anniversary celebration ideas to start planning for?
Ruth
On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 5:55 PM, Ruth Suehle rsuehle@redhat.com wrote:
We're a little behind the intended schedule (and enthusiasm of that moment), but I still think that interview series is a good idea. Do others agree?
I like that idea. Additionally, I suggest we also chase former contributors that had career benefits from participating to the project. That is usually a good selling point to volunteering to work on Fedora (and of course also other open source projects)
Other anniversary celebration ideas to start planning for?
Producing some swag for this anniversary (tshirts, mugs, caps, pens, whatever) to send to contributors? this could be also tied to how long ago your FAS account was created. Or some other metric aimed to reward the people running with us from the longest time.
-- Gianluca Sforna
http://morefedora.blogspot.com http://identi.ca/giallu - http://twitter.com/giallu
Hi all , I already had a plan to do this under Fedora-Videos , I had thought of weekly doing a small story kind of thing on a Fedonra Contributor journey so far with Fedora . Although I didn't get much time to take it further . But since soon I will be getting some time so I can help , let me know if I can do anything .
Print only if its necessary Regards Nitesh Narayan Lal https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Niteshnarayan
Sorry for the Typo , *Fedora Contributor . :)
Print only if its necessary Regards Nitesh Narayan Lal https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Niteshnarayan
----- Original Message ----- From: Nitesh Narayan niteshnarayanlal@indiatimes.com To: Fedora Marketing team marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org Sent: Fri, 30 Nov 2012 07:42:22 +0530 (IST) Subject: Re: Fedora anniversary
Hi all , I already had a plan to do this under Fedora-Videos , I had thought of weekly doing a small story kind of thing on a Fedonra Contributor journey so far with Fedora . Although I didn't get much time to take it further . But since soon I will be getting some time so I can help , let me know if I can do anything .
Print only if its necessary Regards Nitesh Narayan Lal https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Niteshnarayan
Hi all, After discussion with Ruth I had gathered up few points for Interview series , please have a look and feel free to suggest any changes or even make any changes on [1] .
[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Niteshnarayan/ContributorsInterviews
Print only if its necessary Regards Nitesh Narayan Lal https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Niteshnarayan
On 28.11.2012 17:36, Jaroslav Reznik wrote:
[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F18_Beta_release_announcement
About the samba4 AD feature in the announcement:
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2012-June/168253.html http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Samba4 f18:/usr/share/doc/samba/README.dc
I propose the phrase "Active Directory domain" to be replaced with "Active Directory domain member"
Unfortunately, the singe Fedora with AD server features so far was F17 :-)
Kind Regards, Alek
----- Original Message -----
On 28.11.2012 17:36, Jaroslav Reznik wrote:
[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F18_Beta_release_announcement
About the samba4 AD feature in the announcement:
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2012-June/168253.html http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Samba4 f18:/usr/share/doc/samba/README.dc
I propose the phrase "Active Directory domain" to be replaced with "Active Directory domain member"
Ok, thanks - fixed. As far as I understand it - it's true. But I'm not an AD expert :)
Jaroslav
Unfortunately, the singe Fedora with AD server features so far was F17 :-)
Kind Regards, Alek
On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 3:26 PM, Robyn Bergeron rbergero@redhat.com wrote:
On 11/27/2012 11:32 AM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" wrote:
"Subject: Red Hat Releases Fedora 18 Beta"
What the hell is going on here last time I checked it was Fedora's community that released Fedora.
I would like to see these say "Red Hat Announces the Release of ..." instead but perhaps that is only because I have historically been rather sensitive to this stuff as well. Red Hat is proud of Fedora and that comes out in virtually everything Red Hat releases if one can read through the announcements with a clear head.
..
I do my best to share those lessons learned, and even point to "how we do it," as far as "how Fedora's interactions with internal Red Hat departments" go. Perhaps in this case it would be worthwhile for marketing to document some tips and "things to remember" as far as working with the Fedora community for the Red Hat PR folks - in conjunction with Anna - so that it isn't something that is known by "just one person." Things like - where you can always find Fedora's mission statement, the schedule, etc., as well as "please don't do this" type of stuff - such as the case that instigated this mail. :)
One thing I noticed in this announcement as well as something similar in a fairly recent Red Hat blog post is some emphasis on Fedora's role as a place where new technology is developed and tested for possible inclusion in Red Hat's commercial products. While that is true and it is a motivation for many Fedora contributors it isn't the universal view of Fedora even within Fedora. Fedora is different things to different people and unfortunately one of the persistent, although perhaps waning, issues we deal with promoting Fedora is people put off by the impression that is really all Fedora is. So I'd like to see some care around dealing with this. I don't want to discourage Red Hat from saying *this* is why Fedora is important to us entirely. I think that message is important too. But maybe we can boilerplate something that also emphasizes other reasons people love and contribute to Fedora so it is *one of many* reasons Fedora is important.
All that said - and in spite of my "tinfoil hat" comments - I do appreciate your calling out of things like this, Johann, as well as anyone else who sees things like this - there is always opportunity for further education and refining of processes, and really, it just keeps things honest and frank.
Yeah, although it makes our community look a bit insecure when the calling out is done on LWN. Having a discussion internally is great.
John
On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 08:03:40PM -0600, inode0 wrote:
view of Fedora even within Fedora. Fedora is different things to different people and unfortunately one of the persistent, although perhaps waning, issues we deal with promoting Fedora is people put off by the impression that is really all Fedora is. So I'd like to see
I hear understand this point of view, but would like to counterbalance it. (Speaking here as a Fedoraean, not a Red Hatter, although I am that too.)
Fedora is particularly interesting to some people *because* of our relationship with Red Hat, and that's a very nice thing for us. Both Fedora and Red Hat take huge benefits from that mutual, bidirectional connection -- *as do users of both operating systems*.
There is a very real risk of Fedora being a self-referential toy operating system no one really uses (where "no one" excepts a few strange people like me who have been running it as my sole OS for years). Instead, we should emphasize and take advantage of our ecosystem -- Fedora, RHEL, EPEL, CentOS/Scientific Linux, the whole shebang. Each part makes the whole thing stronger.
On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 8:21 PM, Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 08:03:40PM -0600, inode0 wrote:
view of Fedora even within Fedora. Fedora is different things to different people and unfortunately one of the persistent, although perhaps waning, issues we deal with promoting Fedora is people put off by the impression that is really all Fedora is. So I'd like to see
I hear understand this point of view, but would like to counterbalance it. (Speaking here as a Fedoraean, not a Red Hatter, although I am that too.)
Fedora is particularly interesting to some people *because* of our relationship with Red Hat, and that's a very nice thing for us. Both Fedora and Red Hat take huge benefits from that mutual, bidirectional connection -- *as do users of both operating systems*.
Actually that is exactly why it was particularly interesting to me years ago. It did not take long after getting involved to see how much more it was though.
There is a very real risk of Fedora being a self-referential toy operating system no one really uses (where "no one" excepts a few strange people like me who have been running it as my sole OS for years). Instead, we should emphasize and take advantage of our ecosystem -- Fedora, RHEL, EPEL, CentOS/Scientific Linux, the whole shebang. Each part makes the whole thing stronger.
I agree with this but the fact is that I don't see any of that even mentioned in press releases and similar reporting except for the connection to RHEL which is why people not inside the project come to think it is only about RHEL. And, of course, the many people who contribute without external affiliations to other identifiable parts of this ecosystem are always left out.
If we can find a way to broaden this sort of message I'm all for that.
John
On 11/28/2012 03:02 AM, inode0 wrote:
On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 8:21 PM, Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 08:03:40PM -0600, inode0 wrote:
<snip>
There is a very real risk of Fedora being a self-referential toy operating system no one really uses (where "no one" excepts a few strange people like me who have been running it as my sole OS for years). Instead, we should emphasize and take advantage of our ecosystem -- Fedora, RHEL, EPEL, CentOS/Scientific Linux, the whole shebang. Each part makes the whole thing stronger.
I agree with this but the fact is that I don't see any of that even mentioned in press releases and similar reporting except for the connection to RHEL which is why people not inside the project come to think it is only about RHEL. And, of course, the many people who contribute without external affiliations to other identifiable parts of this ecosystem are always left out.
If we can find a way to broaden this sort of message I'm all for that.
What benefits do you see the RHEL clones bringing to the ecosystem?
I see them doing actually quite the opposite ( reduce income for red hat which in turn is reflected in fewer ( upstream ) maintainers )
I see more value in them in the eco system coming here and maintain an Fedora LTS release then maintaining those clones
JBG
On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 9:17 PM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
On 11/28/2012 03:02 AM, inode0 wrote:
On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 8:21 PM, Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 08:03:40PM -0600, inode0 wrote:
<snip>
There is a very real risk of Fedora being a self-referential toy operating system no one really uses (where "no one" excepts a few strange people like me who have been running it as my sole OS for years). Instead, we should emphasize and take advantage of our ecosystem -- Fedora, RHEL, EPEL, CentOS/Scientific Linux, the whole shebang. Each part makes the whole thing stronger.
I agree with this but the fact is that I don't see any of that even mentioned in press releases and similar reporting except for the connection to RHEL which is why people not inside the project come to think it is only about RHEL. And, of course, the many people who contribute without external affiliations to other identifiable parts of this ecosystem are always left out.
If we can find a way to broaden this sort of message I'm all for that.
What benefits do you see the RHEL clones bringing to the ecosystem?
I see them doing actually quite the opposite ( reduce income for red hat which in turn is reflected in fewer ( upstream ) maintainers )
I see more value in them in the eco system coming here and maintain an Fedora LTS release then maintaining those clones
The ecosystem is MUCH broader than the few groups listed above but I agree with the general position that we would do well to speak more about how Fedora fits into other parts of the broader community and how that mutually benefits both Fedora and the rest of the "whole shebang." I don't really want to quibble about one group or another as part of this discussion.
John
On 11/28/2012 02:03 AM, inode0 wrote:
One thing I noticed in this announcement as well as something similar in a fairly recent Red Hat blog post is some emphasis on Fedora's role as a place where new technology is developed and tested for possible inclusion in Red Hat's commercial products. While that is true and it is a motivation for many Fedora contributors it isn't the universal view of Fedora even within Fedora. Fedora is different things to different people and unfortunately one of the persistent, although perhaps waning, issues we deal with promoting Fedora is people put off by the impression that is really all Fedora is.
Yes exactly I for one am one of those that have been trying to shave of that "development version of RHEL or development desktop version for Red Hat" through out the years because I know first hand that users have chosen to stay away from using Fedora because of the "development label" including upstream that have chosen to ship their own packages in their own internal repo simply because they thought nobody would be using their application. ( which in this particular case is server related ) which is why my project vision is that we eventually evolve into releasing and maintaining one LTS release and one rolling release which users that want bleeding edge would upgrade every 6 or 8 months or so ( which kinda is not implementable until we have something like btrfs ).
So I'd like to see some care around dealing with this. I don't want to discourage Red Hat from saying*this* is why Fedora is important to us entirely. I think that message is important too. But maybe we can boilerplate something that also emphasizes other reasons people love and contribute to Fedora so it is*one of many* reasons Fedora is important.
Yes you nailed it *one of many* which is why we cant have a single label that applies to the distribution in whole or single de to push on the front, or a single server solution etc.
JBG
On 11/27/2012 11:26 PM, Robyn Bergeron wrote:
Here is the deal:
Red Hat PR folks have always helped with spreading the word, whether for Alpha/Beta/Final or otherwise. In this particular case, an article *similar* to a press release was posted regarding the Beta to the Red Hat news blog
Here's my proposal: it would be awesome if the Red Hat PR people will add to the check-list of things to do at a release one more bullet:
"* Make sure the announcement is not mistaken AGAIN"
Is F17 release all over again: http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/marketing/2012-May/014314.html we seem to never learn and repeat the mistake at each release, perhaps that's why Jóhann was so annoyed.
Hey everyone,
I have been following the marketing thread since yesterday, and I apologize again for sending our reporters a subject line that was misinterpreted. I was excited to make sure the Beta release received a lot of good coverage, and I will definitely make sure the same thing doesn't happen again, especially with the upcoming GA.
Sincerely, Anna Eusebio
----- Original Message -----
From: "Nicu Buculei" nicu_fedora@nicubunu.ro To: "Fedora Marketing team" marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2012 2:44:08 AM Subject: Re: "Red Hat Releases Fedora 18 Beta"
On 11/27/2012 11:26 PM, Robyn Bergeron wrote:
Here is the deal:
Red Hat PR folks have always helped with spreading the word, whether for Alpha/Beta/Final or otherwise. In this particular case, an article *similar* to a press release was posted regarding the Beta to the Red Hat news blog
Here's my proposal: it would be awesome if the Red Hat PR people will add to the check-list of things to do at a release one more bullet:
"* Make sure the announcement is not mistaken AGAIN"
Is F17 release all over again: http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/marketing/2012-May/014314.html we seem to never learn and repeat the mistake at each release, perhaps that's why Jóhann was so annoyed.
On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 06:32:14PM +0000, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" wrote:
"Subject: Red Hat Releases Fedora 18 Beta" What the hell is going on here last time I checked it was Fedora's community that released Fedora. It's time for the board to come clean with the community on what's going on here...
I'm not speaking for the board (or for Red Hat), but the accusation of conspiracy here seems.... out of line. The text of the press release itself clearly puts the community first, and I think the subject simply indicates a well-meaning PR person not sensitized to the concern that Red Hat might be somehow antagonistic to that community.
To be completely fair, only the subject has this 'claim'. The whole text correctly refers to the community and the project. For my part, I give it the benefit of the doubt and assume it was just copy/pasted from a previous one.
On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 7:32 PM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
"Subject: Red Hat Releases Fedora 18 Beta"
What the hell is going on here last time I checked it was Fedora's community that released Fedora.
It's time for the board to come clean with the community on what's going on here...
JBG
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Alek Paunov -
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